Drowned Rats, Towel Day, Dead Sandals

May 16^th Somebody, by that of course I mean me, slept in again today so it was after eight thirty before we got out. Our plan was to satisfy our befuddled brains that we could still remember where “Binglang Village” is. It’s not really betel nut village, we call it that because they tried to get me to sit and chew last time we were there. We found it easily enough.

This time we walked back on the other side of the fields so you can almost see the whole village in this next photo. When we first visited, we fancied a couple of those balconies to sit and have ‘sundowners’ in the evening. It wouldn’t be so pleasant now though, the fields have been taken over for highway construction, temporary inconvenience!

I fancied a black and white panorama today but I decided that instead of using the camera program I would take a few pics and then use Microsoft’s ‘Image Composite Editor’ when I got home. The result is not too bad at all.

Took some more black and white pictures of old buildings on the way home, and some of Huan fighting through the undergrowth. Yes, we strayed off the beaten track again, lots of dirt and scratches on my legs. Anyway, here she is trying to untangle her skirt.

Late singing lesson for Huan today so no afternoon naps. Luckily no cooking required as yesterday’s dinner had already been prepared before our surprise visitor and menu change. A quick reheat from yours truly and Huan was fed and watered ready to go out again, dancing. Before she went though, I had to take her ‘hostage picture’ with today’s newspaper again, as proof of life for the pensions department up in Dalian. PS I’m not allowed to post that! Once I was left to my own devices I did another Yoyo Chinese lesson, now almost up to where I stopped the last time.

May 17^th SWMBO, otherwise known as HM, PM, Minister of Foreign Affairs (absolutely not allowed), Minister of Home Affairs (position redundant at this time), Minister of Finance, Hyacinth, ‘er indoors and all kinds of other things decided we should walk around the river today and that I should try ‘no lady pads’! Of course, like all good minions, I always do what I’m told so off we went, me with some trepidation. It felt strange after a while because, although you may not know it, after an operation such as I had, after about an hour of walking, you have a continuous feeling of ‘wanting to go’. However, eleven and a half kilometres and two hours and forty minutes later my undies were still dry, apart from the sweat that is! Temperatures were above 30ºC when we got home, although there was a little breeze now and then. Having been ordered to follow today’s plan I didn’t take the big camera with me so no photos I’m afraid.

Evening time and the now usual routine, out for Huan and Chinese for me. I have now reached the point at where I finished last time. New stuff starts tomorrow! If you’re interested, this is the website - https://www.yoyochinese.com

May 18^th Today we decided to go the reverse way round our local mountain walk. We don’t do it so often because there are more steps to walk up this way. What a day we chose for it as well, when we got home and checked the weather, the PC said we had 37 ºC. No wonder we were both soaked, but I was still dry where it counted! Anyway, I decided you could do with a couple of black and white photos again so here’s the first, our very own Disney castle. It would be even better if it was utilised in some way!

The second is a bridge into ‘Jade Mountain’ apartments and villas which we can’t cross because we haven’t got an electronic key. However, I liked this picture and, unusually for Huan, as it’s B&W, she did too. I hope you will like it as well.

Lots more photos of the scenery taken but nothing special to put here for you. I did like this next one though. Watching some cows at the side of the road, and chatting to them as I usually do, I suddenly realised how the shadows were playing on this one. I wonder if he realised he was becoming a ‘Zebow’ or is it a ‘Cowra’?

After our walkies, as it’s the weekend again, it was time for another 'full English'. Perhaps I should have taken a picture of that but I was too hungry!

Another unit of Yoyo Chinese in the evening for me, it’s stuff that I already know so I’m not having to try too hard yet.

May 19^th Two lazy people this morning, we really didn’t feel like walking at all. Huan was just feeling lazy and I had slept badly. According to her it’s because of my ‘female hormones’, I’m more of the opinion that the bedroom was too warm last night. Anyway, we did go out, I need to walk as much as possible otherwise my feet swell up. That’s not female hormones, just old age! Now Huan’s dancing partner has gone off to Thailand for a week with her husband and daughter which means Huan will drag me out walking again this evening. We arrived home, dripping wet again after, just over nine kilometres.

So, what have we got to show you today? How about a ‘test car’, make unknown, and this is the best picture I could get in a hurry. There is a logo on the front but it’s not one I recognise.

Next is something that you can see quite a lot of in China, a swimming pool. You will note though that it is not only empty but in a state of disrepair. Once all the apartments have been sold no one takes care of the maintenance.

