Oh we know how to have fun

I was going to take a lovely picture of all that lovely manure
but I forgot and so I guess you will have to put up with
this one instead. Would look even nicer to me if I didn't
know that is mainly ground elder in the foreground.

What better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than shovelling manure, heh? You can tell we are gardeners when we are so grateful to neighbours for the offer of trailer loads of manure. One of the few advantages for a gardener here in Latvia is the length of time animals end up spending in barns and of course that means lots and lots of lovely muck, so we toddled off with tractor, car and trailer round to our neighbours, as that then meant we only had one lot of digging to do and that was out of the trailer. It was hard work and we were bushed after four trailer loads of the stuff and we only made a dint in the pile they have, so I guess we will be back for more. We also have another offer of manure from a farm that is nearer to our apartment allotments and so we have more fun to go yet. Oh yes we know how to enjoy ourselves indeed!

The cathedral is progressing well!

Digging manure was a break, can you believe? A break from writing essays. I have really struggled with the last few essays as I now just have too much information and trying to process it into an essay is not easy.  It took me all week and about three re-writes which is just not healthy. Good job my eye is still not quite right and I need to take care of it and so need to stay in a bit, but when there is stuff to do in the garden I want to be outside not stuck in. I am now onto antihistamines and anti-inflammatories to keep my eye under control and that seems to be working for the most part, I keep trying to reduce the amount until I feel it getting sensitive again. At least my assignment is finished and that is one more unit completed and just leaves me with a report to write now. I might resort to the old fashioned cut and paste method, you know the one with scissors? I did for this last assignment. I printed out the work I had done and wrote the titles of the paragraphs down on strips of paper and then cut up my printed work into sections and plonked them next to the paragraph headings I thought they would fit in. One reason was that I just couldn't settle on a structure for the essay to bring all the random bits of information together and then inspiration struck and I settled on a structure, but then all the information was in the wrong place. Hope it worked! Should get to know soon enough.

Our not so new caravan, aka mission control. 

I said last week we were soon to be the proud owners of a caravan, and indeed we are this week. It is dirty, it's a bit battered on the inside, but it is dry, and comfortable enough to sit in and when your working the land you don't need a palace. The orange seats and orange curtains are just so 80's but who cares! Caravans like trailers have to have documents of ownership and so Ian went with the guy who owned the caravan and the guy's nephew to act as translator. The young man like so many other Latvians had spent quite a lot of time in England, working in a frozen food factory, I would only hope he was paid well for the responsibilities he was given, but I somehow think not. He is back in Latvia now to study and so I hope he does well in that, but first he has to get on a course which is not always that easy by the sound of it. I think there are just not enough places for the number of students who wish to study, from what I understand. When they got to the nearest centre which deals with transfers of ownership there was a note on the door to say the lady dealing with it was not in and so a short trip turned into a mega trip as the guy was anxious to get it sorted, as he was working for the next 6 days anyway. Still Ian had plenty of time to chat to the guys and find out a bit more about life for Latvians.

Ian ploughing

Ian has also been out ploughing again, something he loves doing. I think if it wasn't so bad for the land, he would just keep ploughing it all the time. He now needs to leave it a couple of weeks for the weeds to rot down a bit and then he can put a spring tine (not sure if that is right but that's what it sounds like) through it and then it will be ready for seeding. Hope we find something suitable. Why plough you might ask if we haven't really planned what to do with it? The reason was that the area was a mass of nettles and ground elder and hardly a blade of grass amongst it. Those rather invasive weeds appear to have largely gone now and we hope to plant it with a grain, probably buckwheat as it is a short season grain, but also some alfafa (lucerne) and some timothy grass for feed and hay (Oh yes and not altogether)- thinking ahead you see! Well sort of, if we were thinking ahead enough we would probably have got the seed by now. 

