They were clattering around in their basket when I was doing the laundry this morning.  Sorry pegs, spring is seriously teasing us this year. Already into April and still no chance of hanging the clothes out to dry due to a foot or so of dirty snow on the patio at back of the house. I have to confess to being a bit of an enviro-babe (“babe” is a loose term in my case) when it comes to a drying-line of sheets flapping merrily in the wind. It is so satisfying – same as baking bread. I don’t mean with a machine - I mean punching it out on a board and watching it rise under a damp cloth then plaiting it into an elegant and delicious loaf. It’s a smell thing too. Bread smells wonderful and so does laundry dried in the fresh air.  I have to admit that I haven’t made bread that way for years and years. I don’t eat it often either. To my disgust I have almost completely lost my sense of taste and smell which takes a lot of the fun out of gustatory matters.  I now have a tendency to use a lot of chili flakes and Indian spices in my cooking. Joe is getting used to it. The plus side is that cleaning out the kitty litter isn’t quite as dramatically unpleasant as it was before.

It’s been a busy first three months of the year up here in the Kawarthas. Joe and I had a brief escape to visit some friends who were spending the winter in Myrtle Beach. Not very warm but definitely an improvement on the weather at home.  I’ll take walking along a nearly empty white sand beach in February any time! Our friends were generous hosts, plying us with copious amounts of good and ridiculously inexpensive wine by Canadian standards. Unfortunately but unavoidably they also shared a nasty cold with me just before we left. Poor Susan – she was quite sick while we were there and her bronchitis lived on as a nasty cold in me and then Joe.

Live Oak at Brookgreen

We did get to enjoy ourselves though .  A visit to Brookgreen sculpture gardens was a high spot for me.  With avenues of live oaks draped with Spanish moss, we were away from the hustle of a commercial seaside resort and back in the romantic deep south that I used to read about in novels by Frances Parkinson Keyes when I was about 14. I suspect they may not have been very good books but my 14-year-old self didn`t notice.

I have been musing on the progress of my reading over the years. From Enid Blyton`s Famous Five and Adventure series to the School Friend, Little Women and Anne of G.G. Then Agatha Christie at around 12, followed by the afore-mentioned FPK. I do remember having graduated to Gone With The Wind at 17 but don`t really remember what caused the transition to Tolstoy and the like by the time I was 20. I was “serious” for years after that. I remember reading all of Thomas Hardy one winter. I do wish I had kept a log of everything I read over the years. Just recently I decided to reread Anna Karenina which I remember really loving in my 20s.

Garbo as Anna

After getting halfway through I needed to have a break for something lighter. The translation I find annoying although it’s supposed to be the classic version. Of course it was translated in the 1900s so there is a stiffness about it that I suspect – but how would I know – is probably not present in the original. I confess to being a literary omnivore. As long as it is well written, I will read it.

Our second break this year was a trip to Niagara-on-the-Lake for a short stay at the 1860ish Riverbend Inn that is also a winery. This was a Christmas gift from James and Angela and it was lovely, lovely. We ate excellent food, sloshed lots of wine and wandered about. N-o-t-L is a quaint little theatre town, home of the Shaw Festival, about 15 km from the heavily commercialised Falls area. Much more to our taste. We allow ourselves a little snobbery.

Two old geezers

Also poor Joe has been to the Falls so often as visitors from the UK and Hungary have always expected to see the Falls. Of course that has always been in the summer when it is stinking hot and full of tourists.

I have always found that visiting world famous tourist destinations has been a bit of a let-down.  Thing is, you are so familiar with the postcard views, National Geographic or TV travel shows that when you do see it for real there are no big surprises.  Niagara Falls looks just like it is supposed to – so does the Grand Canyon etc. etc.  I am sure that if you spent a couple of days exploring the Grand Canyon the experience would be quite different but most tourists turn up, look at the view, buy a souvenir  and a cup of coffee and get back on the bus, as it were.  Years ago we went as a family to the GC and were most amused to see a whole busload of Japanese tourists spill out, line up in front of their bus for a group shot, and get back on again.  They may have stayed all of 20 minutes. Then there was another bus load of elderly Mancunians who exclaimed to each other noisily “Eeee – it’s even more bee-ootifool than it was the last time we were here.” Say that to yourself in a Manchester accent for best effect.

The Butterfly Conservatory at Niagara was a wonderful treat. Lovely and warm which it wasn`t outside but that was to be expected as the place is a replica of the Costa Rican rain forest. There must have been thousands of spectacular butterflies all flutterbying about. I had planned to take lots of photographs but the darn things wouldn’t keep still long enough. I felt particularly honoured when a couple of them actually sat on me. Funny how things change. All my life, until the last few years, I have had a great horror of flying things in confined spaces. Moths, birds and worst of all, bats. Fine outside but not near me indoors, oh, no! Somehow, I have got over it – with the exception of the bats, that is.  I do remember having  to spray rigid with hair spray a huge moth that had invaded my bedroom when I was a house slave in Germany. It was late and the household had retired and would not have been impressed if I had wakened them!  It must have been a nasty end for the moth. I apologise in retrospect.

I have rambled on as usual and now it`s time to put away my metaphorical pen and go make cauliflower and garlic soup.

A bientôt, mes amis. Bis später, meine Freunde – I could go on in Italian, Hungarian, Spanish etc. but that would be showing off…

 

 

 

So, it’s the first day of 2013 (or it was when I began writing, now it`s the fifth). Seemed like a good day to write my first blog of the year.

I don’t think I’ll review last year. It was fairly dull and uninteresting except of course for the birth of my wee granddaughter, Dahlia. /’/’: (Oops! Cat just strolled across my keyboard.) I haven’t seen her since she was two days old so I am looking forward to seeing how she has grown and changed. She must be six weeks by now. Can`t wait to spend some time with Deklin either.  We will likely celebrate Russian Orthodox Christmas with a trip to see the Ottawa family as there are still a lot of presents in the corner of my living room. None of us is Russian or, for that matter, orthodox in any sense of the word but the timing is suitable.

Our own Christmas passed quietly with just a pleasant visit from Duncan, our neighbour. We amused ourselves with M. Hulot’s Holiday which is a real gem of a movie. We laughed and laughed.  Then off to Toronto at the weekend (horrible trip) for some noisy fun with Joe’s son, Stephen and his family.  We were eleven in a small space but it all worked out and we were well fed and entertained. Stephen’s 17-year-old twin daughters are beautiful and talented. Hope is into photography and graphic arts and Patience is going to study music at Uni and entertained us with her brand new saxophone. Lovely. Still waiting to see your photographs, Hope!

With the passing of Christmas and New Year, I find myself in need of some way of cleansing all the musical junk from my brain. I have got Anne Murray and Bette Midler firmly lodged there. I have no idea how they got there as that is definitely not my kind of music! Begone, ladies. Get the hell out of my head. I think I’d better work on squeezing them out with more acceptable stuff. Now, what would be the best Murray/Midler antidote? Some good blues alternating with some exquisite Beethoven would do nicely. A Pink Floyd concert on the telly last night was a help. I still love that stuff!

Shall I make some NY resolutions? Shall I resolve to lose weight? Tried that before – didn’t work- probably because I can’t stick to anything longer than a couple of weeks. Shall I resolve to walk 10,000 steps a day? Fat chance when I spend much of the day hunched over my keyboard. I know, maybe I will dig out my art supplies and have a go at drawing again. Whatever, I’m tired of knitting socks, gloves and baby blankies. I do however have a book that requires some attention – called Knit Your Own Cat. Got to try it, don’t you think?