There were some other photos of people drinking tea, people building bridges, etc, but nothing much worthwhile.

Because I knew I had to walk out with Huan in the evening I did my Chinese lesson this afternoon. However, it was interrupted by a power failure. That gave us a chance to be good Samaritans, someone was stuck in the lift, almost at our floor, so Huan went off and found the security guards who had a key to open the outer doors. A few minutes later the lift man arrived and moved a lever opening the inner doors, I hope I can remember that for the next time. We then helped the gentleman out of the lift. He turned out to be our neighbour, on his way down!

I managed to finish my lesson and after dinner we set off out again at a much slower pace. The humidity meant we were still soaked when we got home. Two photos for you this evening, one some lovely Chinglish.

And the other, a car that I’ve seen a few times. I have no idea what the English is supposed to mean. Were they trying to spell ‘fortnight’ and got it wrong?

I bet they don’t know how close to a quarter of a penny it is. In fact, dear readers, if you are young you may not know either. The ‘farthing’ used to be the smallest coin in circulation in the UK before it was ‘demonetised’ in 1960. (If you’re interested, you can find more info and pictures here - https://www.historytoday.com/archive/farthings-last-day

May 20^th NTR well apart from shopping, dashcam and who knows what was going on in the evening. Anybody listening would have been very amused. Huan was practicing her singing in the living room and I was learning all about ‘ü’ in the office. Lesson seven finished.

May 21^st Afternoon on the 22^nd and I’m writing this in a hurry! It’s thundering and lightning again outside. So, today, (May 22^nd) we went off on our long anticipated river walk which had been meticulously planned some weeks ago. Unfortunately, the village idiot, and I’m sure you can guess who he is, forgot the most important part of the plan which was to take with us two pre-frozen bottles of water. Anyway, off we went. Our walk started off very well, spotted lots of ducks in the river.

Next was a little friend who followed us for a while and seemed to have the right idea on what was a very hot day.

Not much further on, underneath one of the highway bridges, we came across a 'few' baby ducks. There was no sign of any parents though.

Before too long we decided that we needed to cross the river rather than walk back the way we came. By now of course we were both overheating, me more so than Huan, and remember I told you, the village idiot had forgotten to bring any water! Here’s Huan getting out the other side.

I had a lot more difficulty than Huan, trying to keep cameras, phones and wallets dry, here I am, almost at the limit of my strength.

That was the end of any Fuji photos for the day, I was absolutely exhausted. For a while Huan was very worried about me. I wonder if it was the result of being very overheated before plunging into the river and struggling across. I can tell you that I have never felt my age as much at any time in my life. Slowly I recovered though and carried on with the video of our day. You can find that here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9iugdUisuQ.

Arriving home, I took a selfie of my head which I had hurt trying to destroy the farmer’s hut, he had graciously saved our lives with bottles of water. I should have had a photo taken with him but ‘brain’ was out of order!

Home was never so welcoming I can tell you. Anyway, once lunch was out of the way I loaded the photos and videos on the PC but before I could do anything with them, the electricity went off. An hour or so later, sat on the balcony looking out of Wuzhishan I heard a loud ‘whumpf’ behind me and turned round just in time to see a large white ball of flame on the gantry carrying the power to our area. Look closely, you will see the damage.

After dinner we went ‘downstairs’, (no electricity = no lift), to see what we could find out. Three power lines had been damaged in the city due to the thunderstorms, repairs were underway. A walk around town showed that to be true. As we neared home though lights were coming back on so our hopes were raised, until we got closer. Our area was still off and the repairs would be completed by half past eight.

Sometime after nine we decided to have another little walk downstairs, the engineers had almost finished repairing the burnt cable underground in front of our place, but would still have to go across and repair the overhead damage seen above. It would be at least midnight before they finished. Ah well, back upstairs and off to bed we went.

May 22^nd Huan had a singing class this morning and ‘ordered’ me not to walk too fast or too far. I didn’t need telling twice today, only walked four kilometres or so.

Afternoon was sorting out photos, combining the Nikon videos, uploading to YouTube etc. And once again the evening was Yoyo Chinese, I had missed yesterday and my plan was to do at least one lesson a day.

May 23^rd The boss said not too far and not too fast so we did just over ten kilometres in two hours and twenty minutes, only around the town river so no hills. A little disappointment for us though, the man who was making sausages, before the pork scare, has now disappeared completely, along with the whole of that outside market. What are we going to do?