If you look carefully you will see a bee

Ian was a bit worried that the residents of the bird house he had made had gone off the idea and gone somewhere else, apparently that isn't the case. It would seem that the mum must be quietly sitting on the nest instead, so hopefully fairly soon we should be seeing plenty of activity as the parents feed the young. Apparently it is only about 14 days before they hatch out. We haven't heard the corncrakes back yet from their long journey but certainly heard the cuckoo, noisy beasts they are too. Funny isn't it how the sound of the cuckoo is a much heralded sound of spring and yet it is a murderous beast. One the way home from the land one night I spotted a head sticking up out of a patch of ground elder at the bottom of our ski hill, I kind of shrieked incomprehensibly at Ian to stop as I was sure it was an eagle. I got out  of the car and got the camera on my phone ready and walked slowly in the right direction, sure enough it was an eagle and it rather lazily flew up out of the grass and away to a telegraph pole. I am sure it was laughing at me though, as I could not get a decent photo of it, and I even tried the video option but couldn't tell if it was even pointing in the right direction due to the glare of the sun, and needless to say you will have to trust me that I saw an eagle. So far the weather has been for the most part quite pleasant just recently and rained when we needed it and so of course the richly biodiverse insect life of Latvia is appearing in greater and greater numbers, first the fleas, then the mosquitoes and I have even seen a couple of horseflies. Wonderful isn't it! There are some things I wouldn't miss if they did not reappear.

So just picture it, teenage son and bike in the box, and mum
cycling

I was reading a blog just lately and the poor woman who writes the blog had had a rough week and her son wasn't faring much better either as he had had his bike stolen and had to walk three miles home. I know it shouldn't, but it made me smile, but only because it reminded me of the incident our son had with having not all his bike stolen, but a wheel and a seat. Quick release is not a good idea sometimes! It was rather late one night and we got a phone call, "Can you come and pick me up please, I can't ride my bike home." Easier said than done, as at the time we didn't have a car, but what we did have was a Christiania bike like the one in the picture. Well you should have heard my son on the way home, it was so funny, all I got was "Slow down Mum, please!" He was crammed into the box with his bike, because there was no way I was getting in there with his bike and letting him be in charge of the Christiania. By the way it wasn't all bad news on the blog, Gina made a fantastic looking art doll, it has to be seen to be believed, wouldn't mind being able to be that creative on a bad week.

Finished!

Still weird

Studying hard!!!!

Bit early this week but then again we are off to Denmark, remember Denmark, Western Australia, not Denmark, Europe! Also we happen to be 8 hours ahead of GMT.

Well it took until Saturday morning to finish my assignment and it felt like an epic to get it done. That did mean I was stuck inside most of the time, which when the sun is so fierce is perhaps not a bad idea really. I hope I have learnt something from the module and I hope I have passed, after that I am past caring, it was a slog. I knew this semester was going to be a challenge to keep on track with what I am doing when trying to fit in the weddings of two of our children but it was worth it to keep on track with getting the course completed and being an online course does mean that at least I am more flexible in where I study - always a good thing I think.

The beach near Fremantle

I haven't been inside the whole time of course and although you might think it is a boring existence to get out only to do some shopping, we did manage that. Not Christmas shopping or anything, haven't done any of that, just regular shopping. Shopping in a different country I find fascinating as it always gives you a clue about the food culture of a place, what's there and what's not. Fresh meat, fruit and veg, I am pleased to say, is abundant enough but rather eye-wateringly priced. Managed to spend on one evening for four what we would normally spend in a week in Latvia for two, but then again there are not many Kangaroo kebabs in Latvia. We even had steak this week, partly because it didn't cost much more than the pork, and we can get plenty of that in Latvia, very nice it was too on the barbie (Barbecue - just in case you are wondering, which I am sure your not) something you have to do of course whilst in Australia. Mind you I don't think that sitting outside having a barbecue is quite as popular as we imagine, sitting inside air-conditioned houses is though.

