October 26th This was what we saw when we opened the curtains this morning.
Perhaps because we saw that we were both a bit sloth like in getting up, having breakfast, getting ready for the day etc. As a result Huan had to rush off before me leaving me to decide on another route. I decided to check out further upriver and see what the damage was. By this time the weather had cleared and we had a beautiful day.
As you can see the river looks perfect. In fact the only evidence of the high water was occasional clumps of vegetation formed on the banks. In fact throughout my walk I didn’t see any wind damage or any rain damage. All the damage we had was caused by the river being swollen from further up in the mountains.
That last photo is the view from lizard alley, another reason I took that route today. It’s a long time since we saw our little friends. Today I only managed to find one.
The sky was so clear on my way
back into town I managed a snap of the moon. To say that the
My little “Billy the kid” was waiting for me when I left the riverside. No photos for you, you will remember him, although I did make a video for us.
Art is next; do we have a ‘modern artist’ somewhere around Wuzhishan? Not exactly, this pattern, as you can probably guess, was created when the municipality did a lot of work on the pavement and didn’t put the stones back showing the motorbike parking bays.
Knowing where I could find a family of pigeons I took a slight detour behind some buildings, they didn’t disappoint me. Well the grey one did, it flew away; the white ones heard something behind me and to my right. There were more pigeons and even chickens in an old unused room.
Quite a few of my canine friends were out today as well so it was an enjoyable walk, almost long enough, it was nine kilometres. Speed kept it short; I had to slow down searching for lizards, if not for that I would have extended it to make ten. It’s a long time since we, or even I, have had a ten. Mind you, Huan thinks I shouldn’t do that anyway!
Life was back to normal for Huan too, hulusi practice in our little square, it’s very quiet when she is not in the house!
October 27th This morning’s walk included an umbrella and comprised of me basically going around in circles in the town waiting for the rain to start. Do you remember things your parents or grandparents may have said and wonder if the same phrases are still in use today? As I was wandering I kept thinking how ‘close’ it was. For you youngsters who have no idea what this old man is waffling on about, ‘close’ used to also mean uncomfortably humid or airless.
Did I get any pics today despite not taking the
The town square was a hive of activity, the usual badminton, individuals doing various forms of exercise and then what appeared to be hundreds of dancers. Huan told me they were looking for one hundred dancers for some performance. From what I saw a lot more practice is needed. The second photo is snowbirds doing tai chi.
Both of us managed to get home before the rain which appeared just after lunch. The forecast for the rest of the week is not much better. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.
October 28th Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun, or so sang Noel Coward. If you fancy upping your English listening skills, whether you be a native speaker or not, then go here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkEd3WgR8qw&ab_channel=RichardHolbrook. We were housebound in the morning due to rain so had to go out after lunch, in our case in the non-existent midday sun. Wuzhishan was completely surrounded by rain as far as we could tell. Both of us had difficulty focusing on buildings that weren’t so far away, we realised that this was due to clouds. We also realised that we were sometimes getting wet even though there was no real sign of rain, walking in the clouds again.
Going across to our little island a pair of goats must have felt the ‘wet’ too because they were hiding in a little cave. However, the goats on the irrigation canal had no such worries.
A strange insect caught my eye a little further on; I couldn’t get it on my hand at all.
I took Huan to see the room with the pigeons and the chickens and we managed to get a snap of this nicely coloured fellow.
Even more birds next, I wanted to show Huan “Billy the Kid” but he wasn’t there. Instead Huan insisted I took these photos of a goose, two chickens and their chicks.
And finally for today, for the technical among you, another electric vehicle, but for a change, a truck instead of a car. I thought this might have been a PHEV, (Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle) but I failed to find any sign of a filler cap or an exhaust pipe so it may be a full EV.
We had a miniscule amount of sun, a larger amount of dampness, but at least we got out of the house for some fresh air and a seven kilometre walk. That is far more than we expected with the forecast which was ‘rain all day’. Hopefully, we’ll have the same results or better for the rest of the week when the forecast remains unchanged!
October 29th Confined to barracks again, partly the weather’s fault, partly the boss’s. I was given the job of taking lots of photos of the neighbour’s apartment which she wants to find new tenants for. The instructions were that the photographs should be taken at 10 o’clock. By half past the rain had come back from its short NAAFI break.
