May 9th I wandered lonely as a cloud. Isn’t it amazing what memories can surface now and then? That is the first line of a poem by William Wordsworth, which no doubt I would have had to study at school, aeons ago. If you are of a poetic bent, and fancy reciting it, or listening to it, you can find it here https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45521/i-wandered-lonely-as-a-cloud.
This morning I was alone again, the student was hard at it as well as doing a little ironing. Now I know I could have volunteered to do the ironing but I preferred not to. Whether Huan knows it or not, she needs a rest from just studying every waking hour.
I headed off on the road to somewhere, which as the final destination has not yet been completed, sometimes doubles up as a training ground for the Fire and Rescue department. My first mother-in-law suggested I become a fireman, when I left the army. Somehow I didn’t quite see myself leaping in and out of blazing buildings!
For the last few hundred metres of the road to somewhere I left the road and walked alongside the village. No lizards were found but the scenery was still nice.
Remember the village people? Well their name came from Greenwich
Village in
I had no idea about this next one, Huan gave me a clue. Are they grafting here?
It’s only Tuesday but we have our first car of the week. It is another one with a demure lady and a message, 新手女司机请多关照 Xīnshǒu nǚ sījī qǐng duō guānzhào - Please take care of the novice female driver. I am not sure if it means ‘take care of her’ or ‘beware of her’.
Huan had mixed feelings about these next three photographs. She liked to see them but was disappointed that she wasn’t there in person. I’ve still had to do a lot of cropping but you can see a Greater Coucal, (it could be a Lesser Coucal but I don’t think so).
Being without Huan today had one surprising benefit, I walked much faster. To my surprise I did nine kilometres at just a fraction over 12 minutes per kilometre. Despite going so far, I still promised Huan that we would go out after dinner, a promise that I ended up unable to keep. However, it wasn’t my fault this time!
May 10th So it is nearly quarter past nine in the evening and the pain has started to recede from my upper jaw. Let’s start at the beginning, today was dentist day, not a day I love. The dentist went back to work on what he had begun last week, and as is usual with Chinese dentists, he was drilling away to prepare me for caps to be fitted. Now and then he would ask about pain, and there was some. Eventually, when I nearly shot out of the chair after one excavation, he relented and offered me a needle. Oh God, I hate needles almost as much as I hate pain!
I have to admit that it’s not as bad as I always expect it to be and the drugs work rapidly enough. The only thing left for today was the ‘fitting’, of course Huan was there to record that too.
Off we went, after a slightly worrying warning from the dentist, “Make sure you come back by the day after tomorrow at the latest, or the stuff I put in your tooth might poison you”!
On our way through the bap market complex we spotted lots of little jumping things. I thought they were jumping spiders, Huan thought they were frogs. She was right; they were tiny little frogs, all on the move. We both tried our best to photograph them but as we only had our phones with us, and it wasn’t easy to get down to ground level, we didn’t do so well.
And that concludes our day. Huan studied for the rest of the day, my plans for an extra walk were ‘rained off’.
May 11th Neither of us slept very well last night, mostly because of Huan’s test this morning. Her mind was busy working overtime. We were both up before the alarm went off. Looking out of the window this scene looked appealing so it is included just for you.
Huan had received conflicting information about what time she should present herself at the test centre, but we were early enough. Here she is, not looking nervous at all, along with all the others. It seems there were over one hundred people taking the test today.
Once they started calling the
names I decided to head off on a solitary walk. The planned route was
I was treading very carefully and watching where I was going, rain creates havoc with the paths around Wuzhishan. It is quite easy to come a cropper. Because my eyes were mostly focussed down I did spot this insect, it looks like a rather large queen ant.
You may remember that we both prefer to walk around the park in the opposite direction, this way there are for too many ‘ups’ and far too many steps.
Despite my warily walking, and the slipperiness of the paths, before too long I could see that the ascent was over and once past the bridge the descent would begin.
Here I am, on my way down, happy as can be. Although you can’t see it in the photograph there was a continuous drizzle which felt quite good. It did mean that the camera didn’t come out much more today though, this was taken with the phone.
The camera came out for this one, the rain forests in action again.
Just after this snap was taken Huan called to say that she still hadn’t been called. I was about half an hour away from her at this time. By the time I reached there, she had been called in so I added another kilometre or so. When I finished that she was still not back out so I sat and waited. Eventually she reappeared, she had been sitting around inside to await her turn, and when it came she had nerves to start with until she realised that all her hard work had paid off. Here she is coming down the steps from the test centre, what do you think, did she pass?
Well of course she did! I never doubted her for a minute, although I did worry a bit about her worrying too much. Her worry when she met me was “which one did she get wrong?” Yes, she scored an amazing 99%. Tomorrow we will find out what happens next.
