May 13th Our first full Blog week back where we belong. I mean, we even have an island in the stream! However, the river is not yet back up to the required level for videos and photos yet so we stuck to the ‘road to somewhere’ today.
This is a walk where Huan is always on the lookout for lizards on the trees and if she is not successful then she is very disappointed. Today she was happy. PS I rotated the photo.
This view is from beside the road to somewhere. I do like to walk through the green but the Minister of Health denied me that pleasure today.
Before too long, Huan was in luck again. This one deserves to appearances.
And then we have another view towards the end of the road to somewhere. It is nice to back here in Wuzhishan, even if we can’t walk too far yet.
It seems like a long time since we saw any dragonflies too. Today we saw many but most would not stay still long enough to be caught.
Then Huan found another one that deserves two spots.
Just a car park.
I liked this one, maybe because I read it wrong when I first saw it. I thought it said ‘Crown Killer’, very apt with two ferocious felines leaping out at you.
Some things never change; the river still has its cows.
And a pleasant walk home.
Just when I thought it was OK to put the camera away, the director did it again!
After lunch and the obligatory nap it was time for coffee. One of the good things about eating everything in the freezer is finding cake. This one was not too sweet and the chocolate taste was very rich indeed. PS Ignore the date; that was not an ‘eat before’ one.
Dinner was from the freezer for Huan, curry and rice. Because I can’t have curry yet, I treated myself to sausage egg and beans. No photos needed.
May 14th Today’s plan was mine, and it was scuppered by the weather again. I had intended to make the first of our videos on changes to Wuzhishan while we have been away. Unfortunately, we woke up to an overcast day which turned into heavy rain before we had even finished our morning coffee. It did clear up later but not enough for videography. Instead I had a chat with Dodo while Huan had a gossip with his Mum, no photos of that I’m afraid. On our way up the road two other dogs decided to say hello, Huan did take photos.
Because of the weather, and our route, I was not carrying the camera today, only my phone. This was a x3 view towards a possible squirrel sighting which we didn’t pursue.
Remember the Baijiahui car park last week? Well this was the ‘snowbird entertainment plaza’ where there would usually be dancing and music in every corner. We did find two guys playing saxophones and a handful of dancers, you can’t see them here.
For our car stickers of the day we present Lego!
And then, keeping our walk quite short, some scenery at the director’s request.
Just before we got home we met an old friend that did recognise me. There were two guys sat waiting for their lunch and they were quite bemused at the two of us. Previously I had told you that his name was旺财, Wàng cái meaning prosperity. It seems that we were wrong, his name is招财, Zhāo cái and that translates as attract wealth.
As we are back home, and as we are slowly getting back into the routine of home life, it was my turn in the kitchen today. I had to use stuff from the freezer of course, that meant minced pork. Following doctor’s orders I made a ‘Non-chilli con carne’. Here it is in the pan before I added my home made tomato and garlic sauce. I really missed having paprika with it but the boss said it was fine, that’s important too.
While I was cooking we had a visitor, Yú, she came bearing gifts. For some reason all the photos I took turned out really badly, Huan said I could use this one!
Yú had brought a rotisseried duck, that will be our dinner for the next two days. She also brought a bag of what seemed to be hundreds of small bananas along with quite a few mangoes, for the invalid you understand. Just to spoil me there was also a big tin of biscuits.
May 15th With the weather starting off quite badly this morning I thought I would prepare the ‘intro’ to the video for our little island. We want to show how things have changed, mostly in the past few months, especially along the river. However, for our little island that is only the most recent changes, others have been ongoing for years. I ended up staying in all day. Here are a few of the shots that I made a video with.
This one was to be the buffer between the old and the new; it is a plan from 2019.
May 16th Today I set out to make a video to show the changes to the island. Does it look like the plan photos above? Not really, but on the whole I would say that the powers that be made a pretty good job of it. Here are a few screenshots for you.
Let’s follow them with a few photos, not that I took many today.
I could give you some more screenshots but better that you just check the video. You can find it here - https://youtu.be/eq0zE0d4tbI P.S. It is quite long; I really wanted people to see all the changes. You can always mute the sound and increase the speed, I’ll never know!
Let’s finish off the day with something more normal, a bird and a bug.
May 17th Here I am writing this a day late, I spent far too much time searching on Taobao last night. I was looking for all sorts and finding nothing that took my fancy. Anyway, what did we do yesterday? It was market day of course, very hazy in places too.
We had some shopping to do today; Huan had decided that another two salad days were in order. This time it would be chicken and not duck. Sometimes I prefer chicken. It is smaller so we have to buy two and then half a half each for both meals. Here she is buying salad stuff.