Fremantle Round House, looking very pristine for its 180 yrs

Finishing my assignment meant I was finally free to get out and about and see a bit more of Perth and so our daughter and her fiancé took us  to Fremantle or "Freo" as it is called locally. There are a lot of colonial buildings made of limestone that look incredibly new, but having checked the history I think it is just the difference between limestone bleached by the sun and not weathered by the wind and the rain like it is in the North England like we are used to. Having trundled around the town looking at hippyish market stalls and observing the architecture including Fremantle Round house we headed for a bakery for something to drink; never before has an iced chocolate drink looked quite so appealingly in December, hot chocolate maybe but never iced. The temperature a little cooler in the late afternoon and we headed to the beach for a swim, my daughter laughed at me but it took ages for me to get into the water it was so cold, I am not particularly fond of swimming in cold water, it was just a blessing that unlike England after a bathe in the early summer sea it wasn't freezing when we got out. Maybe you are wondering about Ian? Well!!!! He plodged and could not be persuaded to enter the water past his ankles but then again Ian and water that is not in the shape of a bath or a shower never mixed.

Just to prove it! Here's me swimming in the sea in December

Ian has been spending the week on a borrowed bike and walking around the area while I have been studying (no he hasn't been walking around with the bike, he would go out for an hour or two on the bike in the morning and a walk in the afternoon and is consequently getting quite brown already)  and he has been itching to get me out on a bike as he was telling me how good the cycling paths are. I don't mind cycling but I do like to use a bike as a means of transport to somewhere rather than just cycling for the sake of it, a point Ian is well aware of and so he told me there was a wonderful little café along the way. Sold!!! Sunday morning we set off and the bike trail took us besides the Swan river, a well used river for recreation by the look of it, with people picnicking, power walking, strolling, power boating, kayaking  etc. both young and old. We wended our way past conservation areas with wetlands - yes such a thing does exist in Australia and maybe a valuable means of protecting the river banks from erosion due to the use of pleasure craft on the river, past the marshmallow plants and the bullrushes, past the trees that appear to have almost naked and polished trunks, past the sign saying beware snakes on the path - doesn't specify which snakes or whether the idea is not to hit them or not to get bitten by them, and onto the little tea shop, which very conveniently for us, is situated about half way around the loop we were cycling. I don't go in for iced tea normally but being a little hot, decided on an iced peach tea, which was ..... very peachy and iced. Ian had a latte to keep him awake, think he was close to falling asleep I was going much slower than he would normally go, actually he said it was good to go slow as he hadn't really had much time to take in the scenery when he had been hurtling around the track this last week.

The little fella keeping Ian entertained while I was swimming

With plenty of good company to eat with and a lovely home to stay in, all in all its not been a bad week even if I have been stuck in a good bit of the time but I did put at the top of this post "still weird", well it is still weird. Being bitten by mossies in December, seeing star shaped pine trees and weird twisted trees, seeing Christmas decorations in a little tea room but sitting outside in the shade, hearing the wafts of Christmas music in the malls and it is not a mistake as in Latvia where they carry on playing the Christmas music into June in our local restaurant because they don't understand the lyrics, just little things that take some getting used to.

Fettled

Fettled coat with added pocket detail

It has been a fettling week this week. For the unenlightened among you who haven't a clue what I am going on about, the word fettle is a great word that cannot be found in the Cambridge online dictionary, well not my use of the word, but can be found in the Collins English dictionary apparently and is a dialect word which means to repair and mend something. Mind you that doesn't encompass the full meaning of the word to fettle, as it suggests a tinkering about to get something mended, a make do and mend type approach rather than a straightforward technical fix. And what do I mean by that? 


Well fettle number 1. Our combination microwave has been getting a little temperamental and getting it to start was getting harder and harder. We took it apart, and I do mean "we", a joint effort as it was going to take two of us to remember how to put it back together. In fact it took two of us to work out how to take the thing apart in the first place. Anyway on examination we decided that the switch mechanism was perhaps a bit worn and so the buttons weren't able to make contact, so technical fix - two layers of cardboard, expertly cut by me from an alpen cereal packet. Sorted! Well it works better than before. 

Can't see the tear at all now

Fettle number 2. Ian was given a coat by our son and within a week of wearing it had managed to tear the pocket. Tearing the pocket of itself wasn't so much of a hassle and sewing that up invisibly was not a problem but the torn fabric at the top was rather harder to manage without the repair shouting that it was just that, a repair. Hunting around in my stash of haberdashery bits and bobs (sewing stuff for the youngsters) I found some small lengths of ribbon, the sort I suspect are for sewing into coats to hang them up with. Why exactly I should have small lengths of ribbon to hang up coats with I am not sure as I have inherited many a strange item from grandmother's and aunts, anyway it was very useful to sew over the tear and one on the other pocket to match and now it looks like a pocket detail. Well at least I hope so, you will have to look at the picture to see what you think.

