Today is the day of the dead.  Or it could have been yesterday.  It’s the weekend and I am a bit confused about which day they celebrate it. On the actual date, on the nearest weekend, on the Saturday or on the nearest Sunday.  I have bought a big basket of memorial flowers as is the tradition here, from a little old lady who had them spread on the road and in driveway of her house in Letenye.  Last year I bought them from the flower shop, but I thought that this year I would support the local home made industry.  She had a beautiful array spread all over the grassy bank next to the road, and I hoped that the traffic would not spray her creations as it passed by on the wet tarmac.  She also had little bits of wire fashioned into hooks so that she could display the hand made wreaths on her fence.  Not all of them were for the cemetery and they were so pretty I bought one for my Christmas table.  It is made of a ring of pine cones, the short squat open ones not the long slim ones that I get from my trees.  Then she has added dried flowers, a ribbon, some frosting and some seed pods, which I’m sure she grew herself.  The basket I bought has a lovely spray of satin white roses, pine cones and fir tree fronds, but I’m not sure if I will go up to the cemetery for a few days. I will probably potter around at home for a bit. 

It is cold and sunny, frosty and with a whining wind that gets into your back and causes a chill.  I can’t seem to get warm today.  The mud at the bottom of the oven tray I use for a shallow mix of water and chicken food is crazed with frost fingers. The sediment turned pale and glistening lines of frost delineating a map like effect. A microcosmic alien world with junctions, highways and small branching spurs to little villages of left over corn, huddled together in the cold.

As the chickens exited the hen house, as usual with Mrs Duck on point, rushing out quacking her head off, and Lilly trying to keep up with her, chicken feathers flying and bouncing off the frozen cement by the front door of their house, I half closed the door so that they had a warm sheltered place if they needed it later in the day, when all of a sudden an egg rolled out by the door as though laid on-the-trot as it were.  I don’t know which chicken laid it because they all came out in such a rush that they were a blur of fluttering wings.  A black and white speeding stream, streaking out into the sunshine similar to the view from the window of a speeding train, indistinct and acting as one unit.  Obviously I need to get up a bit earlier, so that the poor things can sit on the nest box to lay.

George and Mildred decided to play hide-and-seek again, and disappeared from view this afternoon.  No sign of them when I called and called.  I even tried Maria’s old call of “PEEEPS PEEEP PEEP PEEEPS”, but no response. Usually they appear from around the old multi story rabbit hutch, doing its impression of the leaning tower of Pisa, or peer around the back of the straw barn and then waddle to a safe runway type clear strip of ground in the middle of the field and heads down, honking a greeting, run, hop, skip and sort of fly about two inches off the ground, back to the chicken pen perimeter, hoping for some tasty morsel. But this afternoon, they were quiet as mice and invisible.

They had found the further entrance to the alleyway between my neighbour’s fence and the back of my various barns and sheds and were hiding out there again. I watched them for a little while, curious as to why they want to be in Karchi’s concrete yard instead of the food rich environment of their field. It may be that Karchi has the rest of Maria’s ducks and some of her chickens, or possibly that they like his corn better, or maybe George just thinks he has a better chance at chicken tail grabbing because Karchi has many more chickens than I do.  Luckily the chain link fence separating his farm yard from the alley running down the length of the left side of my garden has much smaller gaps in it than the one I have used for the Stalag 19 fences, so George can’t get his head through.  Just as well because Karchi has two dogs that have been trained to guard the house but also the livestock and I think that if they had been loose in that section of his farmyard, George might have had a close shave of his handsome grey head.

After much prancing around, trying to get them to come back around but through the exit I wanted them to, I eventually blocked up the various escape routes, moved the incredibly heavy box with the George scalloped edges and waited until Karchi came home to shoo them along the gap from his side, to the alleyway I had assigned for their return to paradise.  I really don’t know why they like it so much, but I can see I am going to have to get wire cutters and heavy gloves, hammer and nails and attempt to block the gaps up properly.  Silly old geese, they would rather go up and down a ten inch gap than wander through their lovely tree lined field! 

2^nd November

Minus two degrees last night.  Still feeling the cold in my back. Even though the house is quite warm.  Its about 8 to 10 degrees during the day but it takes all morning to reach this temperature.