Huan was at singing classes again this afternoon so I got stuck into Chinese again, another three lessons done, unit nine complete. No evening walks, the heaven’s opened again!

May 24^th The two dummies didn’t check the weather forecast today before we went walking! Huan fancied the countryside but my boots were wet after being left out on the security bars to air during the rain so we had to stick to the tarmac. Not long after we were out I took some cloud pictures. I like this one.

A little further on we came across a duck standing on one leg. Unusually this one let me get quite close. Do you think this is their way or forecasting rain?

A little further along, about three and a half kilometres into our walk, we came across two motorcycle riders, parked at the side of the road. “It’s going to rain” they told us. I replied by saying “Yes, by eleven or twelve o’clock”. Five hundred metres later it bucketed down! Needless to say, there were no more photos taken with the Fuji! Huan took a picture of me with my phone which didn’t turn out so well, even the insides of my pocket were wet. You can see how wet I was though and how I was trying to hide my Fuji under my shirt.

The rain carried on so we stayed in for the rest of the day. I cooked us a version of noodle (spaghetti) Bolognese, more spice than the Italian version and with a few other differences too. Evening time, well, more Yoyo Chinese of course, another two lessons finished.

May 25th Boots still wet so sandals and tarmac it was again today. We did wander a little off the road and had a look at the work they are doing further upriver. I’m not sure what the idea is except to perhaps stop the river eating the banks when it’s in full flow.

Got home and the first job for Huan, before our weekend fry-up, was to take a few pictures of me with a towel. Today being “Towel Day” I had decided to upload a few pictures of me with said item to Facebook. Here’s one for you, spot the frog photo bombing!

What is “Towel Day” I hear you ask, well as always, here I am with the answer, (from Wikipedia):- The importance of the towel was introduced in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy original radio series in 1978. The follow-up book explained the importance of towels in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy universe in Chapter 3, using much of the same wording as the original radio series:

“A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you — daft as a brush, but very very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost." What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in "Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is." (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)”

 Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

PS It’s well worth watching, listening to or reading. If you can find the BBC TV series, it’s far better than the 2005 film. Even better find the BBC Radio series where it first appeared or read the books which came after the radio but before the movie.

Usual stuff for the rest of the day, Facebook and Chinese, followed by ‘The Bill’ before bed.

May 26^th Would you believe it, boots still wet so a walk around the town and river was all we got today although we still managed twelve kilometres. Almost home when I decided to do what Huan has been egging me to and pose in an old banger. We see a lot of these around our way, still working too. This one is for sale. You may not be able to see very well but I have my foot on the accelerator. I guess it would be pretty difficult to drive. How many of you are old enough to remember how to ‘double de-clutch’?

Sunday fry-up as usual followed by a little nap for the old fogey. Huan had a visitor, a lady we call the ‘shop lady’ because that’s what she did when we met her. She is now selling health insurance on a commission only basis and was here to give Huan her answer. “No, your husband is too old!” I didn’t expect anything else.

Evening time and Huan was happy, her dancing friend has returned from Thailand. Mind you, they weren’t dancing today, just walking barefoot on the cobbles! For me, unit 11 of Yoyo Chinese finished. I’ll probably have to slow down when I get to stuff I don’t know so well!

May 27^th Monday, our day of rest, well, rest from walking anyway. We did the usual shopping this morning after making sure we had filled the car with fuel. We have one of these computerised thingummyjigs which tells us how long until the next refill is needed but sometime after we get below 100km it will suddenly show nothing except digital dashes. The warning light also comes on at that time which can be a little worrying. We were OK today.

Peaceful rest of the day with all the usual stuff. I did make a video recording for ADDS, Abu Dhabi Dramatic Society, of which I used to be a member. It is their 50^th anniversary this year and I was asked, along with many others, if I would contribute a small greeting for them. It only took me five attempts to get two versions that I hope they can use at least one of! Otherwise it will be back to the ‘studio’, otherwise known as the sofa in the living room.

May 28th Boots dry so I let Huan take me up the hill walk, it’s one of her favourites and I can always add a little on the way home if I want to make it longer. Today we found that they are doing a lot of work on the road up, could be a problem when #1 son comes to visit. I’ll have to see if they have arranged a detour for the hotel at the top.

We walked up to the rest place with the ‘limpid’ pool today, very hot, so we took a selfie for you, hope you like it. I had to stop Huan going swimming in her undies, well, there were other people there!

