I found the blog! I thought it disappeared into heaven where free places usually go, who did not demand some agreement to tons of adverts or money... Anyway, we are still here - the nasty JW neighbours ditto, Pecshaz is still a lovely treat every few weeks and we managed to cheat winter for 3 months in unfortgettably wonderful Ardales (mountains, small white town), Antequera (mountains,bigger white town), Benalmedina (brit conquered yet fab beach) Syney is growing, learning, will see her in April in Toronto, Szonya is a professor, Alan is enthusiastically gardening, I don't, and that is all about us... curious if anyone still "follows"...

another year gone dammit

or actually, one and a half. Most of it pandemic, and now, war. one feels guilty continuously. Dad died last July - and had a very sad last years as visiting was difficult or impossible. Carole ended up with all the relevant burocracy etc, while Geoff had health problems,at the moment hopefully recovering. we had trips, nice meals when not isolating... village life goes on, with more young families around, and some of the oldest people dying. our not so new neighbours are still annoying. We are in the process of buying a little house - or flat? in Pècs. We have a chimney and fireplace in the stable-room, that is spectacularly unsuccessful in heating the place, but the table-tennis worked out, where the wine-press place was in front of the cellar, it was a 70th birthday present for me - it was a nice day, too with the old girls coming down with lots of beautiful food. and we are getting ready to visit Martin, Sharon and Sydney in Toronto in June, after more than 2 years of seeing them. Well, I wonder if anyone sees this - I only remembered, as an anonymous comment appeared asking if we were OK- thank you, whoever you are... writing on my mobile, no idea how to attach photos here - there are lots of those

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wow, almost a year rushed past with the same old, now mutated virus... Well, today we just had the Sinopharm chinese vaccine - due for the boost a month time. We are still well stocked and reasonably well - as demonstrated by all the controls and checks-ups we had, exploiting the fact, that hospitals are quite empty - people are not this mad to get there if not absolutely necessary. All our close family and friends are ok - touch wood. Little Syney is fabulous - and we miss her tons. In September, between those waves, managed to get away with the old girls to the Matra to a quaint hunters' lodge in the middle of the forest - fabulous, lucky break - and the start of the celebrations as all of us will hopefully make it to 70 this year. days pass with reading, watching Netflix, Amazon Prime, Eurosport trying avoiding news without much success, arguing on quora for me, on facebook for Alan, playing cards and scrabble, learning guitar and Hungarian (Alan) crosswords (me) music, knocking rummy, scrabble and of course talking to people on every possible way, lately quizzing. And listening to the annoying very loud tool noises from weird neighbours continuously still working on the house we shouldn't had sold them dammit. I don't know how we had coped without this age of wi-fi. well, maybe send some pictures when get round to it - since not much to do, one doesn't feel like doing it... Oh, we did find Lois, she is ok, after the first few minutes on the phone she sounded like the person we remeber of so fondly. And grandad is doing ok, but who would be happy not seeing any relatives and friends this long - not really good for mental health. ok hoping all of my 3 readers are well...

virus times re-start

Everybody else is doing it while locked-in, so here it goes again. All is well, otherwise, Kiskassa is about the best place to be, with absolutely no reason to venture outside, I mean, besides playing tennis in Újpetre, where the court is ready for us any time, with no others ever using it. And rolling out the rubbish. And seeing the delivery-man if ordered sg on the internet - tried out the on-line pharmacy, e-mag, the others are the usual ones, mobile grocer 7 days a week, fruit-veg, butcher, freezer-man once a week, and mon-fry, postlady who is still mayor Erika. She's still doing a good job, we even had some free food-supplies hung on our gate on the past two Saturdays! Well, will get in touch any time I can think of something to say... meanwhile here we are with the made-in Kiskassa masks, again, free, via Mancika, who is a retired glove-maker.We haven't heard anyone locally or in Budapest of our relations of friends or acquantences being infected - let's hope for once at least this part - early lock-down - Orban did the right thing. UK looks very worrying, with lots of people we know having close friends, relations infected, but so far, got through it ok.Marc, Sharon and little Sydney are cooked up in their house - which is very comfy, with time to put up all those shelves - next to a park, Szonya and Drew managed to get out of London, buying a neat little terrace in Reading at just the right time. so anyway, some pics, and see if I'll have anything noteworthy to say...oh, and granddad just had his 95th birthday in the care-home, where he seems comfortable now, we skype often. He says he'll be all right, he's been through worse... and now, looking through this selection, mention, that Alan now a not-so-proud Hungarian, but insured a bit against Brexit... also that he is very enthusiastically planting veggies, but happy, that the garden is only half sized. And we got a very sophisticated looking water-cleaner - at least the kettle and coffee-maker don't look horrid from limestone after one use. Lovely.