My friend Janice Gray is about to depart to Cairo for her annual volunteering jaunt. Clever planning to go from January to March or April. The weather will be pretty well perfect. Weather is on my mind right now as it is minus 20C at the moment and somehow the house just isn’t warm enough although the furnace is doing its best.  Anyway, I really look forward to hearing how things are in Cairo and Janice writes wonderful reports. There is a photograph of her in Tahrir Square waving a flag after Mubarak stood down.  I can hardly believe it’s ten years since I was in Egypt. Christmas Day at Abu Simbel – you can’t beat that, believe me! I will always be grateful to my kids for making it possible for me to go to Egypt. I am really happy that I kept a detailed journal of the trip. I found it recently and spent a pleasant hour reliving many details that I had forgotten.

Joe and I haven’t really been anywhere since Hungary in 2011 and I am definitely getting twitchy.  We will have to put our heads together and examine the possibilities. The trouble with having such a far flung family is that visits to the kids necessarily are “trips” and sometimes that takes the place of more exotic ventures. Of course PEI is a delightful place to visit (Richard) and the Rockies are not too shabby either (Anna, sister Sue and brother Robin)!   I love to go abroad but that is becoming more problematical. Joe will be 80 this year and although perfectly healthy, he is diabetic and both factors really slam up the price of travel medical insurance to more than the price of an airline ticket!

Our little town is looking up! In early December, the Art Gallery put on an excellent fund-raiser that they called “Wine, Women and Song” and that was indeed what it was. Two excellent women performers, one a chubby blues singer and the other a really talented saxophone/clarinetist made it a great evening, washed down with plenty of wine.  We were both able to indulge in the wine as we now live close enough to walk to town. It was a fine night and we strolled down our hill, crossed the river via the footbridge and there we were – bingo! (Actually bingo is what generally happens in that particular venue!) Of course we were later faced with the reverse journey. Full of wine, we trudged back up our hill which is so much steeper than on the way down.

Before my time, Joe and his wife, Pam, had some Scottish friends who had a lovely house right up in the trees overlooking a beautiful lake.  They had bought the house in the summer, not realising that they would be in very serious trouble come winter. Their vehicle could only climb the hill so far. Beyond that point, they had to slog up through knee-deep white stuff, clinging to ropes. Apparently they did have a snowmobile but they didn’t like it! Groceries were transported in backpacks. These were elderly folk too. Eventually they sold up and went back to Scotland where the weather is a different kind of horrible. 

It was expected. Our local winter version of Darwinism has started. On New Year’s Eve some drunken kids drove a Jeep onto a lake. The ice was not thick enough and it fell through, drowning all four kids.  Sadly, we are no longer surprised by this, or the skidoo-ers that also drown or wrap themselves around trees. I do feel for the poor sods who have to try to rescue them or pull out the bodies.  We have equivalent boating accidents in summer – nearly always booze related, of course – and in the autumn they get to shoot each other in the woods.  So stupid! It does clean out the gene pool somewhat but around these parts, a simple stroll around town demonstrates the inbreeding.

Bancroft really is a small town. The population for the whole region is still under 4,000  and like so many small towns, it is aging.  The town was first settled in the 1850s by Irish settlers taking up an offer of free land. Logging has always been important and still is. Some loggers still use horses in the bush in the winter. In the 50s there was a boom in uranium mining which lasted until the 80s, I think. There is a lot of unemployment since a large wood processing plant closed down and now the town relies on retirees, tourism and service industries.  There are maybe a dozen family names that appear everywhere – including the food bank, as Joe and I discovered when we were volunteering there. But on the flip side we have a very strong arts community which gives rise to interesting arts and crafts and we have an actual live theatre which was originally the local jail. We don’t have a cinema although we do occasionally get some “art” films at the theatre.  All in all, it is a pretty good and a very pretty place to live. Come and join us – or at least come and visit us.

I have a little problem in the meantime: I proudly put big fat Christmas ornaments on a tree in our front yard and they looked great during the season. Unfortunately our neighbours will have to enjoy the season until about April because the snow is now so deep that I can`t get there to take them down! Ho-hum – so it goes…

 

 

 

 

The forest is ablaze but thankfully there is no smoke, just leaves of red and gold. We are almost at the height of the autumn colours up in here on the Shield. It really is the most spectacular time of the year, and no bugs to contend with. It is still quite warm although the nights are chilly. My camera is groaning with the weight of its memory stick and threatening to turn golden. Yesterday, I coerced poor Joe into hiking to the top of the Eagle’s Nest which is a hawk observatory on the top of the 200 ft. cliff that dominates the town of Bancroft. I was puffing like poor old Thomas the Tank Engine with a heavy load on the way up (I don’t do hills well at all) and Joe was complaining that his legs were about to give out on the way down.  I must add that we didn’t hike all the way up – just from the car park! It was worth it for the spectacular view of the changing colours from the look-out at the top. Strangely there is a whopping great cross right at the top of the cliff – who knows why, but Church is very big in these parts.

I don’t believe I can remember a summer quite like this one past. It has been positively Arizonan and the grass is dead. The green stuff that has shown up is almost all weeds. How come weeds don’t die, just the grass?

We stayed home this year. No glamorous foreign excursions or even Canadian excursions.  We almost we to PEI and Nova Scotia – and didn’t; we almost went to Niagara-on-the-Lake – and didn’t. All we have to look forward to for now is a trip to Orillia which is rather dull in itself, its main claim to fame being the Stephen Leacock museum (been there, done that) and the big gaudy CasinoRama. Don’t know what Rama stands for. Joe’s daughter, Liz, gave him tickets for his birthday to a stage show at the casino at the beginning of October so hopefully there will still be some decent weather as we will hang around for a couple of days afterwards.

Have I ever written about Joe’s first visit to a casino? If yes, sorry, but I’m going to repeat it. Joe is by no means a gambler, no, no way at all. However, finding himself there, he cautiously converted a few bucks into chips and sat down at a machine, popped a chip in and then all the bells of hell started shrieking. Joe panicked. “Oh, my God, I broke it,” he gasped. He had won the jackpot – $2,700! Are you expecting me to tell you that he gambled it all away? Not likely! He stuffed it in my handbag, told me to guard it with my life, and we scarpered out of there (after I had lost my stake in the slots in about five minutes – which is typical of what happens to me if I play games of chance).

I do remember one occasion back in England when husband and several of his pals went off to the pub while I stayed home with the kids. They all tumbled back for coffee after closing time and then decided to play poker. I won! I won! Of course I was sober and I don’t think academics are much good at poker. Well, these one weren’t, for sure.

Talking about memories, I am sitting here after dinner, waiting for Dragon’s Den to begin and find myself watching Coronation Street. I don’t recognise the characters at all but they all talk Lancashire and seem to have much the same problems they had in the days when I used to feed Richard in front of the telly. Richard is 46. We lived then in the delightful hamlet of Acklam, Middlesbrough, Yorkshire. It was and very likely still is, in reality, a dirty, smelly, heavily industrial city, surrounded by dirty, smelly, heavily industrial cities. But the people were great – friendly and funny and we made very good friends there. Also on the plus side was M’boro’s proximity to the North York Moors and the east coast towns. Beautiful country with quaint stone villages, and cosy pubs serving ploughman’s lunches and real ale.

