May 26th I noticed last night that not only was my
injured left foot swollen but that my right foot was also swollen. This means
that walking is needed The pain was much less in my right foot this morning,
two days rest must have had some effect. Of course, distance and speed are
still not allowed! We also had to avoid the town, Huan had people she didn’t
really want to see, so down the river we went. Our first ‘spot’ was one of
those ubiquitous lizards and I was able to get quite close to this one,
although he zipped off very quickly when I tried to pick him up!
To
cross to the other side we decided to avoid stepping stones, no need to risk
further damaging my foot, and we took the old ‘part time’ bridge instead. It’s
part time because when the river is in full flow it’s underwater. Nowadays,
there is no way to take farm vehicles away from the bridge at either end so
it’s mostly farmers and people like us now.
I
must say it was a great pleasure to get out of the city again even if it was
only a kilometre or so. Feeling the air in the trees and a track underfoot does
wonders for both of us.
Mucho
happiness today, I was able to feed my friends once again although, only the
big male was brave enough to approach today. I recently read about two people
being killed by a water buffalo in the UK ,
in Wales
Insects
were next on the agenda, Huan told me that she and her brother and sisters used
to collect the first one to feed the chickens. We liked the colour of the
second one.
So
how far did we walk today? Not too far and not too fast, we did about four
kilometres in an hour and a half, no hills either. My swollen feet went down a
little but more walking is still needed, must try not to miss any more days.
Huan was fairly shifting though, faster than the speed of light at one point!
Back
to the kitchen for me today, pork hocks with vegetables. The recipe called for
two hocks but didn’t say how many it served. It also called for two carrots,
two sweet potatoes and four turnips. I knew two hocks would be too much so
stuck to one, three sweet potatoes, one and a half carrots, (they’re big here)
and one turnip replacement. The vegetables were just about right for the two if
us, the meat was far too much so guess what, I’m cooking stew again tomorrow. I
didn’t think you’d need a photo of today’s dinner, after all it was just meat
and two veg!
May 27th Just a trip to the bank for the Minister of
Finance today but, we did manage to get a couple of half decent photos of
birds. Still want a longer lens though!
May 28th Busier day all round today. Regular readers
may remember that way back in December 2018 I was a little worried that I may
have had skin cancer, Basal Cell Carcinoma
to be exact. At the time I was advised it was just an infection and given two
different antibiotics to clear it up. Well they didn’t work! I have been
ignoring it since then with the intention of going back to the dermatologist
when I’ve finished the prostate post op treatment. That takes half my pension
every month at the moment. Anyway, the sore, lump, or whatever it is, has been
ever so slowly expanding so we decided this morning to visit the local Chinese
Medicine hospital. One good thing there is that it’s nowhere near as busy as
the main hospital. The doctor is not sure if he can help but he gave me a ‘mix’
to rub on twice a day for the next six days to see what happens. Watching them
do the mix was enlightening. They no longer open lots of little drawers and
beat everything with a mortar and pestle. Instead, all the various ingredients
are kept in a bank of plastic containers which are then moved to a rotating
table dispenser. The results are delivered underneath to a segmented box, six
in my case, which is then sealed for take-away.
To avoid being all sweaty
when we went to the hospital we drove there. I also had an ulterior motive,
that was to visit a café that we have never tried before, the Woye Café.
Usually we pass it on one of our many walks so the ‘time has never been right’.
Now that we have tried it, I will definitely be going back; I had my first
espresso for a long time this morning!
They do the usual run of
coffees of course but if you want alcohol in it, you will have to provide your
own. Huan was impressed with the juice she ordered. We did ask them if they had
any plans to ‘run away’ in the near future which is what seems to happen to
most places like this. They said not, despite not being busy, they are happy
with it the way it is and have no plans to leave. They have a business property
in Shanghai
My busy day continued, I
was on chef’s duties again. Today’s offering was an American one, “Spiced
Haddock with Chickpea Mash”. No haddock here so I made it with ‘Basa fish’,
bought in RT Supermarket already filleted. I have to say that my picture
doesn’t look a great deal different to theirs although I will have to modify
the ingredients a little next time. My ‘garam masala’ was terrible! Still, we
both enjoyed it and cleaned our plates.
