Forgetful Oldies, Monthly Needle, Bureaucracy, The (Sad) Lonely Goatherd.

December 8^th What a good start to the day! First, when we arrived at the car I had to go back upstairs and collect the SD cards and the emergency torch which I had repaired. Off we went then to our area police station where I dropped Huan off and proceeded to do a circular tour before picking her up again. There she was waiting at the side of the road with today’s second senile moment, “Could I go home and get her passport photographs” as she had forgotten them. Off I went, delivered the photos to her and went off on another circular tour. This time when I collected her, she told me it had been a wasted visit. She was trying to renew her temporary Hainan ID but the machine wouldn’t allow the police to do it, we’d have to wait a few days. Ah well, fingers crossed for next time.

As a result of the faffing around we caused ourselves we were a little late setting off for Haikou for my monthly dose of hormones. There was a plus side though, the weather in Haikou was nice enough for us to sit outside and eat our lunch.

Don’t worry, the birds were not for eating and we didn’t eat any of those fish swimming around. We had seventeen dumplings each, not sure about the significance of the number, if any. Huan had vegetable and I had meat, not bad at all. Here are mine cooking.

While we were waiting I was talking to the birds, who could talk back and also to the fish who, while they could not talk back, were tame enough to come and look at me, and in one tank, nibble my fingers. This one caught my attention though, it’s a Flowerhorn cichlid, and you won’t be surprised to learn that it’s not a ‘natural’ fish. It was bred in Malaysia as an aquarium fish but exists now in the wild too.

Huan insisted I take this next one too, the restaurant staff told us that it couldn’t swim! Huan was rather amused by a fish that couldn’t swim; I suspect it may have been getting on in years.

After lunch we did our monthly Haikou shop, I was a little disappointed at the lack of Christmas stuff. They did have a whole turkey and large turkey breasts but we decided they were not for us. Still, we stocked up on cheese and butter, Italian spices etc.

From there we went to the hospital, our reason for the trip. We then proceeded to make more mistakes! Huan booked my appointment, but when we got upstairs and read the paper it was with the wrong doctor. The cash desk on the second floor wouldn’t change it so we had to go back to the first floor, do the necessary and then go back to join the doctor’s queue again. No worries there, Dr. Cheng knows us well and also likes to practice his English. Prescription in hand, and remembering last month, we headed off to the first floor dispensary that within a minute had my needle ready. They then did a double take and told us we couldn’t take it from there we had to take it from the second floor dispensary. Off we went again, picked up the needle and for the last time returned to the first floor, to the ‘infusion room’. There was a new nurse there, very happy to see a foreigner, my nerves got worse! I didn’t see what she did because, as usual, I had my ears and eyes covered, but I can tell you it hurt. This was probably the worst one yet. Huan told me the nurse said she had to do it the way she did to get through the fat!

I was very happy to escape and get back in the car I can tell you! Due to our late start and our problems in the hospital we had to have dinner on the highway on the way home. At least that was OK. We had a chat with a dog, a red copper Siberian husky. I should say, I had a chat with the dog, Huan chatted to his owner who had a caravan. She had to find out how much it was of course. I don’t think I’d fancy towing a caravan again, I haven’t done it since I was in the army, and even then, it was a very small caravan that my boss only slept in.

Once home we were both very lazy, although I did upload all the dashcam videos and rename them. I’ve given up trying to consolidate them; I need more computing power to do that.

December 9^th After a lousy night’s sleep Huan went off to hulusi school and I eventually made myself get dressed and go to the hospital. Today’s therapy was more of the same, only different. As you can see, the electro pads were placed differently. It was quite amusing watching my fingers do a merry dance now and then.

Our weather was not as good as Haikou’s but it was nice enough for me to have a walk around the town. I do enjoy going through the market even if I’m not buying. Today though, I bought chicken livers with their associated hearts, I’ll cook them tomorrow and shrimps sans clothes, I’ll cook them for the weekend.

Nothing else to report really, weekly shopping and an after dinner walk was all we did today.

December 10^th No doctor’s visit today, Dr. Li has gone to Haikou so she told me to go straight to the treatment room where I had a repeat of yesterday. I can stretch my arm without pain now so something must be working.

Next up was the area police station to renew Huan’s temporary Hainan Hukou. We were under the impression that her new card would be valid from the expiration date of the old one for another year, meaning I would be able to get a visa for a year. Once again we were wrong! Her new card is valid for a year from today which means my next visa will again be only eleven months. I’ll still have to pay for a year of course. Next year we will try and renew Huan’s card nearer the date of my visa expiration. Don’t you just love bureaucracy?