My daughter Anna and her Tim have just returned from a trip around England and I’d love to have gone along, even if it meant carrying the luggage. They wouldn’t have let me do that, I’m sure, but I would have been a marvellous guide. They went to the Roman Wall and then took a tour through Wensleydale and Swaledale, visited Hurworth, the village we used to live in before we came to Canada, then down to York and Ilkley to visit Anna’s uncle Rob and then to London where they had a brief lunch with my brother Tom who is just about to take his new appointment as Chief Inspector of Constabulary and is apparently extremely excited. October 1^st is the big day. I never asked Tom if he will be wearing a uniform as CIC – maybe not, as he’s never been a serving officer – as some keep pointing out! He did send me a scan of his Royal Warrant – it’s not particularly impressive actually. I mean, I’m impressed that he has it… oh, you know what I mean…

There must be something swirling around in the ether these days. A few weeks ago I was contacted by some good friends whom I hadn’t heard of since 1971. I still don’t know how they found me but I’m delighted they did. Friends from England who are still living in the same area of Surrey they were in when I last heard of them! You know, when you have batted around as much as I have in my life, it’s hard to imagine living in the same place for all that time – and, if I’m honest, in the same marriage. Gopal and Geetha have done it most successfully, it seems. They are proud grandparents of course. Who isn’t!

And since then I have also re-established contact with another couple of friends from the same era. And this brings me to something I would like everyone to take notice of and join in if you are so inclined. Di and Roland Clift’s son died tragically young in a motor cycle accident. Since 2009, Di has organised Smile for Julian  every year on Julian’s birthday, October the 2^nd.  People from all five continents, and that includes Antarctica in case you’d forgotten, will join in. A bit late to be telling you about, I suppose, but the premise holds good whatever the date is.  All we ask you to do is some small random act of kindness to a stranger or someone in need of some cheering up. Do it in memory of someone you’ve lost. It’s not a question of money at all. Not too much to ask? Doesn’t even have to be on October 2^nd. Choose your own day – or, even better, choose every day! Take a look at the website Smile for Julian, join in and then post your “acts” later, if you wish.

So September is over in an hour or two. Not a lot happened to us in September except for a riotous visit from Family Raiswell from Ottawa. Angela is getting close to baby date and understandably fed up. She says she wants her body back. I always thought that there should be some way of storing sleep before a baby’s arrival.  Deklin was in excellent form and was great fun. He’s a true little boy now. Not even a toddler any more. He’s excited about having a little sister but I suspect he imagines she will arrive ready to play trucks with him! James is a tower of strength and we are all lucky to have him!

 Footnote: I may have to find another host for my blog as WordPress 
seems to have added links and advertising without permission.
Not on!

Deklin having fun at dinner

Blogia, the muse of uncontrolled ramblings, has been whispering in my ear for some time but I have been ignoring her as I’ve been having too much fun getting my garden in shape for summer. There was no opportunity for gardening last year as we were preparing for our move. Almost a year already since we moved in.

Anyway, Blogia just won’t shut up so here goes. I am unsure what she wants me to blog about but no doubt she’ll come up with something if I just keep typing.

There you go – typing. Typewriters, or tripewriters as they may otherwise be known, have been part of my life for a very, very long time. I remember my father telling me to take a typing course at school as it “would always be useful”. I refused as I didn’t see my future including working in a typing pool (anyone younger than 50 even know what one is?) or even aspiring to the dizzy heights of becoming a secretary. I wasn’t going to take orders from anyone! I still don’t. Always had a problem with authority figures unless they are me.

So I got myself a job as a sub-editor and script writer in a company that had typing pools and everything I wrote, I wrote by hand. Four years of journalistic drudgery and I took a break, working as a house slave (au pair) in Bonn, West Germany. To supplement the incredibly stingy stipend of nine Deutschmarks a month – yes, a month! – I started to freelance scripts back to my old company in Scotland. This meant typing and the only machine at my disposal was a very old typewriter with a German lay-out keyboard. Of course I learned to type by the hunt and peck method.

Indeed it was useful. Six months of slavery left me with a working knowledge of German which would serve absolutely no useful purpose in my life or career (except for watching old war movies with Joe and pointing out where the subtitles don’t match the words spoken), a taste for continental food and a decent sense of independence which led me back to Scotland to gather some cash together by serving tables for a few weeks and set off to London with £67.00 in my pocket. I was 21.

I had £3 left when I actually got a job on a magazine with a Fleet Street address. The interview process involved me being shut in a room with a stack of paper – and guess, what – a typewriter - to create a story from scratch. No memory of what the story might have been but I got the job.

From that day on, I was never without one and for years I functioned with a little Olivetti portable that served me well and produced many scripts. It wrote me out of debt numerous times. Then along came computers with their keyboards. I love them too but I am still looking for a real old machine – one with silver rings around the keys. I don’t know what I would do with it and it would take up space I really don’t have, but dammit, I want one! If I ever do find one, I will very likely remove a couple of keys to make some earrings to match the wonderful bracelet that Joe bought for my birthday in the Distillery District in Toronto.

What a delightful place that is. The whole area remains as it was in the days of the working distilleries long since gone but the interiors are restored with galleries, eclectic little boutiques, coffee shops, bakeries and the like. Just the kind of place we both love to potter around. In some ways it reminded me of the old warehouses in Savannah, Georgia which have been restored in a similar fashion.

Ah, that sets me off thinking about getting on the move again. We haven’t any solid plans for a holiday this year but we will no doubt park the cat and pile into the car and take off. But in which direction? I favour east as it’s a long time since we’ve been near the ocean. Roaming around Nova Scotia and PEI would be most pleasant. We may even wait until early September to go as it’s less crowded then.

There is a move afoot within the Winsor family for a reunion next year. It will be my 70^th (aaarrrggghhh!) birthday next year and would have been our father’s 100^th except for him being dead this last eight years. Whether we five sibs can all arrange to be in one place at the same time is questionable to say the least but maybe it can be done. Four of us are at least on the North America continent and one in England. Sue and I are rather in favour of Vancouver Island where none of us lives but Joe thinks Bancroft would be a fine place to have it!

The other big excitement will be the arrival in November of a baby girl, a sister for Deklin. She is already named – Dahlia – but she may get called Broccoli as when Angela told the wee lad there was a baby in her tummy, Deklin shook his head and insisted it was only broccoli. He’s very excited though but is having a hard time understanding that she has to grow before she is born.

Conversation: “We’re going to have a little brother or sister for you, Deklin.”

Response: “TONIGHT?”

We haven’t seen the little guy for some time so it’s time for someone to take a trip. Either us to Ottawa or the family to us.  Deklin will be three next month.

L’il ol’ Bancroft has been providing us with events and general goings-on to enjoy lately. The annual Relay For Life was an excellent and well-planned event recently. There were local bands a-playing, particpants’ tents lined the park venue and there were various entertainments including a hot air balloon. The first lap of the relay consisted of local cancer survivors and there were many, many. Very moving also were the lights that edged the entire track, each one in memory of someone who died of cancer. There were very, very many of those. Joe and I both considered adding one each for our lost spouses but for some reason we didn’t. The relay lasted all night with the bands playing all the way – to which we can attest as we don’t live too far from the park. The whole thing raised over $108,000. Not bad for a town of 3,500.

We have come late to the realization that our town now has an occasional film club which takes place at the local theatre (theatre as in drama, not movies). We happened to catch the last movie of the season before tourist time. It was The Affair, the silent movie that won all the accolades earlier this year. Marvellous and all the other superlatives one can think of. And I am quite in love with the French lead whose name I can’t quite remember.

If you happen to follow the news from Britain, you will see that my youngest brother, Tom, is in the news big-time and is much hated by the Police Federation. They’d better look out as it almost certain that he will be confirmed as the new Chief Inspector of the Constabulary. No, he’s not a cop – he’s a lawyer. It’s a long story and I won’t go into it all here. There is actually an anti-Winsor Facebook site and a YouTube post. My son Richard says (humorously, I trust) that he is thinking of joining the FB site as he clearly remembers his Uncle Tom trying to persuade him to jump off a 12’ wall when he (Richard)  was about seven. My twin brothers are only eight years older than my eldest.

