Donald Had A Bath!

February 4^th Another lazy start to another lazy week? Neither of us fancied going out in the morning then Huan napped a bit too long after lunch. I quite enjoyed binge watching some UK TV again, this time ‘Unforgotten’, a police programme from ITV that aired from 2015 to 2023. When I watch these types of shows I often wish that I had continued down the path of joining the police when I left the army. Still, what’s done is done.

Our guilty consciences harangued us after dinner so we went out for a short while. To be honest, my leg does not like long walks at the moment. I keep telling Huan that we will sort it out soon. We only had two pictures this evening, one each. Huan decided that she needed another photo of an expensive convertible acting as a market stall, this time an Audi.

As for me, it was the lights in the street just so I wasn’t left out!

February 5th We are getting lazy aren’t we? We’ll blame this on the weather though, added to the fact that although Huan was up at the crack of dawn, I didn’t wake until after nine. We dragged my leg out after lunch and had a walk around the town and the river. We started off along the road to somewhere.

We took this route hoping to find the little crested bird that we had seen previously, the one we had not seen in Wuzhishan before but had seen in Nansheng. He wasn’t anywhere to be seen but his buddy was so we snapped him instead.

Not having taken any photos for a while we also decided that you might like to see some different views of our local mountains. These are definitely winter views, they are not all green.

This one is a snake. It’s not a kite but a child’s helium filled balloon. We have no idea where it came from and it was going up fairly fast. The enlarged photo is not so good so Huan said I should show you this one. At least you can see that it is ‘up’!

Pedestrian walkway improvements continue; the new lamps are quite attractive.

My leg and I needed a rest so I stopped at a shop and bought a bottle of water. Huan thought it would be amusing to show Chinese tea, that I wasn’t drinking, alongside me.

Both of our egrets were in their usual places. This is the first one; we didn’t get far enough upriver to take any snaps of the second one.

We did find another we birdie, too far away as usual, and blocked by bits of tree.

On our way home the stupid man thought that he would try the ‘walking exercise machine’. You can see the results in the first photo when the pain shot through my leg. I had recovered a little by the time Huan took the second one.

February 6^th Well, what do you know, another day with no walks. There were reasons mind you, and good ones at that. The morning was set aside to ‘charge the car wash machine’ batteries. When we charge any types of batteries I don’t like to leave them in the house if we are out and I don’t like to charge them while we sleep.

After lunch it was time, actually well past time, to give Donald a shower. He was so grimy that it took over three hours! Here am I doing the easy bits, Huan never took any photos of me doing any scrubbing or climbing on the running boards to do the roof.

All these photos were taken with Huan’s phone of course, but they all came out reasonably well. The ‘after’ photo, taken with my phone, came out absolutely terrible. For some reason Huan’s face and hands look as though they are about two hundred years old! Even the bonnet doesn’t look right to me. Every photo I took was the same. That’s why Huan’s face and hands are covered the same way as I usually cover unknown children’s faces.

An after dinner stroll had been planned but I was far too exhausted to even think about it!

February 7^th Back in the seventies and the eighties, (nineteen, not eighteen!), we used to read about the fast approaching ice age. After the turn of the century we used a lot about global warming, which most of us in the UK looked forward to. Nowadays it seems to be all about climate change, warmer here, colder there, wetter here, drier there etc. Do you ever get the feeling that nobody really knows or understands our climate at all? Locally I certainly feel that nobody understands our weather. Last night told us that this morning would be cloudy and rather cool whereas the afternoon would be nice and sunny, perfect for us to have a walk. Someone got it wrong! Just after lunch the sun disappeared and the clouds darkened the sky. We still got out for a walk, just not as beautiful as we had hoped.

Here’s the commander acting as a donkey for me today. She is nice to me sometimes, well, most of the time really. Despite my ape-like long arms I was finding it very difficult to tow the dead cool box to the rubbish area, mostly because of my gammy leg.

From a helper we move to a line of soldiers. (You guessed it, not many photo-ops this week.)

Here we have a very vocal pussy cat, one that didn’t stay long once I got too close.

Huan pointed this one out to me. Unfortunately I was not clever enough to include the sign on the window that was creating the shadow on this chap’s head. I guess if it was a hot sunny day and he was outside it could be a free ‘sun tattoo’.

Walking home we crossed the road just so that I could get a photo of this little archway that we have seen a few times now. The English translation appears to be right. I also like that it is front of the shop 361⁰ whose catchphrase is ‘one degree beyond’.