After lunch I decided to cook dinner early, these were the ingredients. In the bowl are the chicken livers and chicken hearts, the rest you can see.

Laziness set in then and apart from baths, we did nothing else for the remainder of the day. I did try and find a way to use the karaoke machine with the laptop, to no avail and I couldn’t find a way to convert the files either. If the committee insist on me performing for the New Year show I thought I could use the karaoke if I’m still not allowed to play the guitar.

There was one other thing, household maintenance, as in checking all the batteries we have. The ones in the emergency torch in the car exploded so I decided an excel file was needed listing all the batteries, their locations, types and replacement dates. Half done today, I ran out of batteries!

December 11^th Today’s doctor was Dr. Gao, gave me the usual small massage. I suggested to her that I have a rest from the electro-convulsive therapy for a week or two and see how it goes. She was not so sure and thought I should still go two or three times a week. However, when I showed her that I could pull the door with her holding it with her foot, and not experience any pain, she relented. That was my morning apart from buying more batteries and almost completing the job. All that’s left now though is watch batteries and as neither of us wear watched there’s no rush for them.

After lunch my first job was escort duty for the ladies who were off to their hulusi class. Taking selfies of more than one person is not my #1 skill, Huan chose this one, I think because I am not in it. That’s what I told her anyway.

From there it was off to the post office for me, we’d had a call to say there was a letter for us. It’s easy to find our letters in the sorting office even though we don’t have a dedicated cubby hole.

The gentleman in the office handed me a letter from Aviva, posted sometime around 11^th November, and asked if it was mine. I replied that it was. He then handed me another, posted on 13^th November with the same question so I said yes again. Lo and behold he then handed me a third one, this one posted on 7^th July which I agreed was also mine.

The Aviva letter brought bad news; my fund has gone down in value by 7.8% since last year. In fact the projected value on my pension date is less than last year’s value! I guess the excuse will be 2020. Next year’s excuse will probably be Brexit!

Both the other letters were cards, both from the same brother and his wife, one anniversary card and one Christmas card. The Christmas card’s on time, the anniversary card is five months late. You can see why I’ve asked the family not to bother sending cards can’t you?

Anyway, I came straight back from the post office, Huan had told me the electricity will be going off tomorrow from half past seven in the morning until four in the afternoon. That meant I had to cook the weekend’s stew today, most of it anyway. The shrimps, in the red bag, will be popped in when we heat it up again tomorrow evening.

December 12^th Well they’re punctual, the power went off at twenty seven minutes past seven. My plan then was just to rot away in the house all morning and maybe go out in the afternoon but Huan reminded me about the Saturday market. Arriving there it seemed everybody and his dog was out this morning, no doubt due to the electricity being off in most of Wuzhishan. The market also seemed larger, stretching out at both ends. However, that was because the authorities, 城管, Chéngguǎn, a.k.a ‘Urban Management, had stopped people setting up in the middle of the road. It certainly made navigating my way through the throng much easier. Not much to show you today, we’ll start off with small furry things. They are mushrooms but how you cook them, and whether or not you have to ‘shave’ them first, I couldn’t say.

A little further on was another furry creature, this one advertising a furniture sale. I wouldn’t fancy wearing that suit in this climate!

It’s always nice to be remembered isn’t it? Someone stopped me in the market and asked where my ‘boss’ was, obviously knows who wears the trousers in our house. Someone else who remembered me was yet another furry friend. I wonder if he knows he has a pink tail.

When Huan came home for lunch she told me that the electricity would now not be back on until six in the evening. That meant another walk had to be taken in the afternoon so I headed off downriver. From a distance I spotted this sad looking goat, it even allowed me to stroke it. Its belly was heaving a bit so I wondered if it was having babies and promised myself to look up on Google whether goats stay away from the herd when giving birth.

Before too long I came across the rest of the family, took far too many photos of them, but I’ll share with you the ‘main column’ and the ‘rearguard.

Much further on here’s a couple of the babies, one peeping at me through the leaves and the other having another lie down. I had seen that one lying down a lot on the way but I couldn’t see anything wrong with it.

They may have been heading for this place but I couldn’t stay to see, or follow them any further, the rain was starting.