It can only be a Swede who would add
blue and yellow stripes (see the Swedish
flag to know why). Like the look though

Fettle number 3. My dishwasher was also getting temperamental and seemed to only work intermittently. This type of fix though required a different set of skills to get it going again and sharp words of a technical origin such as "I'm not cooking anymore until this washing up gets done" seemed to work wonders. Dishwasher fixed! Only joking about the sharp words though, we did have a little banter over the fact the dishwasher didn't seem to be working well at the moment and suggesting it would be advantageous to get it fixed, pronto. And just in case your confused, my dishwasher is Ian.


Fettle number 4. This was in part a fettle as there has been a lot of creative thinking gone into finishing off some work in our other apartment by our Swedish friend. He has managed to use an ordinary door to make a sliding door, he has built in a box with a magnetic access for pipes and meter reading. He used some wood he had lying around for some bits of a partition wall, painted some funky stripes on the wall because he didn't like the blue I said to use, and managed to fit a bath and sink into a small space without being too cramped. In short he has done a marvellous job, even if it has taken rather longer than he had hoped. There are still little finishing off jobs to do but nothing that Ian can't handle on a rainy day. 

Not much room but you can just see
the sliding door, now just needs some
handles.

I have been reminded this week of a story from a long time ago when Ian and I were young with two young children and we had just moved house. We had borrowed a little more money so that we could buy a car when we moved out to rural Derbyshire as it was going to be a long commute for Ian otherwise and we would have been a bit stranded as public transport was not too good and went the wrong way for where Ian went to work. We were stretched to the limit and it was a little scary. We used a little money leftover to spend on a holiday though and we went up to a B&B in North Yorkshire, our first holiday not spent at parents. The reality of the big step we had taken loomed large over our holiday and spending money on treats was not really something we could freely do but we made the best of it and the B&B owners were lovely and helpful considering we had two little ones with us at the time, who were about 2 1/2 and one years old. One day we came back from a trip into one of the local market towns and there on the windscreen of our car was a cucumber. Of all the things to be left on our car! It made us laugh but it also made us realise that God was with us and would provide for us in some surprising ways and that is a promise that God has kept all through the years. Some of God's provisions have indeed been as unconventional as a cucumber left on a car in a random car park, but provided he has, and he has never let us down.

The new stove works a treat and looks
good against the newly plastered and
painted walls. The flooring was an
inspired choice as it looks so good with
the kitchen. Proper chuffed we are!

So why was I reminded of that this week? Well it is a little scary living on savings with no income in your 40's with no prospect of a pension in the foreseeable future. With a house in the UK on the market since late last year and getting to the stage where I really feel we need to let it go whatever the price and cut our financial ties with England, things get scarier still. I emailed the agent and told him to reduce the price again and re-advertise but if it didn't go then it was to be sold to investors at a big loss. Mind you the loss in reality is only a loss of what might have been, rather than a loss where we have to find money to cover it, as there is no mortgage on the house. The next day after the email went, Ian returned home after collecting the tractor from neighbours, where it had spent its holiday, with a big block of cheese. We have money in the bank, and we are not about to run short just yet, but that doesn't matter to God, he is in charge, and whether we have a lot or a little he will provide in his own way. I had to laugh as  that cucumber suddenly sprung to mind and now I can rest easy knowing that even when the leaders of countries do not really have a clue  on what will stabilise economies or what is good for a nation and where the recklessness of banks can bring countries to their knees, I know that God will provide, in surprising ways!

Looking the other way. Needs a new
cooker and once it was tidy it
looked very smart.

After the wedding the other week and the epic trip back from Europe I hit the deck running when we got  back home as I had one week to get my head around an assignment and get it posted. I managed it and even enjoyed getting the pieces together on wild boar management and reading around all the papers written about the damage that they do. I did find though that very little has been written from the farmers perspective. So much investigated and hours spent researching and only about three reports asked the farmers what they did or what they felt about the situation. Robert Chambers back in 1983 said:-

Rural people’s knowledge and modern scientific knowledge are complementary in their strengths and weaknesses. Combined they may achieve what neither would alone. For such combinations, outsider professionals have to step down off their pedestals, and sit down, listen and learn.

