20:00 Lois and I re-read an email I got this week from Tünde, my Hungarian pen-friend. She says that Hungary, or "Orbanistan", as she calls it, is a terrible country. They have huge inflation, but Prime Minister Viktor Orban calls it a "wartime inflation", which Brussels has made worse. Yet Viktor continues to enjoy a lot of popularity among the electorate. But "why?", she asks. I'm afraid I don't have an answer for her on this one.
When Viktor was in opposition, Hungarian TV had to give equal time to the views of the Government and of the Opposition Parties. Now that Viktor is in power, however, he has turned it into OTV, i.e. "Orban TV".
This is saddening for me, because I can remember when Viktor, in his younger days, and his party Fidesz - the Young Democrats - were the good guys, youthful and radical, whose aim was to remove all vestiges of Communist totalitarianism from Hungarian society.
flashback to me on my first visit to Hungary in 1994: notice
the advert for the Fidesz party (above and behind me to the left),
at a time when Fidesz, the so-called "Young Democrats", were still "the good guys"
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!
08:00 We get up early because Sarah, our daughter in Perth, Australia, has arranged to zoom with us at 9 am. I set up the computer in the kitchen/diner, because so-called Bedroom 3, where Lois and I usually zoom from, is out of action at the moment until we can get some blinds fitted.
I set up our laptop in the kitchen diner
for a zoom with Sarah, our daughter in Perth, Australia
Five minutes before the zoom session is due to start, however, Sarah texts me to say can we postpone till tomorrow, as she is currently visiting her friend Charissa. This is a bit disappointing, but we are happy for Sarah to spend more time with Charissa, as family life out there can be a little lonely at times, because just like we do in the UK, Aussies tend to "keep themselves to themselves" after they go home after the working day.
10:00 Lois and I had a plan to drive over to Oxford tomorrow (Sunday) to spend a couple of days with our old friend Jen and her son Daniel. However the weather forecast for Sunday is looking rather threatening, and the Met Office has issued a warning about rain falling on icy roads, making conditions treacherous.
Even Steve, our American brother-in-law, has heard about the predictions, so it must be making news around the world haha!
Subject: Well, Sunday certainly looks sucky
Moderate
Snow or Ice Warning
Severity: Moderate
Possible threat to
life or property
Alert in Effect from 12:47 PM (GMT),
December 15, until 2:00 PM (GMT), December 18
Description
Updated to include
areas across Wales and the Midlands , previously covered by another warning. End
time pushed slightly later given slightly slower arrival of area of rain, sleet
and snow across the region. Widespread frozen surfaces ahead of a band of rain,
sleet and snow, pushing northeast across the UK though Sunday, leads to a risk
of icy conditions through the morning and early afternoon, before conditions
turning much milder from the west.
Yikes!
To be on the safe side we decide to postpone our departure till Monday, by which time the temperatures will have been milder for over 24 hours, so we should be all right! Call us risk-averse if you like haha!!!
11:00 Yesterday both Lois and I took fasting blood tests and a blood pressure check at our new doctor's surgery in Malvern. At the end of Lois's session with the practice's nurse, we were advised to get a blood pressure monitor to used at home, so we stopped by the adjoining pharmacy to buy one.
We had decided to try the machine out this morning but, as usual, we find that the English-language user guide has been written by someone who doesn't speak English. We puzzle over the instructions for over an hour. What madness!!!!
we spend about an hour trying to understand the English-language
user guide for our shiny new blood pressure monitor, but
we discover that the writer of the guide doesn't really speak English
- what madness !!!!!
In the end I work it out, which is unusual, because it's normally Lois who fathoms these sort of things out - she's much more practical than me.
15:00 The guy from Hillary's Blinds arrives, an hour after he said he would, to put up blinds in all our windows at the back of the house - the kitchen/diner and the two smaller bedrooms.
It's a weird session, however. It seems that every day I look at Lois at around 5pm and say to her "What a weird day this has been!".
Why was today weird? Because the guy had forgotten that, when he called round for 5 minutes on Wednesday evening, he had left all the blinds with us, in cardboard boxes. Apparently when he woke up today, he'd forgotten about all that, and he had been spending a couple of hours looking for them all in his garage. What madness !!!!!
He's obviously a bit absent-minded and Lois and I reckon he's probably at least in his 60's, and I start to worry that the visit is going to turn into a disaster. Is he an alcoholic, for example?
In the event, he does a perfectly reasonably job, however, which is a relief.
the kitchen-diner
bedroom 2
bedroom 3
At last this house is beginning to feel more like a home. A house can't be a home if you've got nothing on the windows to stop the neighbours looking in, can it !!!!
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!
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