Here am I, pointing out to a mother and son that Chinese people think about money far more often than we do in the UK. They were very surprised to find out that some of my own family do not own houses and the ones that do only own one.

Mind you, money is obviously not a problem for many people. Here are two very happy children with their new turtles complete with mini aquariums. Cost ¥35.00 per child.

Of course I had to chat to the birds. Just like real ones, they wouldn’t run away with me!

Street food in China varies from province to province, these are pancakes. Huan tells me that they may originate from Shandong. I didn’t think this chap was doing such a good job but the Mum and two children who enjoyed the finished product were happy enough.

I sent Huan into Baijiahu to buy me some crisps, I had a little sit down outside.

Soon enough she reappeared, with my crisps, and a smile.

Just to fill up the page as it were, here’s another one from the never ending world of Japanese anime stuff. This is somehow related to the Hello Kitty world, his name is Pochacco and he was born on 29^th February 1989. - https://www.blippo.com/blogs/characters/pochacco

The last one of the day is yet another sit down one, on the swing in our tiny park.

When I say ‘yet another sit down’, that is four for today and we only walked four and a half kilometres. My leg just did not want to cooperate. Soon my dear nagging sisters, soon!

February 8^th Market day comes but once a week, although we have no shortages of markets on any of the other days. We enjoy the riverside one though, as long as it is not too crowded. There is a bird here, one we found on the way. Mind you, it may not be very easy for you to see it.

As for the next one I can assure you that there is no truth in the rumour, absolutely none at all, that we were having a good sniff of each other’s bums!

This is one that Huan has been trying to get me to take a photo of for ages. This was on the way into our bap and sausage market. Don’t ask me how the medicines are made or what they are good for because I haven’t got the faintest idea.

Down at the other market the crowds were much less, very walkable in fact

Today I was the helper!

With our shortage of subjects this week I decided that this bird that Huan found needed more than one shot. Once I had offloaded al the shopping work began. He went strutting off with a purpose in mind until he spotted me. Having judged me to be not much of a threat he proceeded to enjoy his feast. I could not tell what that feast was from where we were.

We started the day with an almost invisible bird so we will finish it the same way.

How was the leg today? When we started out it was pretty good, hardly any pain at all. By the tie we got home it had become a lot worse. However, it was still far better than yesterday and no ‘sit-downs’ were needed for over six and a half kilometres. Wouldn’t it be nice if it suddenly got better all on its own?

February 9^th For a change we had a lovely afternoon so we enjoyed our walk. Mind you, it was still only a town walk as I needed to visit the bank in preparation for our trip to Haikou next week. Right outside our door we found a skink, a very lazy one that actually let me touch its nose before it scooted off, quite slowly.

Passing the cat lady’s shop, that’s what I call her, she takes in people’s pets while they are away or indisposed, I spotted a corgi. Cue a conversation about countries yet again, because for the most part Chinese people call every part of the UK 英国, Yīngguó. Huan didn’t know how to tell the lady that it was in fact a Welsh breed.

If you are wondering this is what Google says:

I couldn’t get so close to the cats today.

Despite what people overseas may think the standard of driving here is not too bad. What you notice more than anything, a lot of the time, is the courtesy and patience of Chinese drivers. Of course there are sometimes accidents. Here the driver and the moped rider are awaiting the arrival of the police, probably because blame needs to be apportioned and I think the moped is a shared one. No doubt with it being after lunch both drivers will also have been breathalysed. The car did belong to a snowbird so if this was his first visit down here maybe he wasn’t used to the two wheeled traffic. There was no need for us to stay and gawp so we moved on.

For the first time in ages I found a dragonfly, a lonely one, all by itself. It kept trying to fly into a restaurant’s New Year window decoration but luckily for us it did perch for a while.

I’m afraid that’s it for today, another sparse one as far as images go. You can blame my leg!

February 10^th The last day of the (Blog post) week comes around every Monday so here we are again. It also coincides with shopping day but today was a very quick shop. We are off to Haikou tomorrow so only bought a few items, just two shopping bags worth. On the way out I thought I might be daring and break the rules!

Because Huan had her camera out and because we were going down in the lift, a very unusual occurrence, she decided that she needed yet another ‘old man photo’.

So, not many photos this week, we do apologise for that. Hopefully you will still love us and still be there next week when we come round again. “I know nothing stays the same, But if you're willing to play the game, It's coming around again” (Name that singer) and it will be next week. Once again, we will see you then!