I carried on being busy and managed to stop the printer from
working! I changed all the inks in preparation to print out Huan and her
siblings for the family wall. The results were not so good even after going
through cleaning the print head and aligning the cartridges so I decided to
check on Youtube how to remove the whole caboodle and clean it outside the printer.
Once I had put everything back together again all I got was “Printer failure”.
After a couple of hours of trying to sort it out I gave up, it will have to go
to the experts (?) in town.
And finally for today, yet another bird, taken
by Huan with her phone this time. This little chick had fallen out of its nest
somewhere further up the tree and nearby shop residents were trying to get it
back up to the right area. They were using a clothes line prop which the chick
was happy to sit on and then trying to get it high enough for it to find its
way home. I’ve no idea if they succeeded or not but good on them for trying.
May 29th These days, most
evenings, Huan goes walking with Yu and friends down to the highway and back, I
don’t go with them, they walk far too slowly for me. Even under doctor’s orders
I can’t match their pace! Today Huan and I went there to satisfy her need to
know how far it is. It’s approximately three kilometres there and back and they
are out for maybe an hour and a half. Anyway, as we were leaving our back gate
we thought we would investigate last night’s bird sighting. We did hear some
bird song from the tree in question but couldn’t see any sign of either chicks
or mother. The nest was there but no signs of life that we could see. This was
the best picture I could get.
May 30th I felt like a lazy slob again today, do you think medicine seeping
through your skin can make you feel tired? That’s my excuse anyway after waking
up much later than usual two mornings on the trot. Huan needed no convincing
not to go out so I spent all morning on Facebook and binge watching more of
Simon Templar
Necessity forced me out in the afternoon though,
today is one of the lottery days and we hadn’t bought the tickets yet. At least
I got the doctor’s orders in, only three kilometres and while it was a little
faster without Huan, it was still slow enough for my feet. I arrived home to
find Huan cooking our weekend full English which we haven’t had for a while,
yummy!
May 31st Another trip to the bank for Huan today, her other bank. She received a
phone call last night asking for her details to be updated, the caller said she
could do it by phone or visit the bank in person. That wording could put people
at their ease enough to comply with the “doing it on the phone” option. Huan,
having learned from me how not to trust people, said she would do it in person.
As it happens, it was a valid request, the local branch wanted to confirm
Huan’s hukou card number and where she lived, I suspect they may still have had
an old address on file.
That got me thinking about
communication in the modern world. How many of you, dear readers, actually have
a phone in the house? We do, I’ve always insisted on it, something that can be
used if the network is down and also a way to send a receive faxes. I remember
when mobiles started taking off in the UAE and some businesses had no ‘office
numbers’. I would never trust suppliers with only mobile telephone numbers, you
never knew if they would still be in business if you perchance had to make any
warranty claims. Today not many businesses at all seem to have office numbers.
Huan’s phone call from the bank came from a mobile phone, calls from the police
station, the visa department, maintenance company, telephone company and so on
all come from mobile phones now.
So, did we see anything on today’s walk? Yes, we
saw yet another lizard; this one also seemed to be having trouble going up the
small wall nearby. We tried to guide it and almost had heart attacks when it
scurried towards the drop down to the road. Luckily we managed to divert it but
we didn’t see where it ended up. It looked quite comical while it was running
away from us. Check out its feet, they don’t particularly look designed for
climbing walls do they?
Although we went nowhere
near the hospital today we did spot some more Chinese medicine. There’s no big
machine here though, the various ingredients are dried out in the sun before
being put into small wooden drawers. When needed they will be measured out,
combined and beaten to death with a mortar and pestle.
Finally, something we
argued about before, I said it was just a piece of material, Huan said it
wasn’t. Today, for some reason, we could see it much clearer, Huan was right
and I was wrong. It is in fact a bird’s nest, and there were two of them. You
can see the dead leaves but I can’t tell you what the white is. I’ve put both
photos here, the first one so that you can see a whole nest, and the second
one, highly cropped, for a different reason. Can anyone tell me who the man in
the nest is?
