Shut That Door, (I Wish)!

October 20^th Good morning all and a happy new week to you. The office curtains came yesterday but due to a communication mix up between us and the online store no supporting stuff came with them. i.e. no Roman rods and mounting brackets. That meant visiting a few shops in the town this morning, all to no avail If they had anything it was going to cost an arm and a leg, if they didn’t have anything they were going to have to order it and still make us pay at least an arm. Still, the weather was good for walking.

No critters were found, just a little flower.

I should have said nearly no critters.

On our way to our last stop we passed through a lovely little garden that occasionally has fish, turtles, frogs, squirrels, birds and lizards, not altogether of course. Today there were none of them just an old guy who knew me. He doesn’t live there but I guess it is a nice shaded place to ‘pretend’ to fish. He asked where Huan was and I pointed out that my 老板Lǎobǎn was busy taking our photographs.

Back home it was time for lunch and the important work of ordering the curtain rods and fixings before our much needed naps. I wonder if my peers in the UK nap every afternoon. I remember my first father-in-law snoring away in his chair after lunch. I don’t remember anyone taking themselves off to bed though, that seems to be a more southerly thing.

Break time over, back on your heads! Yep, it was time for me to get to work again. The parts had arrived for me to fix the lamp in the second bedroom. SWMBO supervised of course and even tried to join me on the ladder once or twice. I sternly rebuked her!

With the lamp finished it was time to replace the missing bed slats. They had been removed to allow the step ladder to be placed in the right position.

Soon it was time for dinner, Huan wanted to buy eggs so we went the market route.

On the way, she still found time to find me a lizard.

For a change even I had rice for dinner today, and Huan had a chicken drumstick!

Back home we admired our handiwork one last time.

October 21^st We don’t have much in the way of pictorial evidence today, we were busy tarting up the lamp surrounds in the living room and on the bedroom balcony. Huan was up ladders too using the toothpaste style filler for the holes so she was far too busy to take photos. I just made sure that she was safe and helped out whenever I could. When that work was completed, after lunch, then we put back up the last remaining curtains in the dining room.

Having had a change yesterday we were back to buffet food today.

Huan’s was a teeny bit spicy so I convinced her to have an ice cream.

October 22^nd Another day with no tasks and no deliveries so Her Majesty decided we should go via the Mansions on the Hill and Luobote village. I found a cat on the way. Those roofs by the way are the tops of nine storey buildings.

Despite not being very fond of hills anymore I quite enjoyed the walk up.

Just after the last of the collage I spotted something big and orange and it was flying. I have no idea what it was; maybe one of you kind people can shed some light for me.

Two lizards came next, one easier than the other. The difficult one was eating its breakfast!

We then found a bird giving us both profiles. He’s a handsome chap isn’t he?

The ‘allotments’ behind the mansions appear not to have been damaged too much by the recent heavy rains. The walk was not too difficult.

Here’s a sunbathing dragonfly for your delectation.

Did I say the walk wasn’t difficult? It wasn’t so easy when we got to the end of the path. A small mountain had to be crossed before we could get the normal pathway.

Here is the aforementioned pathway.

Most photos were taken with the camera today but the Huawei came out for some wide angles.

To our surprise Squirrel Road was quite clear, no rubble whatsoever, and no squirrels either!

Poohsticks was completely out of the question today!

Just before we went out for dinner the Minister for Employment had me working again taking part of the sofa to pieces. It appeared that it was broken and at some time in the past she had tried to repair it. Some photographs were taken of my muttering under my breath and taking parts of it to pieces. None of them were in focus though! Also the work was too much for this evening so it looks like I will be busy again tomorrow. Dinner was a late buffet.

October 23^rd As promised, it was back to work for the labourer this morning. The first step was to go out and buy some new pieces of wood to repair the sofa with.

Back home the new slat and support were drilled first and then stained on the undersides, twice. The top sides would be done once they were screwed in place.

Huan’s nap was fine; mine was disturbed with me worrying about possible support problems at the bottom end of the sofa.

Once the support was in place, stained, screwed and glued, I prepared the additional support.

The slat was then screwed in place and two coats of stain added. Huan missed the first coat!

Dinner time came around giving me a little rest and another buffet meal.

Back home everything was reassembled and Huan gave it a test.

The hardest part of all was probably stuffing all the cushions back into their covers. Huan had washed the covers and was waiting for the repairs to finish before replacing them. Before long we will need to buy new covers but these are doing fine for now.

Window Man called Huan in the evening to tell her that our new front door was in Wuzhishan. He is just waiting for the foreman to call him back about fitting it. Fingers crossed that another job will shortly be done and dusted!