Well hopefully if my assignment is on track then this is precisely what I hope to do next year, sit down and listen to the farmers and what they think about the wild boar damage, how they cope, how they feel it is being tackled or not, what they think should be done, what they feel they can do. 


When I mentioned my assignment on facebook recently a friend replied "i'll get the kettle on. your life seems to be one extreme or another - locked in writing about agriculture, or battling mud, or food mountains :-)" and I think that kind of sums me up at the moment because this weekend after finishing my assignment I got around to pulling up pepper plants that were suffering from cold which meant I had a box full of peppers to dry. Also the apples in our cellar were looking like they needed attention as they wouldn't last forever and so I have tackled a box full of apples as well. I have steamed some with rowan berries to make rowan berry and apple jam and jelly, others are boiled to make apple sauce, others earmarked for apple and chilli jelly and yet others for an apple crumble.

So there it is, food strainer all set up and ready to go. You
can also see the other range of gadgets I have, a steamer
for steaming fruits and getting juice from them and a
dehydrator. All valuable helps in processing our food
mountains.

I was looking for clues on what to do with apple sauce on the internet and looking through their suggestions of how to sieve the apples once they are boiled up when I noticed that they used an attachment for a kitchen aid. On close inspection I realised that I actually had one of those. I couldn't ever remember their being a bit which pureed food which is why when I was in England I had been looking for a mouli to puree food, as it would be a lot simpler than using a sieve and easier on the wrist. Digging through my bookshelf with all the booklets from all the bits and bobs I have in the kitchen I spotted a booklet for a food strainer. Voila! So with booklet in one hand and various kitchen aid bits I proceeded to put the strainer together. It was one of those moments both of elation at finding something that would make life simpler and the realisation that the aching wrists I had suffered the last time I made rowan berry jam was completely unnecessary. Doh! To quote a certain cartoon character.

Where to start

Bride and groom

Such a problem to know where to start after two weeks of little internet access and so much has happened. I mentioned that our son's wedding was lovely and indeed it was. It was fabulous to see the smile on the faces of our son and his new wife throughout most of the day, although I noticed he was tearing up during the wedding service but then again so was his dad - what a pair. Gotta love 'em! I was given a gorgeous bunch of flowers which I got to enjoy for a couple of days and then gave them away to some folks in a nearby caravan to where we were staying. I think the lady was a little surprised but I didn't want to waste them as there was at least a week's worth of life left in them and I didn't think they would survive our journey back to Latvia.

The very happy couple

We had a buffet meal for the wedding as funds were short but goodness me the food wasn't short, we were eating sausage rolls on the way back home as well as cakes and pizza, and who cares that we hadn't had a three course meal for the wedding? We didn't, that's for sure, it's just not important. The promises they made to each other were important, after that it is all secondary. The cake was made by the bride's mum, and it was a stunning creation with carnations made from icing which she made herself, certainly a talented woman. Some friends of the young couple teach Salsa lessons and so the entertainment for the evening after the obligatory first dance was learning to Salsa and the vast majority of folks were all up practicing Salsa steps, very funny! I did notice though that Ian's brother who was the photographer for the event was adamant that he really needed to video the proceedings which meant he couldn't join in, didn't look too upset about it though. Certainly a bit different to the embarrassing discos where many folks don't want to join in, as most people were up dancing or in my case trying to. At least my waltzing when we had to join in the first dance as the grooms parents was a little better than my Salsa skills. Those ballroom lessons in my childhood had some use after all.