Never mind - Christmas greetings from Toronto!

I suppose I should tell you what happened since August... must have been tons of stuff... I just managed to transfer photos from the mobile, so I think I just put on a mixture of things - main thing, that we are here, little Sydney is wonderful, and in a few days time all of us will be together for a couple of weeks, under one roof - Martin's and Sharon's house. We are surviving the Canadian winter - so far - for the rest if there are any readers left - you can guess... meanwhile - the election and the world still ticking away in the weirdest way - but at least we can chew our fingers and dispair - or who knows... Thursday evening, instead of the late hours.

well, long time no see, sorry

wasn't too busy, just not in blogging mood - not farming... big news - we are grandparents, sorry this space has to get to know Sydney Ruth, as she is, of couse, the most beautiful baby even if it happened in far away Toronto. also, can't work out how to put huawei photos on pc directly from mobile like I could from the samsung... so unless I start again reporting village life, this will be less picturesque, as I am painfully aware that people get fed up sooner with baby photos than the particular grandparent. in a nutshell - since other house sold this place a bit jungle-ish, but managed due to Alan's persistence to produce tomatoes, lettuces, the sorrel, raspberry and figs insist doing their things anyway, while the grapes made up a nice cover to the front of the remainer house. Oh. We spent some money on the stables, so that we still have guestroom, even if before the heating season, and far from finished, ceiling is a success, the floor less so, tons to do. In a leasurely fashion, sometimes next year. Off to grandads and Toronto, grandad is not so good, will need to find decent carehome pronto. Maybe I'll start to report from Toronto...

ok, one more... Happy New Year everyone!

The xmas card from Jocelyn - thanks so much remembering us, we'll write, honest! - mentioned the blog and that maybe some people still keep an eye on it - so a quick sum up of the last few fairly eventful months: We did manage to sell No 71 to a pleasant German couple - who turned up to be JW to our immense surprise - will be sort of interesting. They won't move here until they finished with a very thorough renovation. The bathroom and well, everything was taken out and broke into smithereens - and there was high power pneumatic drilling for weeks, not only shaking the other house, but this one, too - the last thing that mud-brick houses need - never mind. But we were left lots of time to fairly comfortably remove all our surprisingly large amount of stuff, now piled up mostly in the smoking room,nearly to the ceiling, even though we had 3 trips to the Siklós official, EU built tip, recently discoved, and managed to give away most of the Hungarian and Boully's Hebrew language books. We had a long planned "wellness" weekend, two night in the Sikonda in the Mecsek, 10min drive from Pécs, and we had lovely time, even if a tad more pricey than should have been. Managed to play tennis quite a lot in that wonderful Újpetre court, until Alan had various issues with elbow and foot. Bonzo became an "inside" dog, so he had to have a thorough cosmeticking by a professional who we managed to convince to come here, I did not want the poor old thing having two traumas on one day with the travel. Anyway, he was good as gold and in a better condition than we thought without any fleas and other parasites, unlike Erzsi's badly spoiled Yorkshire terrier bathed and pampered - which had fleas... He has been very well behaved, hasn't done anything wrong - except continuing his escapades when we are away, but would not stay with Erzsi, escapes back home from there... Alan (yet again) fixed the fence - so far so good - we'll see... We went to England in early December to see grandad and to have a pre-xmas with all the kidlings in a rented airb&B apartment in the newly rejuvenated Northern Quarter of Manchester. We had a lovely time, with lots of eatings, drinkings walkings and more eatings, kids seeing as much of grandad as they could. Oh, and Martin and Sharon bought a beautiful and large house in Toronto, thay moved in just a week before they left for Manchester. Grandad is doing fine even though the usual probably age related low level dementia was diagnosed lately. He manages alone quite well, but hopefully we managed to convince him about daily carers' visits. He definitely has all his marbles - hardly any more senile than we are... Well, that's it in a nutshell - meanwhile Alan and both kids are hurridly establishing EU citizenship - the world is becoming a much too chaotic and vicious place (again) than we envisaged in our hopeful youth of the 60s/70s. which reminds me ü we received from Maggie a fantastic photo we have never seen before from Somogyd0r0cske showing grandad and grandma being younger than we are now... Photos are not sorted, you have to guess which of the above has been illustrated... We had to get a car-drive-in built, which turned out to be a much simpler and cheaper procedure than we thought, also at last the front of the house was painted by a lovely local old professional.