After an afternoon nap we sat down to a very English dinner, fried liver and onions with mashed potatoes and peas. I even forgot to include garlic today! There was one difference though, the liver was cut into smaller pieces, it doesn’t dry up so much that way.
May 12th Well the student had to go out this morning to find out what the next stage of her training is and to get her ‘provisional licence’ uploaded to her phone. It is valid for two years, she should easily pass her driving test in that time. After that she had to go back to her normal Friday life and go to her hulusi practice. I decided to have a riverside walk.
Our island park was looking quite beautiful today.
Fishing often looks better in black and white, don't you agree?
And then, just to spite Huan, I found a little lizard, a well camouflaged one! Ps It was going down the tree but I rotated the photo so that you could see it better.
Much easier to see was this little beauty. Neither of us have seen a bird like this before, and although I couldn’t get any closer, this snap is not bad at all.
I made a mistake this morning and decided not to take an umbrella with me. My weather app on Windows 10 has also updated and while the controls are still in English, all the information has changed to Chinese. The upshot was that for the second time this week, I got soaked. Here I am trying to take a selfie of me; and trying to include the camera in a plastic bag.
No other photos of any import were taken. After lunch we had to go out again, to the dentist again. They wanted to ‘remove the poision’! After that we visited the market to make sure we had duck for dinner this weekend. I had already bought the salad stuff this morning, so we were making sure we had everything just in case the weather was still bad tomorrow.
May 13th Rain stopped play in the morning, laziness stopped it in the afternoon, but conscience prodded me to walk after dinner. Huan accompanied me all around the riverside again. Flora was our first stop, just over the other side of the island.
The river and the market street both looked quite good tonight so I thought I would try some straight forward normal photos, (with the phone), not on the night setting.
By now you now that I like to ‘talk to the animals’ and that when I do Huan likes to go crazy with the camera. Well, we both did it again; here I am first enjoying the dog’s company, and second trying to gently push it back home!
Almost back home and Huan found another lizard, not such a good snap this time though.
May 14th Today Huan was busy after lunch; she had a show to do, so I chose to have my daily walk then. I didn’t fancy watching another show, with more of the same performances. I did walk Huan to her venue though, so I think I was forgiven. Within minutes of leaving our place Huan managed yet again to find a lizard. How does she do it?
After dropping Huan off I thought I would show you just how busy our little metropolis can be, especially on a Sunday afternoon.
You may be able to see from the above photo that the shadows are not very long; the sun is high in the sky. Although this next one shows clouds, the sun was really burning the back of my neck and as I often do, I had forgotten to put a hat on again. The Elvis collar would have to do.
I was heading into the countryside, past the new river crossing I had found last time I was out this way, but today’s plan was to continue up to the real bridge.
Before I reached the bridge I found a little Buddhist spot that we have never seen before. I will save most photos from there until I have taken Huan that way. What I will show you is the little library they had on the side of the path. Only when I was showing the photo to Huan later on did I see that there was a ‘guest’ in the library. Can you see it? If not, enlarge the photo.
Further than I first thought I eventually reached the bridge, and crossed over. On the way I took another photo to show you the weather, it was beginning to try to rain.
The rain did try but it never succeeded in getting itself going.
Approaching the kindergarten in the hills, which is how we describe this walk, I stumbled upon a graveyard. However, it wasn’t people and it wasn’t animals, it was two and three wheeled machines, Many of them, the green and white ones at the back, were rental mopeds. Sometimes the police do take vehicles of all sorts away to be impounded but this place had no signs on the gate so it didn’t appear to be a police pound.
By the time I reached home the sun had reappeared and so had the sunshine of my life. Here is the sun with me holding my hand over the lens hood to hide the glare.
And here is my ray of sunshine, before her show started this afternoon and then after the show had finished, sitting in the stairwell waiting for me. Don’t worry; she had only been there a few minutes. Had she been there longer I doubt if the smile would have been so welcoming.
May 15th Here we are, last day of the week, and although you might find it hard to believe, we were both exceedingly lazy today. In the morning we did go shopping, Huan did find a creature, I failed to get a clear photo of it.
After lunch it was another of those OAP nap times, for both of us, we decided we could walk after dinner. However, procrastination set in, or was it just laziness, and we went nowhere. If, like me, you are not sure whether you are procrastinating, and why that should be, then follow this link, it’s a good read, https://solvingprocrastination.com/laziness/
Oh, I forgot to keep you informed about the learner driver’s next steps. She will be starting her lessons at the end of the month, after Yú has taken and hopefully passed her test too. I have to admit to being so happy when she passed her Highway Code test and then so disappointed when she told me that she was now waiting for Yú to catch up. Maybe I am just irrational!
And there you have it, our week. Stay tuned for another week, which you can read all about at the same time next week. Tatty bye!
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