Humbug and other sweets

Two months ago today we boarded a FinnAir flight to Hong Kong. Two weeks ago we parted company with our beautiful Hampshire home. The process, barring a few formalities, is complete. It remains only to sort out utility bills. Southern Water wants to charge me £100+ for water during the period the house was empty and unused. As we were in HK we could not take a meter reading so they have estimated our usage. I had warned them a long time in advance that the house would be unoccupied but hey, they say I should have given two days notice of sale and so they can estimate the reading at whatever they like unless I can give them the actual reading. Which of course I can’t. Rogues.

Nevertheless we feel settled in our rental apartment. My walks have been slightly curtailed by events, dear boy, events. The odd lunch has intervened. A day of work. Some minor contributions to the wedding preparations. But I do have a new improved, whiter than white, Daz sparkly walk. Non-bio of course. This has been introduced to try and capture two extra sites of possible bird interest. Instead of looping round Harlech Road I know go up and over the Peak. This is an extra climb but worth it. Then I have worked out how to include Pik Shan Path without doubling back on myself. The problem with this is that it also means my walks now take considerably longer. No point in simply walking through or along these paths. They must be explored. That takes time. My longest absence was 8 hours. No lunch.

Carrying the camera gear is not too bad. The Fuji performs adequately enough. I keep tinkering with my technique as I try to find the best way of using what is admittedly a much slower autofocus than the old Canon bodies. I have added the 80mm macro lens to my armory, effective 120mm. I have carried it for 2 weeks in my backpack and hardly used it. The bugs are, as it were, snug in a rug somewhere and not coming out to play. And the birds stay over the hill and far away. Hence the order of a 1.4x tele-converter for delivery today.

There is little sign of Christmas here. Somewhat surprisingly we received yesterday two physical cards. Real ones you can touch, handle, read and throw away (recycle) later. I am in favour of a virtual Christmas. In an ideal world I would virtually ignore it. We do have a proper Christmas lunch. Each year we decamp to the club, where a buffet is available. This could, I suspect, feed a small country in remote parts of Africa, for a year. It is the one day of the year when the dress code is slightly relaxed although the younger cost centre was refused entry a few years back for ‘inappropriate footwear’. Quite right too. But jacket and tie are not mandatory. Mobile phones may be used for taking pictures but not of course for making calls. The meal always starts with lobster served at the table. I am not allowed shellfish so usually one of the others wolfs mine down. I on the other hand will ask for extra stuffing. There is an obligatory visit from Santa. I always try to see if I can spot a bottle of Black Label sticking out of his coat pocket but it seems club rules forbid even a modest snort on this occasion. Probably the designated sleigh driver will have a tincture or two after his ordeal is over. I know the guests do. The trick is to wait until the desired foodstuff is almost finished, and then join the queue. By the time you reach the front a splendid new side of beef / turkey / pork / venison etc. will have been produced and the juices are soon dribbling down the chin (or chins in many cases). The Christmas bread and butter pudding is a thing to be treasured and devoured. Away with the traditional pudding. Stick a sprig of holly in the B&BP and ho ho ho, you too can weigh like Santa. Go back for seconds or thirds. Help it slide down with the club’s superb chocolate mousse. Perhaps a token slice of fruit to assuage the conscience. Followed by coffee. Mrs. Ha and I are teetotal so we shy away from the brandy sauce, the butterscotch schnapps and the lashings and lashings of Bolly. This then is pretty much our sole concession to Christmas. A couple of hours of sheer unadulterated gluttony. It would be no great challenge to turn into a pumpkin at 3pm.