October 24^th As expected there was no sign of our new front door this morning. I reminded Huan of how many times we had been told the windows were here in Wuzhishan when they were actually still on the mainland. Instead of worrying about it we went to the market. Here are the before and after #2 bus photographs.

Having purposely left the camera at home I also avoided the potential ‘Look Bob, a bird!’ areas and we headed down the other side of the river taking in the Saturday car park on the way.

The director did still manage to find me a lizard before we reached the market.

One last photo before we crossed the bridge, a solitary fisherman.

We only took one photo of the market today and that was as we entered from the bridge.

Our next photo was just a view of one of the Little Island bridges.

And finally, before going upstairs, here is little Dòu dòu having a consolation hug. He wanted to go up in the lift with Huan, we think Èr dì, on the fifth floor, might be on heat!

I wasn’t worried about not having too many photos this morning because I knew that Huan would be taking too many in the afternoon. It was time to put up the Roman rods for the new curtains. It was a job and a half needing more than one break for the worker. The fittings needed to be installed in a reinforced part of the wall. If you check the last photo in the collage I suspect the drill bit actually encountered some reinforced steel bar!

Eventually the curtains were up and the worker was done for the day.

With all the strain of trying to drill through what seemed like granite I decided another nearby buffet meal would be enough for today.

Back home it was time for a shower, do my Chinese lessons and admire the curtains.

October 25^th No walkies today, I first had to finish the curtain rail. There are two rails, one at the front and one at the back. However, we are not using the back one for a curtain, not yet anyway. Because of the convoluted route our ISP cable takes to our router we wanted to hide it from view, at least mostly hide it. If you check both ends you can in fact still see it but at least it is not hanging around all over the place as it was before.

After work was finished it was shower time for the boss and Chinese lessons of the day time for me. At least there is some advantage to not going out! Also, now that the office is functional again I took the opportunity to catch up on the last few months scanning and filing of house costs, bank stuff and my health records. It was good to get everything back up to date, with one exception. It appears that my state pension payments have stopped again, presumably while they wait for ‘proof of life’ letter. As usual, I have not received the request to do this yet!

Window Man told Huan that the door would come this afternoon. At four I told her that he was once again not being honest with us and we went out for a walk before dinner. We found nothing in particular to photograph so here are a couple of park views.

For dinner I took Huan to one of her favourite spots, 小谷姐姐, Xiǎogǔ jiějiě – Little Sister Gu. On this occasion though I had planned in advance and bought some of what they call here ‘toast bread’. It is not toast; it is very much like hard stale bread, nice and crispy. I had chosen this because I was going to have my food done in a tomato sauce. Ergo, I had tomato soup with bread! Here are our dishes, Huan had bread too. It’s worth trying even if you’re not a Brit!

I forgot to take a picture of the toast bread, sorry. Huan of course took a photo of me having my fourth cigarette of the month. She also took a photo of me holding our 60cm long custard slice which we will be having with our coffee tomorrow afternoon.

October 26^th This morning Window Man told Huan that door work would start at ten o’clock. Just after nine, I suggested a walk and dinner at lunchtime because I felt sure that neither the door, nor Window Man would appear. Our river is still busy draining the mountains.

Across the island we found our proposed path still blocked.

Our river is still in full flow mostly because the gates are still stuck open.

The blocked pathway meant we had to walk on the other side of the river again. Mind you it did give me an opportunity to check on friends of more than eleven years.

The two structures we have shown you before now have roofs on them, not fashioned out of reeds but still looking fine. One structure looks like it will have some kind of reinforced floor where the other one is just normal. What will they use them for?

Next we have a tree sprouting trees. Well that is what the commander told me.

We made the right decision to go out. There was not a word from Window Man and we had perfect walking weather and great views.

Huan was happy, she found a lizard. These are rotated for you to better see them.

Non market days make for a quieter walk but I do wish more use was made of this place.

To her great delight Huan also found a lovely little squirrel.

Let’s finish the week’s photos with dinner at lunchtime.

After napping we just relaxed. I did try and phone the UK State Pension Department but for some reason I was unable to connect to the UK. We will try again tomorrow. I much prefer the Chinese way. Someone from the government sends Huan a message, she contacts them, and they then verify her identity and state of life via the phone network. It’s done in a matter of days, sometimes hours. A company sub-contracted to the UK government sends me a ‘proof of life request’, by post (not air mail or courier) with a deadline. I have not received a request this year but obviously a deadline has passed and payments have stopped. Always look on the bright side of life! 

See you next time when maybe we will have a new front door.