In the afternoon I was a music producer and publisher, helping Huan either upload from her phone, or record onto mine and then upload from mine before printing.
We did get out for dinner though, it is Friday after all. Today we didn’t stray too far but the place we chose is definitely worth visiting. Check here - https://youtu.be/oNElyk6AI0E
October 30th Market day called so no early start was needed and no long walk either. We felt the odd bit of rain here and there but the rain did have enough patience to wait until after we had returned home.
Often while we are out Huan stops for a gossip, sometimes I hang around (not understanding much), other times I go on ahead, slowly. Today it was the bridge lady’s turn for a chat so I went for a look at the river and took a couple of photos to stitch together, one vertical and one horizontal. I think the latter is the best one to share with you.
This week we were actually shopping in the market, buying vegetables for my two day duck stew. As always we looked for something for you, dear reader, today we found a portable bakery. The ovens run on gas and presumably they use an inverter or generator for the controls and the mixer. The results are not bad, but I do miss European bakeries.
Our last picture of the day is one of the ingredients for dinner, a
bean. It’s not just a common or garden bean though; it’s something I had never
seen before we came to
The rain came back after lunch; just as well, we both needed a kip. Is it the weather or is it our age? No need to answer that!
October 31st A good day! The weather was fine walking weather and Huan was free to accompany me. Her choice was the ‘farm side’ so that’s where we went. Mind you we found the goats before we reached the farms; they were just across the island bridge. Not knowing a great deal about goats maybe one of you can tell me why none of them were grazing today, all were napping or just relaxing. This was at nine o’clock in the morning mind.
Here’s the last one on its own so that you can see the dragonfly.
We’ve had a lot of goats this week so why not also have a lot of fowl. Here are the boys.
Sentries on duty.
“What did you say?”
More sentries, this time running away!
All the way along this road I had been ‘mooing’, hoping to catch the attention of my bovine buddies. I was beginning to think they were not there as no eyes peered over the wall as they usually do. I needn’t have worried, as soon as I got to the gate they came for a chat.
It was definitely a day for feathered friends today, “stop pushing, there’s enough for all!”
“We’ve had enough, we’re off to the pub, see you later!”
“Let’s try a slightly different route home’ said moi, rather foolishly. We tried navigating through the first photo but there was no way through so we ended up going via the second trail.
Initially, when we reached the access to the construction road, everything was going fine, but then I trod in the wrong place and almost had visions of Huan seeing my hat floating on the surface with no sign of me. I did manage to get out, fairly rapidly, as you can see from my socks!
So we didn’t get rained on, we had a nice seven kilometre walk through the fields and farms, we saw lots of ‘wildlife’ and I got my boots dirty, not a bad morning I’d say. This last picture had me looking at it for quite a while trying to fathom out what the third ‘pinyin’ word was until my brain cell eventually clicked that the third word was English. Did you spot it?
November 1st Here are three firsts for the first of the month. 1) 1800, John
Adams became the first
Monday, Monday, so good to me, time for shopping. Today I thought I would show you how great a variety of noodles we have available to us. Even then, this collage is missing at least another row of ‘normal’ noodles and there are loads more pot noodles too. For some reason all the photos are a little out of focus in the distance, I think my phone somehow changed itself from normal photo mode to portrait. Anyway, you get the idea.
Our only other photo of the day, and the last one of the week, shows you that the snowbirds have definitely begun returning en masse. You would think the supermarket would be aware of this and maybe make allowances for it. No, there was only one lady weighing and pricing the fruit and veg, added to which her pricing machine was playing up.
Huan was off out in the afternoon for her deportment class, she asked me to walk her there because Yú was skiving off today. As I was sitting there in my Onslow suit when she asked (vest and pyjama trousers), I respectfully declined. Just as well I did as the rain bucketed down not too long after. Huan was OK, she got to school in the dry and the rain stopped just before home time.
Well folks, there we are, another week over, another week of mostly miserable weather. I guess we can put it down to climate change. Wherever you may be, I hope the sun is shining on you, if not literally, at least metaphorically. After all, that’s the way it usually shines on us!
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