In the afternoon we had another express delivery, more underwear for me. Last night we had received this pair which Huan thought looked sexy. Her eyesight is not what it was you know.
This afternoon I had received the other ‘trial’ pair, Huan didn’t think this pair was sexy!
So why was I doing this? Dr. Féng on seeing my side effects at the side of my naughty bits had suggested that I should try boxer shorts. I have never got on with them in the past but I thought I would try again. The first pair, the ‘fashionable ones, despite being the biggest available (5XL), were not very comfortable at all. As that was also the biggest size I will not be ordering them again. The second pair, which I wore today, (Sunday) were a little bit better but still felt odd to me. I might have to persevere with these though and buy a few more pairs, at least until my body recovers more. Speedo Man is not a boxer fan!
May 18th What shall we do today? A
visit to our local hospital was needed, not that there are any additional
problems with either of us. I am due to have a ‘drip’ to help my bones heal in
a week or so and we wanted to check on availability. The smaller clinics had
already told us that they couldn’t do it. Luckily the main hospital had the
required medication in their pharmacy so an extra trip to
On the way to the town square we heard some pretty good drumming. Huan told me that there had been something on last night where people could ‘win things’. Was it a talent show? Quite possible going by the writing on the drum. This young man was drumming along to a pop song I think, he was pretty good. I tried to get him to smile while he was drumming but he stopped and gave me the ‘rock on’ symbol instead.
Huan meanwhile had found someone else to snap. I think she may have been trying to inveigle me into posing with these two but I managed to evade capture. If you can read Chinese then the poster on the back wall will explain for you who they are.
Here we have a queue of people waiting to appear in a fake newspaper headline. Huan had forgotten that I had done this for my boss way back in 2008 just by using MS Word. I had to prove it when we returned home!
One of the many jobs completed while we were away was the set of steps leading down to the indoor market. They have also refurbished the building.
In our very small children’s park we spotted a memorial pair of wellies. We couldn’t tell whether they were accompanied by socks or pants and we certainly didn’t want to investigate further!
A couple of flying beasties next, one clear and one not, one checking me out and one not.
Soon we turned off looking for lizards, snakes, birds or anything. All we found was some nice scenery and lots of mosquitoes that loved my legs and left Huan’s alone!
Huan started pointing at something yellow in the leaves. Initially I didn’t see it, I had spotted another dragonfly. Eventually I saw what Madam was going on about. Google told us that it is possibly “spongy moth eggs on tree leaves”. Don’t you just love AI?
Birds were soaring up above so I tried once again.
This is one that I call the
‘marmite’ car, you either love it or you hate it. There is definitely a
futuristic look about it and it definitely divides opinion. Having said that,
the divisions are much more varied in the west, most people in
.
Huan loves me to talk to children and always tries to take photos of the occasion despite knowing that I am going to hide their faces. Having said that, they are still visible on our own PC. These two were busy in the shop until I said hello when they had to come out and chat. Here they look a bit worried because I think their grandfather told them off for trying to touch the camera lens.
Our last picture of the day is me struggling to remove a box from the express delivery boxes. For some reason the delivery agent had forced our box into an express box that was a little too small. My other hand is full of fish, we had been to the market, and Huan was busy trying to record the incident. Eventually she took over and got our ‘coffee’ out.
May 19th Here we are, lazing around doing a lot of nothing. We did go shopping this morning but that was about it for me. Mind you, I spent a lot of time on Taobao again, my bum-bag needs replacing after ten years. I found a new one for a quid! I was worried that we would have no photos at all for today and I was pretty sure that you didn’t want to see me modelling any more of my underwear, or Huan’s come to that! However, I did sneak up on the lady in question who was busy after dinner, making some flat bread. Needless to say I had to test it!
As it is the end of the week, I will also give you an update on my recovery progress. For your info, this is the NHS page - https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/radiotherapy/side-effects/ The tiredness is changing to a more normal old man tired feeling. My skin is slowly getting better; the open wounds seem to have healed. You needn’t worry; there will be no photos of my nether regions to put you off your dinner! There are still occasional twinges in my thigh bone. I don’t know if that is anything to be concerned about or if it just my bones now trying to heal themselves. At least walking is easier as is sleeping.
So, back to normal life, with a little luck we will improve our distances this coming week, maybe take some half decent photographs too. Miracles can happen! Stay tuned for photos of yours truly snapped by SWMBO, photos of various subjects ordered by SWMBO and maybe even the odd one or two taken by me with the permission of SWMBO. Isn’t life great? I wouldn’t have it any other way though and I would be lost without her! See you soon.
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