08:00 We spring out of bed to have our shower, but we take too long over it and over the cleaning up afterwards - damn!
09:00 Lois starts on her annual project to make 10 pounds of home-made marmalade - it takes most of the day.
Lois works on her annual project to make 10 lbs of home-made marmalade - yum yum!
Meanwhile I start to get rid of some of the clutter in our rooms - we're due to "show off" the house to a potential lettings agent on Monday morning by means of a whatsapp video call: Sarah, our daughter in Perth, Australia, wants to buy the house from us and let it out to tenants until she and her family are ready to return to the UK in due course.
10:00 We also have to fit a walk into our schedule today, but the temperature remains below freezing and there's a bitter easterly wind coming off the Continent, so we decide to do the walk in the garden and in front of our row of houses. Brrrrrr!!!!!
We come in after the walk and try to warm up with a hot cup of coffee and a ginger biscuit. Then Lois phones Budgens, the local convenience store, to give them our order for groceries, to be delivered on Saturday.
after our freezing cold walk in the garden, we warm up with hot coffee
Lois phones her grocery order through to Budgens, the local convenience store
I recently saw that Hungary is doing relatively well when it comes to vaccinating the population, better than the EU average, according to this chart.
The Hungarian government apparently became impatient due to the slow roll-out of vaccines by the EU, and decided to approve use of the Russian and Chinese vaccines.
Last night I got an email from Tünde, my penfriend in Budapest, who's in her 60's. She says that she got a call from her doctor a day or two ago offering to give her the Russian vaccination. Tünde doesn't really trust the Russian one, however. She stressed to her doctor that it hasn't been approved by the EU - as a result of the call, however, the doctor has told her she's now at the back of the queue - my god.
The country's health workers have all been given the "western" Pfizer or Moderna vaccines - from what I can gather it seems to be mainly the ordinary people who are being offered the Russian and Chinese products.
And the government is apparently also prioritizing sportsmen and women, who are also getting the "western" vaccines. The government is also allowing football matches between top British and German teams to take place in Hungary. And they have also diverted pandemic money to building new sports stadiums for some reason, Tünde says. What madness!
Ordinary pedestrians have to wear masks in Hungary when they go out, but joggers are exempted from this. I know that world medical opinion seems to be split on this issue - in France, joggers are required to wear masks if they cannot keep a safe distance from pedestrians.
I know, however, that maskless joggers worry Lois also if she meets a runner not wearing a mask: these people tend to expend a lot of energy, puffing and panting as they go, and Lois doesn't want their heavy breathing and their "droplets" flooding into her nostrils as they rush past her, that's for sure. And Tünde feels the same - my god!
16:00 We have a cup of tea and a ginger biscuit on the sofa. We ring Alison, our elder daughter, who lives in Haslemere, Surrey, with Ed and their 3 children Josie (14), Rosalind (12) and Isaac (10).
(left to right) Ed, Josie, Rosalind, Isaac and Alison
Alison has had a good week in her new job as part-time teacher's assistant at a local primary school, the first job she has had for 15 years. The family are hoping to move a few miles to a new house in a quieter location, just over the county boundary, in Hampshire: with luck the deal will be signed next week.
The children have all had their parent-teacher reviews this week, remotely, using zoom. The system is that the parent gets exactly 5 minutes' discussion with each of the child's teachers - at the end of the 5 minutes the zoom just cuts out, which is good. No more cases of parents "hogging a teacher" and taking too long over it and building up a horrendous queue, which is nice!
20:00 We watch the last episode in the new Danish crime series, "The Investigation", which tells the story of a real-life murder of a Swedish journalist, Kim Wall, by a Danish billionaire, Peter Madsen, on board his private submarine, in 2017.
Police are frustrated because forensics have consistently failed to come up with a cause of death for Kim. Without that they will be forced to accept Madsen's admittedly scarcely credible "explanation" of what happened.
Tonight police finally find a couple of flaws in Madsen's story: he said she died of carbon-monoxide poisoning after the sub's engine malfunctioned, but there was no sign of this in the autopsy. Also, physical injuries on Kim's body are found to have happened either immediately before, or immediately after, her death. Madsen's story however, was that the injuries happened much later when he discovered she was dead, and was trying to heave her body up the submarine's tower. Madsen is found guilty by a court, and he gets the maximum penalty: life imprisonment.
Jens Moller, the ageing detective in chare of the case, has been broken by it psychologically and emotionally, and he takes early retirement after the trial.
We never see the Madsen the murderer's face during the whole of the series, because he doesn't appear. Interviews with him are carried out off screen and we just hear the reports of them afterwards. Instead, the story concentrates on the painstaking and emotionally draining police work that eventually pays off, if only after several months of hard graft. A brilliant job, we think!
21:00 We continue to watch a bit of TV, the first programme in a new series about
An interesting programme. Lois and I were curious to know what it would be like to sleep in a hotel room that was open to the elements.
It sounds idyllic, with your own private pool and all. However we both start worrying. Lois wonders if guests ever get birds flying into the room while they're in bed, and I wonder apprehensively what it's like to sleep under a mosquito net. We have twice been plagued by mosquitos in our long marriage: first in Hungary about 15 years ago when we thought it would be a nice idea to sleep in a boat moored on Lake Tisza, and secondly in 2016 when we visited Lois's cousin Sylvia in Melbourne Australia and spent several evenings under their gazebo in the back garden. What madness!!!!
On reflection we decide to keep the walls on our current house for the time being. My god !!!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!!
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