I retraced my steps and reached the ‘sad’ goat that by now was lying down and looking much the worse for wear. In the UK I would have phone the local vet for advice but I had no idea how to do that here or even if we have a vet in Wuzhishan that would deign to come out and take a look. Some passers by chatted to me but they had no ideas either. By this time it was fairly clear that the poor little creature was dying, from what I don’t know. I stayed with it, stroking its head, giving it a bit of love as it went. I have no idea if I was helping or not. Two of the passers by came back again and asked me if it had died to which I replied, ‘with a tear in my eye’, yes it had. They then walked the other side of the wall so as not to pass it. Obviously I did not take any photos this time round.

My timing wasn’t bad for returning home and I joined the security team praying to the local transformer altar. Punctuality was the word yet again and the power was back on a few minutes before six.

That elicited a big sigh of relief from me, I didn’t fancy walking upstairs a second time today. This morning I counted the steps, there are 114 of them, too many for a doddery old git! Apart from my Chinese revision I had a lazy evening again.

December 13th Sunday again so Huan’s off for her second weekend day of keyboard practice. I say second, but yesterday they had no power so they practiced hulusi instead. I stayed in and did a huge pile of admin work. We have to go to Haikou again on Tuesday, this time to visit the visa office. Remembering that the lady last year had seemed to think we lived in hotels, I printed a whole lot of documentation, just in case they need it. It’s a long list, new passport, old passport, all my visas since 2007, Huan’s Hukou and temporary Hainan Hukou, both our marriage books, three pages of photographs from 2004 to now, all our property books and all my bank books from 2007. Huan tells me that I will still only get eleven months but hopefully they’ll put all this stuff in my file for future reference.

I didn’t finish until after lunch. My next job was to find out why the printer is giving us an error message all the time, ‘nearly out of ink’, when we have a CISS installed. That’s a Continuous Ink Supply System just in case you wondered. I failed, for now. Being too lazy yesterday evening I also had to bring the Blog up to date.

Once Huan was home and we had finished our second day of shrimp stew it was time for an evening walk, much needed for me, the first walk today. She had an ulterior motive though, we had to pass by both of her banks! Along the way I spotted yet another little friend, Huan insisted that we take a photo of him begging, which I did once he stopped trying to mate with my leg!

December 14^th Another (almost) lazy morning for me, I did do a bit of work, scanning medical bills and electric bills then filing them. Huan was at choir practice today.

After lunch, Huan was out, at hulusi practice, so I carried out my escort duty again to be sure they arrived safely! My route today was anticlockwise around the river with a short detour to see how the new ‘fishing restaurants’ are coming on. They do have a new sign. Huan says the Chinese is “Tea Story” and the small characters mean “farm”. As far as we can see there is no tea there whatsoever!

And what’s behind the sign? Why, the fishing lakes of course, plus a few restaurants and what appears to be a small guest house.

A little further on I spotted what seemed to be a rather large bee in the sky, with a long tail. As I got nearer I was able to take a few photographs of it and, the ‘flyer’ let me take his photo too. He was rather puzzled that I didn’t know how to fly a kite. I never really knew, even as a child.

Next up is a butterfly that has forgotten what plants and flowers look like, it just kept doing circuits and bumps all around this muddy patch.

And let’s finish the week with another one of my four legged furry friends. This one just wanted to sit under my legs when I had a rest on the steps outside the shop.

That’s it for this week, no shopping yet as we’re off to Haikou again tomorrow. Take care all of you and stay safe from the big bad bug!

Burn, Return to Normal (?), Brownout, Sunburn

March 17^th Moody weather sometimes equals miserable people. Well I guess we weren’t exactly miserable but there was no walkies today! We could have gone out, it wasn’t raining, it was just a dreary day. I did an extra guitar practice having yet again missed one yesterday. Skype calls used up my usual practice time in the evening. Huan kept herself busy destroying and recreating her clothes. She seems to do that quite a lot! Surprisingly, even though she refuses to wear her reading glasses, she can still thread a needle.

We did debate going out after dinner for an evening stroll but that decision was rather taken out of our hands. Dinner was nearly two hours later than usual due to our oven playing up. If we ever buy a new one we’ll make sure it has analogue knobs on the front and not a computerised display panel. Recently it has started switching itself off every time you open the door!

March 18^th “Good Day Sunshine”. Name that song and singer, answers by postcard please. Yes, the weather was better today, a little sunshine, enough to have a pleasant walk without being too hot. Bob was injured before we even started but it didn’t affect his walk. He burnt his left hand on the oven last night, poor little soldier. Of course the dressing fell of before we were half way round our route for the day.