At some point I do try to find some Christmas music. The first challenge this year will be to find the CDs, as yet unpacked. I don’t think my family really ever appreciated Noddy Holder screaming “it’s Chrissssssssmaaaaaas”. So I will go for something a little more genteel. Slade was never Easy Listening even in the 70s. Which reminds me that I have also so far overlooked to plumb in the rather antiquated CD player. I am sure that millennial child will do everything by Wi-Fi or shout, “Alexa, play some Christmas carols”. I don’t think our CD player has valves that need warming up but it definitely has wires for the mains and the speakers. Our outrageously smart TV connects to something that looks like a speaker (but may be something completely different) by Bluetooth. Except it doesn’t. Despite several visits from John Lewis’ tech team and a couple from the Sony engineers nobody ever managed to get it to work. So we resorted to yet another cable. I was also assured that I could ‘stream music from my phone to the TV’. Fascinating but for the fact that I a) don’t have any music on my phone and b) have no idea how to do it even if I did. How much simpler it was when Christmas morning consisted of a darned sock containing a few nuts, some squashed satsumas and chocolates, a Rupert the Bear annual and a battery powered Dalek. The Dalek was happily not full size and as far as I recall never exterminated anybody. Dad occasionally hoped it would. His mother gave him the same present each year. Well, similar anyway. He would get an ounce of St. Bruno Flake and a Giles annual. And socks. Always socks. Each year he would go through the pretence of having no idea what was in the paper package. He would shake it and make some outrageous guess whilst Granny H smiled happily thinking what a wonderful surprise it would be for little Jimmy.

Far-fetched as this may seem to the youth of today (who is the youth of today? Has anybody met him?) it is largely true. So simple. And that is why I have such a jaundiced view of Christmas today. It has lost all meaning. As one cartoonist wonderfully captured it this week, the Three Wise Men would today probably bring Gold, Frankincense and Bitcoins. And on that bubbly note, I wish both my readers a very happy holiday and please remember to give thanks to the good folk of Alabama. Amen.

Manic Monday?

Every day it seems has to have a tag. Bloody Sunday. Black Monday. Ruby Tuesday. Wobbly Wednesday. Mrs. Thursday. And so on…….

Today then is Wind down Monday. Of course in a perfect world it would be Wednesday but alas we managed to unpack in 3 days and ruined the script.

It was on a Friday morning the removal men came to call, they delivered not just one box but brought them one and all. 297 to be precise. All present and correct. The only missing item was the dog. We put her into Dogotel to spare her and us the trauma of her raging against the intruders bearing boxes great and small.

The challenge was moving to a floor area roughly half what we had in England. Much of what he we have is still in plastic crates. We have fitted them together like the wooden puzzles we had as children, hoping that as and when we want something the pile won’t come crashing down when we pull out the crate near the bottom.

The worrying aspect is the fact that we had already disposed of a vast amount of stuff. Yes, stuff is what we have. Piled high. Clothes maketh the man, said Erasmus (later borrowed by Polonius) although of course he said it in Latin. Well in that case we have enough to make an army. And possibly a navy and an air force too. If that is true then shoes clearly maketh the woman. Although I am reasonably sure that the First Sea Lord wouldn’t be seen in Manolo Blahnik, at least not in public. What he gets up to behind the doors of his cabin is his business.

And books. I somewhat misunderestimated, George Bush (43) style. So now they are piled everywhere and I wonder why I have so many. Why on earth do I have a small collection of cookery books? My forte is fresh Waitrose pasta. I don’t think Delia or Nigella would be very impressed. An entire shelf of P G Wodehouse is understandable. So are two floor-to-ceiling bookcases of miscellaneous tomes on birds, moths and photography. Another 2 shelves of New Naturalists. Stacks of business and investing books might be ok. Then there are Dickens and Hardy novels. So what am I to get rid of? Maybe the gardening section could go? I don’t think I shall need Monty Don again. I have already discarded Alan Titchmarsh. Not a moment too soon many would argue. I am unlikely to use the Butterflies of Hertfordshire again. So that would be at least 5 to go. Only another 3995 to go. Roughly.