Mother of the bride, bridegroom, bride, best woman and me.
The mother of the bride and I were witnesses (and no I am
not wearing a plastic bag as Ian keeps saying)

Our son and his wife had a few other non-traditional touches such as a best woman instead of a best man, and the bride's mum walked her down the aisle. The best woman was a Danish friend of our son's from a time that he spent attending a youth bible college when we were living in Denmark (obviously). They got on really well and folks made all sorts of assumptions but they were always just good friends and she even spent one Christmas with us as she couldn't make it to her parents as they lived in Kenya. Fortunately she was comfortable enough with English to give a great speech and talked about their time in the bible college and how she was responsible for our son not being fluent in Danish as they spent so much time chattering away in English. She even got into trouble for it from the principle, but in the end it didn't matter too much since our son returned to England after the course.

Forgot to get a photo of the finished cushion and this is
a scanned picture before making it into a cushion. Still
you get the idea. The wheels are bike wheels since
our son works at a bike shop and they both go cycling
together and the lace is possibly tatting that my
grandmother made.

As the young couple were getting ready to leave our son turned to me and asked me for the red bag. Red bag!!!! O-oh! He had handed me the red bag when we were getting ready for the service in the caravan so that we could take it with us and I had dutifully taken it outside to put it straight in the car but I hadn't got the keys and I couldn't get Ian's or any guys attention whatsoever at the time, the reason being they were all entranced with the car that had arrived to pick our son up. Our son's boss had borrowed a friend's car - as you do, in order to take him, which just so happened to be a black ferrari. Aren't they always? Well failing to get anyone's attention I took the bag back in and promptly forgot about it in the hurry to take the best woman to church (she couldn't fit in the ferrari of course and so had to travel with us). Well our son had to give us directions to hotel where he was staying on his honeymoon night so we could take the clothes in the morning but we did keep the information to ourselves. Couldn't resist sticking a couple of bows, we happened to have in the car, on the windscreen wipers of their car as we left after handing the clothes over, well they had removed all the bows and paper chains from the night before and the car looked quite bare apart from just married written in lipstick on the windows. The funniest thing was the hotel was full of Jane Austen fans on a tour and down comes our son in his shirt and trousers from the wedding, proper dapper. Wonder what they thought?

The fabulous cake. All those flowers
are hand made in icing. Amazing!

Well it was rather a hectic weekend as we not only helped to clear up the hall after the wedding we also helped to clear our son out of his old flat and shifted into their new flat. It was rather surprising how much stuff they had in a one bedroomed flat. Doesn't help that they both come from a family of hoarders and his sister had cleared out her house a few months ago and taken much of it down to him. They did say they were going to get rid of some stuff on e-bay but first they will need to find the chairs to sit down on before deciding what they are keeping and what they are getting rid of. I was proud to hear though that as soon as the table was free they sat down to eat their evening meal at it, even if it meant sitting on speakers. Eating around the table is so important and something we are pleased for sticking with even with the odd grumpy meals due to someone being in a bad mood. Even now we sit and chat around the table for hours when we get together.

Mother and daughter

Well I guess so this doesn't get too long I shall summarise our trip home.
Folkestone - blessed with a bed and a meal out so we didn't have so far to travel to catch the ferry in the morning. Wish the rest of the trip had been that easy.
France - only 20km so we weren't affected by the strikes thank goodness.
Belgium and Holland - Boring! Tedious! Slow! Just too much traffic and we hit Antwerp at 3:30pm ish and apparently that was not a good time to get there (is there a good time apart from the middle of the night like the last time we drove around it?)
Germany - roadworks, even though we chose a different route there were still roadworks on the autobahns and so I must conclude they are digging up all their autobahns (okay maybe not all of them but it sure feels like it). It was funny though to hear Kraftwerk on the radio singing "Autobahn", not something that either of us thought we would ever be listening to whilst actually driving on an autobahn.

Fairy lights and balloons. Very simple and yet effective

Our wonderful room (courtesy of the hotel website)