Around to the bottom of the hill, the beginning of the actual ‘scenic walk’, and then, via the bank, around the river, back to the ‘top’ road via the court and home. I managed to go a*** over t** on the way. I was looking at something in an apartment complex garden and going to ask Huan about it when, whoops, over I went. Sometimes, when it has rained, under the trees in town can become quite treacherous, this was one of those places. Lucky for me though, Huan didn’t have her phone with her so no photos!

Another afternoon of rain, lots of those these days. Mind you, the mountains can look quite good after the rains. Here’s a panorama of those clouds again.

The rain eased off in the evening, as it often does, so Huan went off with her little USB music player for he dancing hour and I decided to try and clean up my Fujifilm camera display. I had asked for recommendations on the camera Facebook page and the first was children’s toothpaste, the second ordinary toothpaste. I tried both, neither worked. It makes me wonder how the screen ever got scratched in the first place! There were other recommendations but they don’t work in a “small” city in China. I guess I’ll have to put up with it for now. To be honest, when the camera is on, the display still works well enough and I compose most of my shots through the viewfinder now anyway.

May 29^th Music lessons for Huan again this morning so I did the scenic hill walk the ‘other’ way, the scenic part first and the roadway second. I wanted to see if it would be possible to get to the hotel by car just in case the work isn’t finished by August. It looks like there is a way so that’s good. I walked exactly twelve kilometres before collecting Huan from her class and adding just over one more. Quite fast today, I was pleased with myself.

Lazy afternoon for Huan, Chinese lessons for me, I’ve now come to the end of the Pinyin introduction. The difficult stuff will soon be coming. Huan went off dancing again in the evening and came back having taken 40 pictures of a frog eating moths, and a video of it too, sometimes with a dog. Unfortunately, being night time, the video didn’t come out well at all but we did manage to get a couple of photos. Here he is in all his glory.

May 30^th Quite a few photos today but we are nearing the end of the month. No long walks today, just two short(ish) ones. In the morning we thought the rain might be coming in so we kept to the town and the river, just over five kilometres . Huan had me taking pictures of mushrooms! This one looks rather odd and I wouldn’t like to say whether or not it is edible.

Next off to the ‘cheapo’ supermarket to buy a new hat, for me, and some new hair ties, also for me! Look what Huan found. It does say ‘Hecho en China’ on the label which I presume means “Made in China” in Spanish. Whoever buys one here, and there were a pile of them, will have no idea what they are buying.

And what about that hat then? Who decided on this particular one? I could say it was a joint decision but I’m not sure that you would believe me. Still, at ¥15.00, (less than two quid), who’s complaining?

“Another one bites the dust”, or in this case another two. My sandals grew jaws and really did bite the dust. Not to worry, there’s a brand new identical pair in the wardrobe. Whenever we use the last pair, we order another two. So far, that particular online store has not closed down so fingers crossed for later.

We beat the rain back by about thirty minutes and I treated us to a home made iced coffee. Take a bottle of Nescafé Smoovlatté, add some ice cream, some whipped cream and enough milk to fill our two glasses, whiz it around a bit, et voila! It was lovely. In fact it was so good Huan started talking about opening a coffee shop again! She enjoys her dreams.

Thursday afternoon means singing for Huan again so I set off, with my new sandals on, and my umbrella in my hand. This time I didn’t beat the rain back but at least I was prepared. Luckily for Huan, by the time she came home it had stopped again. I saw something on my way home though that I haven’t seen in Hainan before. Is this a bad omen?

And our last photo of the day ends sadly. This little creature was caught between our windows so we managed to get it to where you see it in the photo and then Huan gently picked it up and put it out of the window. It was half way across the road when out of nowhere a few birds appeared. You can guess what happened next. I guess we are murderers now…

P.S. The sandal store hasn’t closed yet so another two pairs ordered!

May 31^st A fine day today, no rain all morning or afternoon, but we didn’t go too far. Huan needed to visit the bank(s) to top up her Taobao account. As always, she was trying to get me to photograph all kinds of flowers which we already have hundreds of on the PC. I’m not so sure we have this one though so I agreed.

Unfortunately for Huan, the rain came back before the evening so no dancing. I should say no dancing, outside. While I was doing my Chinese lesson, I did hear the dance music and the shuffling of feet from the living room! We’re both learning, that’s what counts.

So there we are, the end of yet another month. If you are wondering about the progress of the waterworks since the operation, it’s getting better all the time. I don’t think there’s much danger of embarrassing myself outside any more although there is still the occasional leak.

Don’t forget to tune in again next month, until then, it’s goodbye from me, and it’s goodbye from her.