I think Blogia has done her bit for now. It’s stinky hot here – over 40 degrees with the humidity – and we are guzzling strawberry flavoured iced green tea. Quite nice really.

 

It’s blog time again – in fact it is long past blog time. Not sure why I haven’t got around to it before this. The usual excuses, I guess. Certainly it is true that I have been very occupied with my work since the beginning of the year. I have been expanding my horizons on the social media front as it is certainly becoming more and more important in the real estate world to which Robert, my client, belongs. His website is taking up a lot of my time and I am rather enjoying it. I have indeed learned how to Tweet. I still find it a bit pointless but following people is quite entertaining. Ian Rankin is my current favourite tweeter. Unsurprisingly his utterances are generally about beer, music and the occasional book signing. Shades of Rebus, for sure.

Right now we are in renovation mode – again! This time it is the ugly old bathroom that is the subject. I do wish I had taken a photo of its original ugliness before the reno began. Maybe if I just describe the tiling, you will get a general idea. Whitish with green swirls and black edging, all made of plastic. The tub had its surfaced ruined by about 50 years of Bancroft’s horrible iron water and also had an incipient hole in it. There’s more… It has taken four days so far to get to the stage when we can at least have a bath in the otherwise completely unfinished room but a bath feels pretty good when you have been deprived of the opportunity for a week. Surely they will be done by next weekend.

Our reno guys are very pleasant to have around and are always laughing and joking while they work. They have one flaw however. Every day they tell us that they will arrive between 7.30 and 8.00 and then turn up around 9.15. No biggie? Well, it is for me.  You see, I am not accustomed to getting up before about 8.15 and the crack of dawn is something I rarely hear. In fact I have never heard the dawn crack. Who decided that dawn cracked? The dawn glimmers and starts to resound with twittering birds, in my experience.

Have you been over-Titanicked this last week?  We have, although last Saturday TV ran the 1958 Titanic movie “A Night to Remember” which is far, far better than the overblown James Cameron movie of a few years ago. It always annoyed me that they included that silly love story in the latter film. The story is quite strong enough without the addition of fictional characters swooning and mooning to Celine Dion (never liked her).  I wonder if there will be anything left of the ship in another hundred years. (There certainly won’t be anything of us, will there?) Probably not, from what I have read or seen in documentaries. I hope the scientists will leave the poor old thing alone now and let her disintegrate in peace. And before I too let the topic rest, I must report the astounding fact I read in the paper the other day. A very large number of teenagers were amazed to discover that the sinking of the Titanic was a real event. How about the Holocaust, kids? Or did they just make that up for TV or the movies? If indeed they have heard of it at all.

Segue – seems to me that there must be some very confused people out there. If the Titanic story is fiction to them, what else is fiction? How do they determine what is and what isn’t? Are extreme, violent computer games real to them? Probably not. What about violent shoot ‘em up movies? No. So what about a cop show like Law and Order? That seems to me to straddle the issue. Such situations as they portray do exist but they are presented as fiction. But are they? I have recognised real cases on L&O SVU which they claim to “have no connection with anyone living or dead”. The Paul Bernardo case was fictionalised only slightly and served up on L & O. Imagine how the parents of the kids those monsters killed must have felt if they had just happened to be watching that show after a nice supper. Although of course, given what they have been through, perhaps they wouldn’t subject themselves to programming of that sort anyway. Hope not.

Sean and Drew, our renovators, are both “alternative” guys. Between them they have seven kids and all of them are being home-schooled. They live without TV and in Sean’s case they all play music and paint. I haven’t asked them if they are organic vegetarians but I’m prepared to place a bet on it.

Our stutter-stop spring has produced a really nice warm day today and I felt the urge to get outside and do something useful in the yard. I chose to remove last season’s dead leaves from the flowerbeds at the front of the house so I commandeered the leaf-blower machine that Joe picked up at auction some time ago (and did not subsequently sell in the yard sale last summer!) I had never used it before, and in spite of its name, I kind of expected it to suck the leaves up rather than blow them all over the place which is of course what happened. Add to that the fact that there is a strong wind out there and… oh well, you can imagine.

Thoroughly discouraged, I decided to return to this blog post.

A strange thing is going on – my typing is getting worse and worse these days. Is this an effect of getting older, do you think? Or perhaps I am just getting sloppy. I do find that typing on my laptop is a lot better than on the desktop though. My DT is getting old and clunky and is sometimes ridiculously slow so I am seriously considering transferring all my work stuff to the laptop and retiring the old lady. I do have one concern though and that is that my first laptop just died all of a sudden at the age of only two. Working one minute – dead, dead as a dodo the next. The power unit had failed completely. Are LTs generally less reliable than DTs? Anyone care to advise?

A couple of months ago I would have asked our good old Boxtalk friend, Malcolm, about this but sadly he surprised us all and died. (Boxtalk is the list I belong to on the internet, for those who are not familiar.) Malcolm was an all-round kind, good man and we all miss him. Famously he often wore a shirt that stated No, I will not fix your computer! but he always did. I remember having lunch with Malcolm one day and noticed that he was earing his shirt inside out. When I eventually mentioned this he simply shrugged and told me that was how it came out of the dryer. Didn’t phase him a bit.

Joe and I are looking forward to a birthday (mine) trip to Toronto in May. Joe always sets up something special for my birthday and this time it’s a culture event – although I have been told that St. Lawrence Market and a good Hungarian restaurant are on the agenda. I hope that we might make it to the ROM and the main event is a pair of tickets to the stage production of War Horse. I am looking forward to it immensely.

Meanwhile, I will finish this off with a wonderful photo of guess who? Deklin – Supergrandkid!

 

DEKLIN!

 

 

Can you believe it? Joe is nagging me about doing my taxes and it’s still only February. He, of course, has his all ready to go. But his are easy; he doesn’t have to spend an entire weekend surrounded by little slips of paper, calculating totals and all that rubbish. The real problem, however, is getting started. Why do you think I’m sitting here with my laptop, writing? I’ve meaning to get to a blog post for ever so long but let myself procrastinate on the excuse that I have had nothing to write about. Now a bigger case for procrastination has come along and joggled me into blog writing. Of course I still don’t really have much to write about…

No more medical dramas have occurred I am pleased to say. I did have my follow-up MRI a few weeks ago but although my doc has the results, I am not to hear what they are until Monday. That sounds to me as if everything is fine and dandy. I did also have a Doppler ultra-sound of my carotid arteries and the technician was swooning in joy at the beauty of my arteries. I expect he’s still talking about them. Once upon a time, they admired other parts of me that you didn’t need a machine to look at. But the past is another country… to paraphrase L. P. Hartley.

Anyone remember The Go-Between? Wonderful book and an excellent movie too. I wonder if it will bubble to the surface on one of Joe’s ancient movie channels. (Son James comments that most films viewed in our house were made around 1933. There is a certain amount of truth in that statement.)  I’d love to see it again. Come to think about it, there is a common thread between that and Ian McEwan’s Atonement in that the main plot is driven by a young child misunderstanding what s/he sees and causes disaster. Hmmm… wonder if Ian McEwan also read The Go-Between? Not that I mean to impugn one of our very best writers – sorry Ian.

Talking about books, which I do at the drop of a hat, has anyone read Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending? A very slim volume and really, really dense. I have been thinking about it a lot over the last weeks.  It is about memory, ageing and regret.

Then I moved on to The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje. Delightful and so well written. Also about events seen through the eyes of a child, this time the main character is an 11-year old boy travelling unaccompanied from Ceylon (as was) to England by ship.