Germany was redeemed in my eyes though by the sweetest of hotels, the Pension-am-See in Neustadt-Glewe which has a gem of an owner. I rang to say we were running late due to traffic in Belgium and Holland and he said not to worry they would still be there. Well, shortly after that conversation we missed our turning due to yet more roadworks and ended up with me having to navigate our way around Osnabrück at night, not happy was I! Further roadworks added to the length of the journey and meant we arrived at the hotel at 1:30am and I had to ring the owner and wake him up to let us in, which he did with a gracious smile of welcome. I was never so grateful for a warm welcome as I was that night. (Actually I tell a lie, it was the same sense of relief to be welcomed into a warm home after having to abandon a leaking tent and turning up cold and wet on someone's doorstep one holiday in Scotland). We collapsed into bed but despite the comfortable bed I didn't have a restful sleep at all as I was still navigating our way across Europe in my dreams and woke up exhausted. Breakfast was wonderful though, with a table in a nice warm conservatory full of autumn decorations and fairy lights on the table (had to put that after putting up hundreds of them at the wedding as our son and wife really likes them and they had bought them in the January sales for decorating the venue). At least that was a good start to the day, well nearly! I forgot to read all the details on the booking form and missed the bit about only cash accepted, so had to dash out to a cash machine. (Just a note for anyone planning on staying and I would highly recommend it, not just the hotel itself but also because it is in a really pretty area of Germany, but the cash machine is inside the bank and so only available during working hours).

The only photo of our whole trip. A view of the lake from
the hotel car park as we were leaving. The view from the
room was much better but it was raining and we just wanted
to get on our way and the camera was in the car.

Poland was lovely again and the northern route through it is well worth the travel. This time we stopped in a hotel next to a pretty lake. The rooms were large but spartan and for some reason the plug sockets didn't work but since we arrived late-ish again, we hadn't time to sort that out - it may have just been an isolator switch to the room that hadn't been switched on or something simple like that. It would have been hard to explain anyway as the receptionist only spoke German. Now I have done a bit of German at school and even have an O'level in it but wouldn't be able to speak it all these days but I can still remember some words and numbers and can understand some things, Ian however who professes to have no skills in languages at all, was far faster at translating what the receptionist had said than me. I told Ian later that I was really impressed with his ability to understand German since he supposedly didn't know German at all, at which point it was Ian's turn to be surprised, "he spoke German?" he said. Ian has been in so many hotels whilst working that he thought it sounded something like breakfast seven till 10 and not frokost sieben zu zehn, which is what the receptionist actually said and fortunately means the same thing.

Lithuania was still flat and the route a bit monotonous and boring but I do understand that Vilnius is nice but we decided not to call in, a little tired of navigating around cities unintentionally. At least they didn't have loads of roadworks and so better than Germany on that score. It was nice to get to familiar landmarks in Latvia, even if we had never actually seen them in the dark before (we only ever go to Jekabpils shopping so never there at night) and we made it back to our home village just before the hotel finished serving meals. Perfect timing or what? And judging by the snow that started whilst eating I think we did indeed get the timing right. After that epic journey, would we do it again? Don't know! The next time we fly, we are not going to do that route in the middle of winter, that is guaranteed.

Our friend's husband assembling one of the machines at
the orphanage. Just heard they have some money to
redecorate which will be good.

Saturday we went to the local orphanage to handover 9 sewing machines that we had transported back from the UK. A friend of ours had managed to get information out to folks about the orphanage's need for them to teach the youngsters sewing techniques and then to set up a project for unemployed youths to give them a diploma in sewing. Within weeks she had had the offer of the machines and organised them to get to us during our stay, she even brought some across herself to us. Some more will be coming later in a container but at least the orphanage can get started on the project with the ones they have now. The husband of the lady who managed to organise this tremendous feat happened to be in Latvia too so he came to see the place and take pictures and find out a little more about the orphanage and then joined us for tea.

Sunday I rested! How Biblical! Has something to do with a cough and a cold as well though, picked up in England! Thanks guys! And so to today, no chance of a rest this week either as I have an assignment to complete and so I am up to my eyes in the habits of wild boar, and the methods of monitoring their activity, preparing for a possible project next year for my Masters thesis. Ian meanwhile was back into his normal-ish routine too, transporting a neighbour, picking up our tractor from its holiday home at the nearby to the land neighbours (boy this is confusing), and checking to see how far our Swedish friend has got with the apartment. It is in serious danger of actually being finished but I won't hold my breath, it does look absolutely lovely though (I think lovely springs to mind far too readily, need to find a new word). Progress on the barn has been slow though, but I don't think the fact it snowed while we were away has helped either.