And what was our route for the day? Previously we had seen a truck delivering rebar just down the river and we wanted to see what they were doing with it. We thought they may have been repairing the small dam or making another small bridge to the island. Here’s Huan climbing over the wall to get to the steps on the other side. (PS They will make an access point here when everything inside is completed.)

As usual, we saw a beautiful bird but couldn’t get near enough for a decent photo. We passed the construction works but you’ll be able to see better from the other side of the river. I took various photos of limpid pools, or perhaps you would call them stagnant pools! Hopefully we’ll get some water moving by April when the rains start in earnest. I did like this next pool though, at least it was clean inside and it had a lovely little island too.

Would you believe it, we were back to bovine friends again. This was a little calf with no sign of its family anywhere. It was struggling a little to eat these leaves because they weren’t anchored at all. It did accept a little help from me but not much, it was a little too nervous.

Could this have been its family I wonder? If they are, I can’t see how it escaped. Anyway, for a change, as these cows never come to say hello, I tried feeding them today. They are quite fussy, some leaves they just wouldn’t touch even though Huan said people ate them, other leaves they were happy to scoff from my hand.

From the other side of the river we got a much clearer view of what they are doing with the rebar and its associated concrete. They are burying the sewer pipe that crosses the river there to join the route to the sewage works further downriver. What I can’t work out is what the flat bit to the right of the pipe hump will be used for. Any ideas?

From there it was a trip to the lottery shop, Huan won last night. There was a squeal of delight from behind her computer, almost got my hopes up for the jackpot. Still, ¥200.00 is not to be sneezed at and it’s good practice! Our last stop of the day was the Xinjiang bread cart, we were lucky today they only had two left. This is what they cook them in, it looks terrible doesn’t it? The bread, on the other hand, is very nice indeed!

A quiet day was the ‘order of the day’ for the rest of the day. Guitar practice has been postponed for at least a day maybe more. The skin on the burn area of my hand is now tightening up and there is a swelling on the back of my hand, presumably due to the water from the burn area. If you check the photo you may be able to see that the burn stretches from just above the knuckle (proximal interphalangeal joint) on my little finger up to a point just above the knuckle (metacarpophalangeal joint) of my ring finger. Moving my fingers is now not so easy and forming chord shapes is nigh on impossible! PS The colour is Chinese burn medicine, not covered because I’m at home. It does work, Huan has used it before.

March 19^th “Nice day for it!” Did you know that is a common English greeting where “it” can refer to almost anything at all, even if you have no idea what the person you’re greeting is going to do or where they’re going to go. For us, it was a nice day for a walk.

First of all, how do you feel about electric cars. Personally, I quite like them except for two rather salient points. The first is the range, remember I have a four hundred kilometre round trip to buy cheese! The second point is charging. If you’re lucky and live in a house in the suburbs of UK you might be fine, but what happens when you live in an apartment. Here’s a Geely home charger, in this case connected to an empty shop. Can you imagine dozens of these connected to all the apartments in one building and what that would do to everyone’s electricity consumption not to mention the wiring!

Some people may say that you can charge the car on the way to buy your cheese, which is all well and good, if you have enough time to spare. Present cars can not exactly be fast charged and of course they may be a queue when you find a charging station. I can envisage many people carrying a generator in their boot, (trunk), at least while it is still possible to buy fossil fuel.

Today we took one of the routes behind the main street, up the first turning, through the woods and down to the second turning past the fish pond restaurants. Here’s the turning, very easy to remember, it has a speed limit sign. We turned left.

This walk, while being a little short, is very pleasant, taking us past a small farm or two, some beautiful overhanging trees, two or three canine friends who will have nothing at all to do with us. They bark a lot, and then run away if I approach them. The walk ends at the afore mentioned restaurants. There are at least two fish ponds, one completed restaurant, another one or two plus a hotel under construction. In this picture you can see the future hotel on the right and a future restaurant on the left.

When we reached the left hand corner of this photo, just beyond the glass building, Huan found a creature in distress. It was a small frog, less than one centimetre in length, trying its hardest to find a way over an enormous kerbstone. Using a leaf, after a couple of unsuccessful attempts we were able to help it. Hopefully, it will manage to find its way to the water.