And just to leaven the mix, I next attacked Heartstone by C. J. Sansom. It is the fourth Matthew Shardlake novel set so well in Tudor England. The series starts with the dissolution of the monasteries and has progressed through the latter years of Henry VIII’s reign. The details of life in those times are so sharp that one can even smell the streets of London. Shardlake is a lawyer who solves mysteries.

Many of you know that I work for a real estate agent in Ottawa, generally managing his “behind the scenes” stuff. We have known each other for years and years and have an excellent working relationship. Working electronically suits me very well indeed and although I will never make a fortune that way, it provides a little extra for financing the occasional reno or foreign holiday. Every so often though, Robert provides me with a challenge. Some time ago I was faced with learning to manage his webpage and I am doing fine with that now. The latest challenge has been to set up a Facebook page that is purely for business. I am struggling a bit on that one as people keep putting non-business messages up but I am managing. What has been a new experience for me is to try and get the guy going with Twitter. I never really have seen the point of Twitter but I thought the best place to start was to sign myself up and get to understand it. I have quite enjoyed following some interesting people like Salman Rushdie and Stephen Fry but I have yet to learn how to persuade people to follow Robert’s pronouncements. Any ideas, people?

I want to take a sentence or two to acknowlege the death of Marie Colvin and two other journalists killed in Syria thi sweek. I so very much admire these correspondents who put themselves on the line time after time to expose the horrors that are taking place in so many parts of the world. We must know about this and these fine people are getting killed to make sure we do. Condolences to their families. They must be grieving but I hope they are proud too.

Damn it – lunch has got in the way and now I have lost my impetus. Being Saturday, Joe happily watches English soccer all morning, then he watches a show in Hungarian for half an hour and roars with laughter at incomprehensible comedians and says “Look, look, we’ve been there!” when they do a travelogue bit. I think that I have now visited a higher proportion of “sights” in Hungary than I have in Scotland. Most of my real travelling has been done right here in North America though. With my husband Warren we roamed around the country extensively and Joe and I have done our share together too. Still got no firm plans for this year yet although we are toying with maybe going east to NS and PEI.  The point of this paragraph is that these entertainments are now over and the promised movie set in Hungary is junk, so Joe needs to chat. It’s hard to write while being chatted at about how we missed the cheap cherries at the supermarket yesterday etc.

Our next excitement and major expense is going to be the total gutting and renovating of the main bathroom. It is the Achilles heel of this whole house and we really have to attend to it as there is an incipient hole in the steel bathtub. We have covered it up with polyputty or something but it’s probably quietly continuing to rust underneath. I just hope we get it all done before there is leak which would doubtless hit Joe’s computer in the room beneath. May as well make a real job of it by relocating the tub and the toilet to give the impression of more space. That will also require removing all the ghastly old tile.  The whole (hole?) job will take about a week. No shower for a week! OMG! We have two other loos but no other shower. Head in the sink like the old days. I vividly remember an occasion in England when I was washing my hair in the sink and my Siamese cat leapt from the top of a cupboard onto my bare bent back. There was a huge cacophony of mingled shrieks – mine from pain and shock and the cat probably from getting wet and being shrieked at!

Bancroft has had more winter than many places and we got a huge dump of snow  last night which has completely obliterated the tracks from Deklin’s snow-sliding activities of a few weeks ago. Everything is looking pretty again but there is a sharp wind blowing the snow from trees and roofs, spoiling the enjoyment of a nice walk around the neighbourhood. Last week was the annual dog-sled races which passes at the end of our road and the main street was closed for an hour or two for street hockey. I like the dogs, you can keep the hockey.

So here I am at the end of another 1,300 words or so and when I have written the last character I will be looking for another form of procrastination. A little light vacuuming, clean the toilets?  Not very appealing, any of it…

 

 

 

What a fizzy, bizzy year it’s been, what with moving and all that that entails. The auction to get rid of all our surplus Stuff, fixing up the new house, actually moving in, fitting out the garage and basement with storage for all the remaining Stuff. Then realising that we had to go out and buy stuff to replace the Stuff we sold! Somebody (no names of course) sold all the garden tools at the auction! Now our yard is one seventh the size of the previous yard but it’s still an acre and that requires a spade and trowel at least.

Our holiday in Hungary of course was a major feature of the year. This visit I felt more comfortable with the relatives although not when they gave up their beds for us. Little bits of language were slipping into my consciousness which helped and travelling around provided us with lots of adventures which you will already know about if you read my earlier blogs.

The fall was livened up by visits from immediate family coming to inspect our new home and of course a visit from Master Deklin and his entourage. I also went to Ottawa without Joe, to do an overnight babysit with the wee lad while Mum and Dad were all gussied up to attend a formal “do” at the Chateau Laurier. Angela had arranged this formal for 350 people on behalf of the company she works for but in the end the pair of them went to help a friend deliver her baby in the middle of the event. I would like to have a picture of them in their evening clothes in the delivery room!

Then of course came Christmas – dash about buying stuff and wrapping it – going to Oshawa for a family party given by Joe’s daughter prior to their family all going to the Dominican Republic for Christmas. Liz does put on a good show.

Then came trouble. I  won’t go into all the details. On the Friday before Christmas, I had a wicked headache and, more worrying, couldn’t get my words. Went to Bancroft Hospital and they told poor Joe it might be a brain aneurism and whizzed me off to Belleville in an ambulance for a CT scan and a spinal tap. Both were OK and by the next day my words were back. End result is they had no idea what was wrong and discharged me on Christmas Day. Joe was really sick with a very bad cold and had to drive to Belleville and back to get me. Jamie and Angela did a mercy trip on the Saturday and brought me some toiletries and a book to read.  Prior to that I had absolutely nothing to do except stare at the ceiling. No TV either as the technicians who set it up (flick a switch?) were off for Christmas. Did occur to me to wonder why the techs who were not celebrating Christmas could not be persuaded to work but then I am known to be a bit stroppy about such things. One of the nurses did give me a book someone had left at the nursing station (they seemed astonished that anyone would want such a thing!) It was about the influence of God in the relationship between mothers and daughters. I swear it just made me sicker and I rapidly abandoned it, preferring the ceiling.

So here it is – the last day of the year. We have no intention of kicking up our heels and will probably be in bed long before midnight. Such is growing older…

However… there have been some memorable Hogmanays in years gone by! One year, before I left home, I had been to the Arts College Fancy Dress Ball the night before New Year’s Eve and pulled an all-nighter. It had been quite a success – especially my costume which I constructed from front pages of a teenage magazine called Romeo. With my Romeo tunic, black tights and my medieval page boy hair and a plastic sword, I got my picture in the local paper!  However, come Hogmanay, I was pretty wrecked and went to bed to catch some zzzzzzs in the early evening before going on the bus to meet my boyfriend Tony and go to his Mum’s fabulously famous New Year party. WELL -  my mother deliberately didn’t wake me up! And neither she or my father would agree to drive me to meet him. I was really mad – seemed like teenage abuse to me and of course I ended up on the bus when midnight struck. The bus stopped dead on midnight, all the people got off, took their flasks from their pockets and passed them round, then we all sang Auld Lang Syne on the sidewalk, had a wee dance and got back on the bus.

The party that followed was a typical Hogmanay do. The first-footing began after midnight and continued until about 5.00 am. Originally it was common to bring a lump of coal as a gift to the hostess but I remember people bringing kippers all dressed up as people in crepe paper clothes. I suspect that most people can hardly imagine the amount of spirits that was consumed but there was lots of special New Year’s food too. Shortbread is of course traditional but so is a thing called Black Bun. It is the heaviest fruitcake you could possibly imagine – no flour at all, just fruit soaked in whisky and compressed into a thick pastry shell.  Needless to say there were also many other impossibly sweet treats. Not for nothing does Scotland win the race to have the highest sugar consumption and generally most unhealthy diet in the western world. We did after all invent the deep-fried Mars Bar. And the mealie puddin’ supper! One day I will tell you about Atholl Brose which is a Scottish dessert – oh, OK, I’ll tell you now. It’s uncooked oatmeal mixed with whisky and really thick cream. It’s really quite good. Believe it!