On the bright side my study or man-cave is almost palatial. I have installed my espresso maker, 2 printers, 2 laptops and a dry cabinet to protect lenses against humidity. Why do I need two laptops? Because the world sees fit to stop me using DVDs from different regions on one laptop. You can actually change region five times and then it locks. So my newer MacBook is for HK DVDs and general work. The old one is the exclusive domain of UK DVDs, currently rerunning Kenneth Clark’s magnificent Civilisation series. I am thinking of sending a copy to the White House.

I remain challenged by how to set up the TVs, which are British bought and need something called a digital decoder. Search me, guv’nor. I have no idea. As there is absolutely nothing worth watching on HK TV this is no hardship for me but Mrs. Ha likes the Korean dramas they show. I think that is why she became addicted to Pointless in Britain. I watch little TV anyway. I prefer 1970s rugby when Wales won everything. I have barely progressed past Steptoe and Son and Ena, Minnie and Martha in the Snug.

At least we have reached a point where we can sit and look at the chaos rather than be overwhelmed by it. Later today we will bail Lulu out of Dogo-jail and she can chase the robot vacuum cleaner round the apartment.

The true sign of having settled in though is the arrival of our first moth. Mrs. Ha suspects this is her late father come to inspect her new home. Unless her father was called Cirrhochrista brizoalis I think this is unlikely. But you never know.

To be continued (maybe).

If snails be the food of dogs, play on

Well the second painting has been cancelled. When we said 2 weeks ago we wanted it the reaction was ‘we’ll get it couriered to the gallery immediately so you can view it at home’. It was in the Bath gallery. Or was it Lichfield? Then it was still sitting with the framer. Eventually my frustration had the better of me and I said now or never. Never it seems is the answer. There was also a contretemps over the hanging. We wanted to hang it on the landing – tricky I admit. They had however promised an end-to-end service but now that is not available on Health and Safety grounds. I mean to say…….. Is there nothing that isn’t covered by the nanny state? Sorry guv, more than my jobs worth to hang a painting. Here’s how it goes:

We can’t fix anything to the wall. The boss told me.

Why not?

It might fall down and cause injury.

Not if you fix it properly.

It might hit an electric wire.

There are no wires in this wall.

It might puncture a water pipe.

There is no plumbing behind the plaster.

Well I can’t do it. Company policy. Health and Safety. I can give you a hook if that helps.

Maybe we will pick something up in Venice instead. This time next week we shall be airborne and looking forward to our water taxi ride up the Grand Canal.

Afore we go I am pottering in the garden, cutting this, pulling up that, checking my compost etc. Today was a red letter day for pottering. I have a very large mound of hazel chippings from the coppice. It looks curiously and ominously like a medieval burial mound. Right length, width and height. I’m reasonably sure it isn’t but you never know. Be that as it may and notwithstanding I decided to turn it over and give it a bit of air. All was going well until I realized I was about to skewer a rather shocked looking Slow-worm. I have never seen one in this garden before. They are jolly good slug eaters so of course I am delighted to welcome them to the Lodge wildlife park. We both paused. Damocles’ fork hung by a thread and the Slow-worm peered upwards, panic-stricken no doubt, wondering what its chances were. Then belying its name, its head went down and it did a passable impression of little Tommy Daley, diving prestissimo and without so much as a ripple into the depths of the wood chippings. Damocles raised his fork and gently brushed the mulch into a substantial pyramid. The Slow-worm, thereafter named Tutankhamun, has not been seen since and a there is now a curse on the pile of mulch. So I guess it is a burial mound of sorts.

Further preparation for the trip to Venice has been hampered by Lulu’s illness. Multiple trips to the vet and a lot of cleaning up have distracted us as we try to lift her spirits and return her to good health. She was caught chewing a rather large garden snail a few days back. I suspect the outcome was bad for both participants. Now there is a good case for Health and Safety to deal with. Better shells for snails. That’s what we need. In fact, checking my research sources, I think Corbyn J. is campaigning on exactly that platform. I’ll vote for that.