Wednesday March 24th 2021

08:00 My friend "Magyar" Mike emails me with this week's Hungarian vocab test that he's put together for me. He says that he and his wife "Magyar" Mary are getting their second coronavirus (Pfizer) vaccine jabs tomorrow. This is good news for them, and also perhaps indicating that Lois and I will be getting our second jab in the next 2-3 weeks, which will be nice.

Flashback to 1994: me (left) and my friend "Magyar" Mike on my first visit to Hungary. We're showcasing our second-hand "excellent co-worker" medals from the communist era, which we bought at a flea market in Pécs in southern Hungary

10:15 A "big" day today for Lois and me  - for only the 3rd time this year one of us has to go and talk to somebody in person outside of the house and interact with them. Yikes, scary!!! 

The first time was when we had our first astrazeneca vaccine jab at the end of January. The second time was when I had my annual review (blood test etc) at our doctor's surgery. And now today Lois has to go to our dentist's surgery because first one of her teeth/fillings came out, and then this last week one of her crowns came out - damn, what a nuisance!

our dental surgery 

I drive her over to the dentist's place and come home - she's wearing a face mask and disposable plastic gloves. She will ring me when she's ready to be picked up. She has to ring the doorbell, and then the receptionist comes out to take her temperature: she tells me later - the woman just held a thermometer somewhere near Lois's forehead, and then she got the ok to go inside. The wonders of modern science - my god!

Lois had to wait a little while in the waiting-room before she saw the dentist - one we haven't had before, who's called Chris: a young guy, very nice, she says, but wearing a Darth-Vader style helmet.

She says there were never more than 2 people in the waiting-room at any one time, apart from the receptionist, so it was easy to socially-distance, which is nice. Seats are swabbed down after somebody vacates them.

Chris gave her a temporary repair, and Lois needs to discuss what to do next with Daria, our regular dentist, when we have our check-up in May, I think it is.

our regular dentist, Daria (left) demonstrating her relaxed

conversational style and dazzling smile with a typical patient

11:45 Lois and I relax with a cup of coffee on the sofa. I look at my smartphone. There's a useful article on the quora website telling visitors to Sweden about the top do's and don'ts of life in Sweden - it's authored by Marc Tudosoiu (crazy name, crazy guy!) who lives in Lund in the south of the country.

Marc advises the following: 

Do:

1.       Accept a fika (Swedish word for afternoon coffee/tea with cookies) if you are asked 

2.       Nod and give many signals that you agree to the person you’re talking with. In Sweden people say “Aa, precis” or “Mm” to show understanding.

3.       Keep a distance from one another and maintain your personal space

4.       Be on time if you go somewhere

5.       Be neat and tidy all the time

6.       Learn the Swedish language

7.       Recycle all the time - environment is important for Swedes

8.       Keep your thoughts about others to yourself

9.       Talk about the weather and nature

10.   If you want address someone, use their first name - even in formal situation people in Sweden don’t use Mr.(Herr - in Swedish) and Ms.(Fru - in Swedish)

Don’t:

1.       Interrupt others while they’re speaking

2.       Brag about your achievements, house, car, etc

3.       Speak loudly

4.       Use your speaker on your phone to communicate in public

5.       Make jokes about the religion or ethnicity of someone else. Swedes take this very seriously.

6.       Wear shoes inside someone’s home

7.       Use too much body language

8.       Drink bottled water - In Sweden tap water is preferred by every one

9.       Cut in line - in Sweden nobody cuts in line [or "jump the queue" as we say in the UK]

10.   Use cash - credit cards are used by every one

I discuss this briefly with Lois - it'll be a useful little list to take with us and consult, if we visit Sweden again, that's for sure.

A few years ago we visited the Swedish city of Lund with our daughter Alison, our son-in-law Ed, and their 3 children, and Lois and I think we kept most of those rules. Nobody offered us a "fika" unfortunately.

We think it probably held the Swedes in good stead that they tend to maintain their distance from each other, as a matter of habit, when the pandemic finally struck a year ago, that's for sure!

flashback to December 2016 - outside Lund Cathedral, Sweden - 

(left to right) back row: me, Lois, Ed,

front row: Isaac, Rosalind, Josie

19:30 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's weekly Bible Class. I settle down on the couch and watch some TV, a 1986 concert by the rock group Queen at Budapest's Népstadion stadium in 1986.

When Lois is otherwise engaged with her zoom sessions etc, I look to use that as an opportunity to see things on TV that Lois wouldn't be interested in. The problem is that we're both quite alike in a lot of ways, and we tend to like the same programmes - oh dear! But I think I'm fairly safe with Queen haha!

I think I'm right in saying that in 1986 it was still a huge novelty to hear of Western rock or pop artists doing concerts behind the Iron Curtain, as we used to call it. In fact this Queen concert is the first one I was aware of. I remember also seeing a concert by Billy Joel, perhaps a few years later, that took place in Russia - something equally unheard of at the time, I would say.

It's particularly nice tonight to hear lead singer Freddie Mercury break into his playlist of Queen songs with the beautiful Hungarian folksong about the coming of spring, "Tavaszi szél vizet áraszt", whish seemed to be a crowd-pleaser, no doubt about that.

In between the concert performances we also see shots of the band members sightseeing in the centre of Budapest, and down by the Danube. 

They bump into a family of British tourists with a very vocal young daughter -  a British tourist must also have been a rare sight in 1986. Even a few years later, when I first visited, in 1994, I realised that people were expecting pretty much all foreign tourists to be Austrians.

How cute! Woolmer Gardens is in Edgware, by the way, in case you're wondering.

flashback to spring 2006 - I photograph Lois down by the Danube in Budapest

21:00 Lois emerges from her zoom session and we watch the latest programme in Ben Fogle's series "New Lives in the Wild".

Tonight's family, the Goddards, have a slightly different story - they moved to the Isle of Rum off the Scottish coast in 2012 to start a wild, self-sufficient life-style, living in an old dilapidated caravan, but they found it was a bit too wild for comfort. 

The family eventually moved to a less wild existence on the Scottish mainland in a proper house that they're renting, and where both father and mother do part-time jobs and they don't do as much food-growing and animal-rearing as they did on Rum. Makes sense to me!

One of their big reasons for leaving Rum was their children's education. It's interesting however that the two youngsters, Davies and Scarlett, now 20 and 17, don't mind the fact that they get fewer in-person contacts with other young people. They've always been quite happy to interact with friends mainly on the internet - Davies has a girl-friend in the US who has visited twice. 

Again, like the Swedes with their endemic social distancing, the two youngsters were "pandemic-ready", which must have helped: my god!

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzzzz!!!!