So, dear readers, I am signing off for 2011. Hopefully there will interesting and amusing stories up and coming in 2012.

Joe and I have a special wish for you in 2012 -

LANG MAY YER LUM REEK!

Note: I’m having a bad time with photos and a new header so I will work on them later!

October 1 – 28 degrees!

This is the day we should have been in Vienna but the schedule doesn’t work so now we are back in Szolnok with the sweet lady, Terike.

I feel most awkward sitting here in the only living room writing this but I feel more awkward gawping at Hungarian telly! To get here from our last visit was a fairly boring drive of about 120km. What did make it more interesting were the prostitutes leaning against trees or fences at intervals along the way. We counted 13 girls spaced out along about 50 km of rural road. Some were dressed in as little as a thong and skimpy bra. The truck drivers pick them up and chuck them out again when they are finished with them. Actually it was a sickening sight as some of them are very, very young looking.  One girl even tried flagging Joe down in spite of me sitting right there. Cheeky bitch! As you may guess, prostitution is not illegal here.

October 7^th – 9 degrees!

We can’t complain – today is the first day of miserable weather we have seen on the entire trip and we leave for home on the 11^th so that’s not bad at all!

Six days without writing and I have almost forgotten what has happened in the intervening time.  We drove into Pest to visit another relative who is married to a horrible witch. The wonder is that he has neither offed himself or strangled her. Sanyi (husband) is a state-certified folk artist and does really lovely work in wood – chess sets etc. and he has also produced some wonderful furniture. Officially he has retired but is still working on projects. Sadly though, the witch Ica (Itza) has insisted that he act as a store detective for her son’s business which is importing and selling junky clothes from China and selling them cheap in the Asia Market, a huge mall in a poorer part of Pest. Lalli (the son), Rita (the wife) and Szofika (the sullen daughter) all work there, with Ica criticizing everything they all do.  Honestly, this woman is truly ghastly. I guess she’s about 60, has everything possible medically wrong with her(?) although she seems quite healthy enough to plague everyone else, has dyed her hair scarlet and bits of shiny scalp gleam through – an interesting effect. When we met her, she was wearing red pants, a flowered t-shirt with sparkles all over it and an orangey-yellow blouse over the top of it. She NEVER stops yapping whether you are listening or not and when Joe was trying to do something tricky with his borrowed cell phone (everything was tricky between Joe and that phone!) she yakked on and on and Joe was saying quite audibly “shut the fuck up, Ica, shut the fuck UP!” She paid not a scrap of attention. She does understand some English so it’s important to watch what one says.

Witchie Itchy had arranged for us to stay at her son’s house which is regarded as a great deal of steps above the accommodation of the rest of the family. Certainly a lot of money had been splashed around without a modicum of taste. I think I counted five huge flat-screen TVS in the house. It was a very sad house though. Witchie spends all day annoying the family and then drags poor Sanyi back to her son’s house for dinner which she neither buys nor prepares – ever. The wife Rita is understandably tearing her hair out as she is left to deal with the old bag, two kids and everything else as her husband spends all night out gambling in the hope of keeping the business afloat. At least that his excuse. He is an addict for sure.

We escaped next day for another day in Budapest and went up to town in a rattly yellow tram car and had rather a lovely time wandering the upmarket area, poking around the posh shops and turning our noses up at the tourist trash. While I had been at Asia Market the previous day, I bought a handbag from the rack in one of Lalli’s stores and now I am in possession of a  Gussace purse! Get that! Who wouldn’t want one of them???

Next day began with a somewhat hair-raising trip driving diagonally right across Budapest and ended four hours later in the tiny hamlet of Bikal, not too far from the southern city of Pécs (Paych). The EU has partnered with an Austrian developer to produce an extremely upscale resort there with a hotel complex and a fake but faithful renaissance village, rather like Upper Canada Village in as much as the miller, the baker, the smith etc etc were all actually working and producing real stuff. I was tempted to buy some wool but loyalty to Rosemary prevented me.  No yaks, Rosemary, but some old-style sheep with curly horns, lots of donkeys – even an albino! Our reason for going there was to see Joe’s nephew’s sculptures. I know I have spoken of him before. Barnus is a most talented guy and was fortunate enough to get a huge commission to provide statues all over the park surrounding the resort.

Barnus with statue

Barnus had booked our accommodation and we were astounded to be shown to a two-room suite with a large two-person bath and all the luxuries you could imagine. It was very Germanic in appearance with lots of dark wood and fake plaster made to look as if it were falling off. The bath was very, very nice.

B. joined us next morning and showed us around the park. His work had all been conceived with the future location almost becoming part of the sculpture. It was our last really warm day and after our sculpture tour we were taken to a “mediaeval” bird show with hawks and owls doing what trained hawks and owls do. We enjoyed it. Later we were treated to a “mediaeval” tournament with lots of horse tricks and then a joust. Now we had seen the same stuff last time we were in Hungary and then again when we were in  England (but that was at Hever Castle, Anne Boleyn’s family seat) but we smiled and pretended we had never seen such a thing.

Being very keen to have us meet his latest love, Barnus then whisked us off to Siofok which is a holiday resort on the famous Lake Balaton, really the only large body of water in the country. There is something that I really like about holiday places out of season. The girlfriend, Argi, had found us an unoccupied holiday apartment in a large building. The view of the sun going down over the lake was so stupendous, breathtaking etc. that I forgot to actually look at the apartment which was under renovation and pretty tatty. No matter, there was a bed to sleep in. The girlfriend spoke some English and was very pleasant. The pair is obviously madly in love and couldn’t keep their hands off each other. I can remember that stage – just…

I had planned to do some photographs of the Balaton next day but we awoke to white caps and black clouds and so it remained.

Back to Szigetszentmiklos for a couple of nights with a side trip to Keckemét to see another relative for  an hour or two and now we are sitting in our last hotel, close to Ferihégy Airport. We leave here at 5.30 am for our flight to Copenhagen (????) and our connection to Toronto. No doubt we will crawl happily back to our little nest in Bancroft at around 7.00 pm.

Huh! It was 8.30 before we got home as our ride was an hour and a half late picking us up.

Just a few thoughts before I wrap up this topic, I promise! The first part of our holiday was primarily spent doing the tourist thing which was of course enjoyable, the second part was relative driven. Although spending time with strangers that I could not understand was not my choice, it gave me a much better idea of what living in Hungary is like. The older country people seem to live very much as they have done since the fifties, many live in the same house which they may have built with their own hands. Certainly Joe’s niece and her husband in Torokszentmiklos did that – right down to making the mud bricks themselves! They don’t have a car – never had one and nor do most of their neighbours. They do have cell phones though – I suspect that every human over the age of three has at least one cell phone. Some have many.

The small towns seem to have lost their economic bases and the young people are leaving. An old, sad story. The EU has funded all sorts of projects – schools, parks etc. but somehow it makes little difference.  One person said to me (in English) that after communism was done with people lived quite well. They didn’t earn much money but there were jobs and everything was cheap. The EU has meant steeply rising prices, emigrating doctors and other professionals.

In the cities, it’s not so different but instead of owning houses most of the people are crammed into tiny communist era apartments. Here many do have cars in spite of a litre of gas costing the equivalent of an hour of work at minimum wage. There is heavy truck traffic as the huge camions clog the main roads and motorways.