We finished off the day with not quite a full English again. This
time we had no sausages left so we used a couple of bratwurst instead. My only
complaint? They were too small!
June 1st “Beautiful, beautiful summer! Odorous, exquisite June! All the
sweet roses in blossom, All the sweet birdies in tune.” (June in Maine
Monday again, which usually means shopping but
today, we had something else to do first. 师傅, (Shīfù – it translates as ‘Master), the “site manager” or “foreman”
who supervised our apartment renovation in 2015 called us last night and said
he was going to the farm today and asked if we wanted to tag along. Speak of
the devil and he will appear.
We had talked about this
last time we stopped off at his shop for a chat so we were only too pleased to
go. I thought we would be doing a little farming so I could get photos of Huan
in the fields again. It seems I got the wrong end of the stick, no actual
farming will be done for another two months at which time new crops will be
planted. Today they went to start work on putting in some irrigation and
erecting nets over the plots, probably to keep birds out as well as protect the
crops from the midday heat. As it happened, they couldn’t even start that work
because their generator had packed in so off went Shīfù to get it repaired. We
stayed along with Shīfù’s young sons, all four of them. They were in their
element playing in the stream, catching fish, trying to catch crabs and just
generally being boys.
Later on, they found a
deeper section and were then down to their birthday suits. Huan did take photos
but I told her we were not allowed to use them! We decided to explore the
natural perimeter and went off for a walk, here’s Huan on the way.
It’s not as barren as it looks;
the plots in the foreground are the ones that Shīfù and his gang will be taking
care of. Further up we came on what we think are tea plants with some Bīnláng
(Betel nut) trees thrown in for good measure.
Towards the apex of the
panorama we found a small fish and duck farm, we added the ducks to our short
video of the day. Here they are trying to escape from us.
As we were walking down the
other side we could hear lots of bees. “There must be a hive somewhere” we said
and then turned round to see this. There were a lot more than you can see in
the photo, needless to say, I didn’t get too close.
Next up it’s Huan doing a
pretty good impression of Hyacinth Bucket and crossing the small stream over
two bits of tree. She was quite safe; honestly, they had just supported me with
no ominous sounds of cracking.
Once down we set off
further up the actual road just to see where it went. Remembering what “both”
doctors told me, I didn’t go too far. We got another huge panorama for you, it
gives you an idea of what it’s like in the mountains and why we love walking
there. PS Don’t look too closely, the horizontal stitch failed!
We found a wrecked car at
the side of the road so I asked Huan to try and have a sit in it. Only after I
had taken all the photos did I tell her that I was going to share it on the
internet as an example of her driving, (she doesn’t drive), and of women
drivers in general. I know, it’s not PC, but I thought it was funny. Just in
case you are wondering, yes I am aware of just how many more accidents men, in
general, have than women!
Arriving back at the farm
site we found that Shīfù had not yet returned so we looked for the children,
found them and asked if they wanted us to take them home. Not a chance, they
were having far too much fun still! We left them with Shīfù’s helpers and set
off back to Wuzhishan and shopping. Luck was not on our side today, not far
down the road we came across this obstacle. After stopping behind him for two
bouts of offloading he found a place for us to squeeze past before he carried on.
Still, we had nothing better to do and we were not in a hurry to get anywhere.
Back in town, the supermarket car park was full, initially surprising
because of the time of day, but once inside we understood why. Today in China
We finally arrived home with our dashcam swinging in the wind. Yes,
yet another item in need of repair, or replacement, but at least this one is
not my fault. I guess the heat of the sun through the windscreen over time has weakened
the plastic and the vibrations of the camera in its mounting led to its
eventual demise.
And that brings us to the end of another week.
Don’t forget to tune in next week, same time, same channel, bye for now!
Love seeing your alternate lifestyle thankyou for sharing. Looking forward to next weeks adventures. Thank you for sharing. X
ReplyDeleteMy pleasure, thanks for the comment and feel free to share.
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