Huan often tells me that she is not the compassionate or empathetic type, (my words, not hers), so I rather like it when she proves herself wrong. Now, if only I can convince her that we need a couple of dogs, two or three cats and perhaps a parrot…

Now something I do like is cars! I’m not usually a fan of this next one though. It’s a Mercedes Benz G-Wagen, more often seen in white or black. Normally I’d prefer some other 4WD to this one. However, today I fell in love! Not only does this one have increased ground clearance, very useful on a 4WD, but it’s also in my favourite colour, yellow. Quite often the colours you like will not always go with the shapes and sizes of the cars you like, I don’t think ours would look good in yellow for example. In the case of this G-Wagen, it works. Now all we need is either a lottery win, or two, or a gracious donation from some kind reader out there!

We were both good little exercise bunnies in the afternoon and did our TV walking exercises. I have to say that I for one wasn’t really in the mood but I’m glad we did them. The whole exercise takes roughly fifteen minutes and we certainly do feel the effects afterwards. I can’t say how long it will take before we see any results though.

March 20^th No long walks planned for today, just a short one around the town in the morning followed by some TV walking in the afternoon. After catching up with all the latest virus news, and fake news, we set off. It was a good day for walking, Huan got to have a gossip with many of the people we know and I got to chat with a few of my four legged friends. However, the first photo is a couple of beautiful two legged friends of the flying variety. Unfortunately I couldn’t get them both to look at the camera at the same time.

Next up was a new four legged friend although this one was not quite so friendly. I only had my phone with me today which, like many phone cameras, of a certain age, has some delay between pressing the shutter and taking the picture. No matter how hard I tried I could not get a photo of his face head on. That’s a shame because he was such a handsome fellow. I doubt very much if he’s fully grown yet, just look at the size of his feet!

Now we are back to two legged creatures again, this one with a large metal extension to its body. Yes, work has begun again on the installation of the underground electricity cables. I couldn’t get him to smile for the camera either!

Now the reason for our short walk today was our trip to the police station. I took Huan there and handed her over to the boys in blue. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t keep her and handed her back to me along with her new local Hukou card. We need this one when I renew my visa.

So our morning plan went perfectly unlike our afternoon one. I was playing nodding dogs in front of the computer again so we took an afternoon OAP nap. Huan slept for just over an hour, most unlike her as she can normally be back to normal after thirty minutes. I was even worse and slept for two and a quarter hours then woke up with a headache. That meant no afternoon TV walking for me, and as Huan doesn’t like doing it alone, none for her either. Not to worry, at least we walked five kilometres in the morning.

March 21^st Today’s plan worked out well. My only grumble about it was that we went around the mountain park route in an anticlockwise direction which means more steps going upwards! It would appear that as far as snowbirds go, Wuzhishan is almost back to normal. This chap had the right idea although I don’t know if he was planning on staying the night.

And just so that you realise what I mean by snowbirds thinking all is normal again here’s a whole gaggle of them on the turning just before the next ascending pathway. Notice how there is a dearth of masks in this picture.

Next we saw a couple of ladies on a rock, one of whom was belting out a song. I have no idea what she was singing about but it definitely wasn’t ‘rock’!

Next up is one of the reasons why I don’t like going this way round. Coming down these steps is fine but going up them is another matter. Today my knees were giving me gyp and I even found myself getting short of breath. I guess it’s been a while since we’ve had a walk that involved using a bit more energy than just a pleasant stroll in the country. What’s worse about these steps is that there are even more higher up!

Like many countries, our views of nature can sometimes be blighted by ‘fly tippers’. In this case they had dumped a load of old mattresses right by the side of the scenic bridge. Personally, I don’t only blame them but I also blame the authorities, in any country, for not making it easier to dump rubbish that can’t be collected in regular bin rounds. My opinion is that there should be a place that you can take it to and it should also be free of charge.

What you don't want to see on your walk. The country folk in front of us both raised their feet high on their little motorbike just after they passed us, I thought they were having fun. Huan realised they were shouting 'snake!' This particular one is Trimeresurus stejnegeri, common name here "Green leaf bamboo snake". It appears that it is very venomous but only rarely kills. It is a nocturnal creature so this was a rare sighting. Because of its venom and its proximity to people, the country folk killed it, which I suppose was for the best. Lots of OAPs and sometimes children do walk down this road. If you want to know more about this snake you can follow this link -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trimeresurus_stejnegeri.