The scenery is lovely, the villages are dying, the medium sized towns seemed to be doing OK and most are very attractive. Budapest is lovely in the centre but it’s a big city and of course it has its underside. It is noticeable that more people speak some English since my first visit in 2004 and I assume that is a result of the EU.

There is lots more to say but I am rambling now and will leave it right here.

Thanks for coming along on the trip.

 

It's been a blast!

 

Welcome to Erdobenye

Csütörtök, Szeptember 29^th, 2011

Wine Taxi Day but before that, we went off to the once-upon-a-time orphanage to drop off a copy of Joe’s second book which covers his entire childhood – in Hungarian of course so I haven’t read it.  They were so happy to get it and Joe was delighted.  Actually Joe is dropping off copies of his book across the country – signed of course. I think he is feeling rather like a Great Author. And why not!

Our Wine Taxi driver wasn’t able to pick us up until the afternoon as he was busy helping with the harvest at his own family’s winery but he did appear in a ramshackle sort of Jeep/bus thingie and rattled off with us to a very smart, newish winery where we had an English-speaking guide and a very good explanation of the wine making process. The Tokaji grape is only white and there are various stages at which they are picked and fermented to create all the different varieties. We tried three wines and decided that we liked the driest best but the flavour of the sweetest wine, the Aszü, was really exceptional. I had to keep Joe off that one, as a bottle of Aszü contains about 160 grams of sugar!  The story of the grape used in making this wine is left on the vine until it develops what they “noble rot” and turns it into what looks very much like a raisin. From that the wine of kings is created. At one time they used to make an Aszü which could only be purchased by royalty. Given that the number of royals around has decreased substantially, the very rich can now buy it. Our Wine Taxi lad told us that 80% of his family’s production is pre-sold to China!

An alcove in the cellars, Tokaj

The second winery we went to was very different. Here we only visited the cellars which are 36 metres below ground and date from the 15^th century. I learnt less here but really got the atmosphere! The cellars are hand-hewn out of lava limestone and they are black with thick clinging mould. No wine, no mould. No mould, no wine. Symbiosis. There is an ancient tasting room where all the tables and baronial-looking chairs are also black with mould and there is a Miss Haversham chandelier draped with mouldy spider webs. Atmosphere! Not sure how healthy for people but excellent for wine. Fortunately there was a much fresher tasting room above ground.

And that was the end of that bit.

Next day we were off to Szigetszentmiklos, south of Budapest, to do the relative thing again. It was a long ride full of missed turnings and dodgy maps and frazzled nerves but eventually we arrived at our hotel, booked through the internet. It sounded all right until we discovered that it was right on the motorway and was actually a truck stop as well as a hotel. I think it is the worst hotel we ever stayed in. Our room was on the second floor – no help with bags – it was stifling hot although we had previously ascertained that it was air-conditioned. In fact they had turned off the a/c all through the hotel according to the date, not the temperature.  Anyway we had a hot rest and then went down to wait for the family we were there to see. They turned up three hours later but we did have a pleasant evening with them. Next day we spent wandering around SSM.

There really was nothing at all to do and as we were invited to dinner with the young family that evening and we had to amuse ourselves somehow so we ended up wandering aimlessly around a huge discount store full of stuff that was such junk we didn’t even want to touch it. We got into the car and another vehicle drove up beside us. The driver hopped out and asked Joe the direction to the motorway (which was actually unmissable), then he stuck his head in the window of our car and shook Joe by the hand,  leaned across to kiss my hand (!) and announced himself to be Turkish. Next, he had something for us – a catalogue of stainless steel pots and pans. Next he “gave” Joe a shaver and pressed a knife block onto my lap. I wasn’t touching it! He was not giving up though. Next thing, he opened the back door and hurled in a complete set of pots and pans. Then of course he demanded money. I was ready to get out and hurl it right back but Joe is a much softer touch and started bargaining. Bad idea. The guy was practically helping himself out of Joe’s wallet. He spotted a 50 Euro note and demanded it and when he didn’t get it, he took back his “gifts”. So we drove off with $150 worth of stainless steel pots and pans. Of course there was no way we could bring them back so they were given as a gift to Eva, our hostess for the evening.

We left the “bad” hotel this morning and took an expensive taxi into Budapest for a day of sightseeing. Originally we planned to visit the Hungarian Parliament which, if you have photos of it, looks like a wedding cake. We had to wait around before we could even buy a ticket for a tour as there was a red carpet event taking place. The Vice-President of Croatia was leaving with some ceremonial pomp. I got a nice shot of a security guard descending the steps as I actually have no idea what the V-P of Croatia looks like. After queuing for tickets for the tour, we were told they were free as we are both EU citizens and by the way, come back in two hours and we’ll let you in. The hell with that!

We grabbed a taxi and were driven over the famous Chain Bridge to the Buda side of the river and the Buda Castle area. St. Matthias Church, the Fisherman’s Bastion etc .etc. All the buildings in that area are 18^th century or older and we had a lovely wander and bought things we didn’t need in classy little boutiques. Then we dropped into a little café for a presszó kavé. To my childish delight it was a movie star hang-out and there were signed photos from lots of big stars on the walls. Christopher Plummer, Jeremy Irons, Anthony Hopkins, Robert de Niro and lots of others were all there. Not physically however.

Buda seen from Pest

All that before going back to the relatives’ tiny house to spend the night as they wanted to take us out before we head back to another town to stay with the relative who did the birthday celebration mentioned in Part 1. Unfortunately the rest of the time is going to be eaten up with relatives liberally sprinkled all over the country, which Joe had promised would not happen. It is a great strain being with people you cannot communicate with. They all seem to called Itzi, Bitsi, Mitzi and Titzi and that’s just the girls – the boys are Tomi, Doni, Laci and Janci  (“C” is pronounced “ts”) then there is Sanyi and Pityu and Pista – not to mention Józsi of course. As Joe is everyone’s uncle, he is Józsibacsi.

Anyway, I digress. We stayed with Tomi, Evike and Tomika, their son, last night, on the hardest bed I have ever slept in and it was only 30” wide! Amazingly, I did sleep.

Taxi, anyone?

Today they took us to a newly set up historical park – 12^th century  – very well done. There was an English movie crew filming there at the time so we had to wait here and there. It was fun though – made up for the hard bed. They really are very, very nice young people, even if I understand not more than a phrase of two in a thousand! Tomi is mad about everything Scottish and knows a few words of English. He was a professional footballer before he got too old – but not one of the ones who earned fantastic salaries. His son is now showing a lot of talent. Tomi and his wife have a small business that seems to be constantly on the edge of disaster, like many of the small operations in this country right now.

12th century vessel

Just wait – Part III will follow really soon.

 

We Leave

We were ready to go hours before Miss Daisy (yes, Driving Miss Daisy!)  came to pick us up in her little boxy Nissan. She seemed smart and on the ball and assured us that she was quite familiar with airport trips and preferred to go the back roads. She had never been late and knew exactly what she was doing. She insisted – too often, as it turned out. HUH! I shall pass over the chaos and rising panic as we eventually hit a completely grid-locked Toronto. There appeared to be no open route to the airport.  Miss Daisy’s back roads were of no help at all. Suffice it to say that dodging through minor roads and burning down anything that was open, we eventually made it. Joe’s son, Stephen and Nancy had arrived at the airport at 6.30 for a little visit. We arrived at 8.15 pm. By that time, there was barely time for Stephen to haul our bags and sprint to the check-in. We had left home at 4.00, expecting to get to Pearson at 7.00. Joe was fit to be tied but of course they rushed us through and we made the flight.

Our Air Canada plane was an old rust bucket with torn upholstery and even armrests patched with duct tape, the food was predictably horrible but we did get a free bottle of not very nice wine. Sleep was impossible. I would have read but our reading lights were both broken so we kept on trying to achieve unconsciousness. I think I had just dozed off when they put the lights on and started a movie, prior to serving a half-frozen muffin, the consistency of damp clay. So finally to Madrid. Hot and dusty, but hey, we were in Spain! Never been there before so now I can add it to my List of Countries Visited. We ate some indentifiable cold meat and hurried off to wait for our Malev flight to Budapest. Malev much more pleasant than AC and only a three hour flight.

Thankfully we were met by Barnus, Joe’s nephew the sculptor, for our ride to Törökszentmiklós, Joe’s family town, where we stayed for two nights with his niece’s family in their three room house.  Let me describe the town – perhaps “past its best” is the most accurate description. I guess originally it was a small market town and then with the advent of communism a few factories sprang up which provided employment. However these factories are now abandoned and there is high unemployment. The young people have mostly taken off for brighter futures and the oldies on pensions are left to live out their lives. Since the advent of membership of  the EU there are a few projects designed to bring some life back to the region. This includes a very smart new eco-school and judging from the number of bikes in the yard there must be enough kids left to justify it. I do notice that compared to my first visit in 2004, the shops look a bit smarter. Joe and I took a stroll to the town centre for a kavé (great coffee!) and a wicked cake which sent Joe’s blood sugar over the top, predictably.

Joe’s niece Bozike (short for Erzibet – by one letter) is the soul of kindness but of course speaks no English. She does however subscribe to the louder is better school of communication. She is endlessly active. Her husband has had a stroke and needs 24 hour attention. Meanwhile she also works a very productive garden which produces all their fruit and vegetables and preserves them, keeps chickens and a little terrier which is chained all day long and let loose at night to guard the property. There is still a shoe-menders shop at the back of the yard as her husband used to mend the neighbours’ shoes after 35 years of chauffeuring the mayor of the town. Now it sits empty of the shoe-mender but still containing his lasts etc. Thankfully they no longer have a pig.

As we were strolling into the market yesterday I noticed a powerful stink coming from one of the little houses and Joe said it was pig-stink. Apparently that used to make him happy as a kid because it meant that there was food around. Those people probably had meat. Pig killing is a huge ritual and relatives come from all over to enjoy the results. The pig-killer comes to the house and does the job and the family does the rest. Of course this is dying out and most people buy their meat at the butcher. When we were walking, Joe also pointed out a little shop which announced Women’s Clothing and had a couple of dresses hanging out at the front. This is an illegal butcher’s shop. Everyone knows it’s a butcher’s shop, including, I presume, the authorities. It is the preferred spot for buying your pork or chicken although usually in this little town if you wanted chicken you’d just go out the back and pick a plump one!

One image of TSM sticks in my mind – an exceptionally slim and pretty girl on a bike, wearing tight white pants, her hair loose, talking on her  cell phone.

A Cacophony of Clocks

After a couple of days in Törökszentmiklós we moved about 20 km down the road to a larger town called  Szolnok. This time we were there to visit another relative called Terike. Terike turned out to be a most pleasant person, soft-spoken too. It is common in Hungary that when a husband dies, thechildren, as is their right,may  demand that she sell her apartment and give them the proceeds of the sale – leaving her nothing. Now, in her late sixties she is working as caretaker of two tatty Communist era blocks of flats which provides her with an apartment, plus she cooks and delivers food to a much older woman, and on top of all that, she cares for two of her grandchildren, boys about 12 and 14, full time. Their parents are permanently unemployed and spend their time drinking and smoking (drugs too).  The dear soul surprised Joe with a mini birthday party with cake and champagne.  And the boys who are very pleasant and speak a little English from school, joined in with a rowdy version of Boldog Szuletesnapot (Happy Birthday).We stayed with her for one night, on the living room sofa which is her normal bedroom, and in it I counted twelve clocks. And all night they ticked and tocked…

In the evening we went to see the glorious Baroque and Art Nouveau architecture of the town and strolled across the lovely new bridge across the Tisza, Hungary’s second river.  A very pretty town indeed.  At least the pretty bits are pretty…

A strange sculpture in Szolnok

Eger

Eger is in the north of the country, not too far from the Slovenian border. It dates back to the 900s and a lot has gone there ever since, including the famous siege in 1552 when 2,000 people, including  women and children defended the castle from 80,000 Turks.  This is where the famous story of Egri Bikaver wine comes from. The Turks could not believe the fierceness of the Hungarian resistance in the siege and the rumour started that they mixed the blood of a bull into their plentiful supply of wine to give them superhuman strength. EB is therefore the famous Bull’s Blood wine for which area is famous. The cheap, nasty stuff we get in the west is nothing like the local tipple which is delicious.     

So far we have explored the town and the castle. After our castle adventure this morning, we fell, sore of foot, into a pretty little restaurant for lunch in their courtyard. After passing up tripe and onions and roasted cockerel testicles, we settled for the most delicious bright green cream of fresh pea soup accompanied by superb bread with spiced butter!  Tomorrow we are going up into the hills to see the grape harvest, if we can ever find our way out of this tortuous and labyrinthine mediaeval muddle. Now it’s time for our $3 taxi ride into town to experience more gastronomic delights for dinner. Ah, me, it’s hard… Turns out Joe had a bad tummy (wonder why?) and ate very little but I managed a courgette pancake stuffed with sheep’s cottage cheese. Yum!

Yes, we did find our way out of town to a place recommended by the hotel staff called Silvasvarad which translates into Plum Friend. I guess that our hotel person didn’t know that we didn’t like tourist traps and horrid kitchy souvenirs. However, we ignored these and bought a ticket for a ride on a choo-choo train (narrow gauge railway)  in the oak forest that covers the hills. The train was packed but when we got to the top there was plenty of oak forest to spread us out. Actually it was quite lovely and there are logging museums and fish farming museums. We didn’t bother with logging as we do live fairly close to Algonquin Park but the fish stuff was interesting.

Our last night in Eger. More eating at “our” restaurant just under the castle walls at “our” table with “our” waiter. Three of four restaurants share the patio space and together they pay musicians to play as we munch. Several of them have been really quite good and we were even treated to some real gypsy violin music on one evening. It does go on a bit…

Flashback

So now we are in Erbobénye, a tiny village right in the middle of the Tokaj wine district. Again a very pleasant, modestly priced hotel – at least by our standards. Very few Hungarians could afford to stay here. We were told that an average hourly wage will buy one litre of gas!  No wonder so many people bike it or bus it.

Apart from the beautiful scenery of this place and the wine, wine, wine, Joe chose this village to visit as in 1942 when he nine years old, he was sent here to an orphanage for boys. He tells that he was accompanied from Budapest for part of the journey on the train by an official but when they got as far as they could by train, the chaperone left him on the station platform where he was met by an aged one-legged man with a horse and cart who took him the rest of the way. Today we visited that orphanage which is now a home for elderly and mentally afflicted women. We rang the bell and a white-coated woman allowed us in. It seems that we were a great diversion for the inmates and we even found old lady whose husband had been in the same orphanage while Joe was there.

This was during the war, of course, and food was very , very scarce but at least there was more than his mother could find in Budapest and I believe the boys were pretty  well-treated. Joe didn’t see his mother for two years as she had no way of making the journey. He says he remembers getting two letters from her but they were read to him and not given to him.

Tomorrow we are hoping to take the Wine Taxi which will ferry us around for some serious wine-tasting without having to worry about driving.

Did I mention that we have had about 22 degrees and sunshine every day since we arrived?  No? Smug smile!

Photos will have to wait until I can get organised.

 

More soon.