As we progressed we could see further signs of a return to normality, the market at the side of the road was back where we always look but don’t buy. A little further on the road works were back in full swing too. In the case of this truck, ‘swing’ is the operative word. He had broken down and they used the excavator bucket to move him to one side. Words from the C-in-C when the job was milliseconds away from completion; “Why don’t you do a video?”

My hand had healed enough to do some guitar practice by this evening. Three days off hasn’t helped at all. Nearly all my ‘one minute chord changes’ are lower than before. Still, at least my hand is working again.

March 22^nd Oh what a beautiful morning! Today we were advised that our electricity would be off from half past eight in the morning until half past five in the afternoon, cue a nice long walk. Life is getting more and more back to normal, here’s the outdoor gymnasium by the river.

Next up is a picture of some kind of seeds and the location of some (accidental) British vandalism. One chappie was trying to get one of these pods down but having little success. I thought I’d help by bending a branch down for him, not such a good idea. There was an almighty crack as the branch broke which led to grovelling apologies from yours truly.

Today’s walk took us on the other side of the river, over the bridge to nowhere which we can now see is actually going somewhere. We still have no idea where its final destination is though. We took a lot of photos today so some places you will not see such as the road works referred to above. Someone not interested in speed is this little fellow. I did try for a ‘head-on’ photo but without falling in the river I couldn’t manage it.

This next one almost has a wartime feel to it, looking a bit like seaside fortifications, except of course they’re all made of wood. These places used to be restaurant rooms looking over the river. Despite the tourist spot still being there, these have all fallen into disuse.

Not far from our turnaround point, the village of Nancheng, we came across a couple of lads fishing so I tried for a nice black and white photo while one of them cast his net. I’m reasonably pleased with the result.

By the time we arrived in Nancheng we had walked thirteen kilometres so a break was called for, in fact a second break. We had had a drinks stop around ten thirty but it was now time for a lunch stop. I was quite looking forward to a small bowl of fried rice but as usual there was none to be had. I don’t know why fried rice is so scarce around here. I had to settle for fried noodles instead while Huan had a bowl of noodle soup. I guess you don’t need to see noodles!

Something rather strange caught my eye in the restaurant though, the ceiling fan. Was it made like this? Did someone cut off the long blades? Does it also double as the village barber shop? Answers on a postcard please.

Some more wildlife for you today, you could say some local colour. I took the first one just in case the little creature disappeared as I walked round the tree. Luckily, I was able to get a second one too, handsome isn’t he?

As I mentioned earlier, it was a beautiful day today. The sun had definitely got his hat on and had come out to play. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my hat one. If you look between the shady bits you may see a Belisha beacon shining through. When Huan was trying to find a word to describe how red I was, I told her it was beetroot!

We eventually arrived home around four after a very long walk. How long? Well, we had walked nineteen and a half kilometres when my phone battery died, but knowing where we were an extra four and a half kilometres can be added. So, we walked twenty four kilometres today! Apart from being a tad sunburnt, I also ended up with chafing on my thighs and on my bum. I wonder if I should go walkies ‘au naturel’ in the future.

So our last photos of the day, the reason we were out, the electricity cut. Here are the gentlemen responsible for it just putting the finishing touches to their handiwork.

As they hadn’t finished their work, we had to climb the stairs for seven floors, oh to be young again! Luckily for us, our hot water tank still had enough hot water in it for Huan to have a shower and for me to pour a bath. That’s when I realised that my forearms and my lower legs were also a bit on the overcooked side! It’s a good job I kept my shirt on today or I wouldn’t have been able to sleep at all! Neither of us felt like doing much in the evening, we were two very tired little warriors. I did a Chinese review and Huan did a little keyboard then we just relaxed with our respective programmes.

March 23^rd Surprisingly, we were both up before seven this morning, very unusual, especially for me these days. It’s Monday of course so no walks planned for today, just shopping during Hainan’s siesta time. It did give me a chance to do yesterday’s guitar practice in the morning. Huan was back to destroying and recreating her clothes!

The only other thing to report is that I was a bad boy today. In our rush to get out of the house and go shopping, I forgot all about my face mask! Still, because of the time we now go there weren’t many customers in the supermarket at all and I kept my distance from what few there were. Huan always goes to the fish market too but I sit in the car and drink coffee while I wait for her. When she summons me, I drive up like the good chauffeur I am and pick her up.

So another week comes to an end, still no idea when I will be able to upload these small epistles, but whenever it is, we’ll be back next time, see you!