This morning I just had to sit at my ‘bird watching’ position on the green and grey striped, folding garden chair to watch.  The chickens were really funny. Or I should say the hens.  Mrs Flopsy (aka Elvis) rushed out of the house this morning, did a loop and came back to ogle at the nesting box with her head on one side. Then she rushed off again, sling shot around the big white enamel basin and came back again.  She launched herself off the ground far to early to jump up to the nesting box, missed and disappeared into the little room that houses it. Then she came out and did a kind of out and back, out and back fast paced run, forming invisible sharply angled geometric shapes all around the coop. It was obvious that she wanted to lay an egg, and when she eventually got up onto the nest box I was smiling in anticipation. But she jumped down again without so much as a ‘cluck’ and ran off towards the feeder, returning shortly for another look. It was far to quick so I doubted that she had laid an egg. Next one of the other hens joined in this pre-nursery dance, and again went up and down the coop and on and off the nest without stopping in one place for more than a few moments and definitely not long enough to lay. It looked like they really wanted to sit on the nest box but for some reason it was very hot and was scorching their fury bottoms when they tried to sit down, or maybe it didn’t smell right or something.  When the third chicken started joining in and not staying put, Flopsy having given up for a moment in favour of devouring a hasty breakfast, I decided to inspect the nest box, because I had heard that if one hen has laid sometimes the others don’t like it if there is already an egg in the box. But it was empty. So I decided to go and have my own breakfast and visit again later, perhaps leaving them in peace for a while will get some results.  I think maybe I have too much straw in there and they don’t feel safe with so much cushioning. Also a rat might hide in it so a lower mattress would be good.  I will go and take some straw out. It started to rain at about mid-day and hasn’t stopped since.  I think that if it was a couple of degrees colder it would be snow.

3^rd November

Well I said last night that if it was two degrees colder the rain would be snow, and sure enough this morning at 7.30am it was 3 degrees C and the rain had turned into a pathetic drizzling snow shower. Way to thin and puny to settle, but it does herald the beginning of winter proper. A month or so late, which is good as the weather last week was unseasonably warm for my sons’ visit which was fabulous.  I moved the goose feeder and water into their little porch this morning before I let them out so that George and Mildred can shelter if and when the snow gets heavier which I know it will eventually.  My next task is to make sure that all the water meters and wells are covered nicely at the various other houses I look after. Also I will ask my English Language pupils to come to me when the snow starts to really fall as I don’t like to drive in the icy conditions around these very windy and hilly rural roads.  Although it is very pretty it is also treacherous.  Mildred was awake enough to spot the food when she came out of her bedroom this morning and had a little snack before doing her round the apple tree squawking dance.  Hopefully they are intelligent enough to find the water bucket too after a while. When you move things for the big birds they are a bit dumb about finding it again, but the chickens and ducks are always very quick, as they are always hungry. I never have any problems moving around their various bowls and old cooking pans. Of course the chicken bird feeder is made out of two huge logs with a metal tray in between, metal ends and concrete inserted in the gaps, so I don’t move that about in a hurry. It weighs about fifty kilos! So unless it’s absolutely necessary, it stays where it is and I avoid getting a hernia.

4^th November

I really like the snowy weather and love to stay cosy in my house and watch the crystalline icicles form along the guttering, and the whole countryside become soft mounds of white. Even the most decrepit old barn or building becomes a romantic Christmas card version of itself, it’s frosted glittering blanket of snow blotting out the harsh reality of broken roofs and fallen bricks.  Lovely, But if this snow continues and stops being so pathetic and actually settles,  I must go and get some cash from the bank so that if necessary I don’t have to travel the 30 km round trip to the town and can survive quite happily traipsing to my local little shop for essentials. My freezer is already full, and I will get some more canned goods in and I can pay my bills by putting the little green card on my gatepost to hail the post lady to stop on her rounds and take the cash payment, her portable office complete with official stamp and calculator available at the front gate from the depths of her big green leather bag, slung on the back of her ‘official’ post office tricycle. She carry’s the post, the pension payments, the smaller parcels and of course the gossip from village to village. 

Earlier this year she had a problem because they hired an apprentice for her to train.  He was a young man and pretty soon he was doing the rounds when she was away, on her summer holiday or whatever.  Unfortunately for her, he did it in two to three hours less time than her.  I think it was because, first of all he is a fit young man in his twenties and can probably pedal faster than her, but most of the village told me that the second and most important reason was because he had not been doing the rounds for many years, so did not know all the local inhabitants very well, and therefore did not stop for a hot drink on cold days and a cold drink on hot days and a gossip at every village!  She got into quite a lot of trouble so I am told and the post came earlier than usual for a while.  Not being prone to smiling very much, she looked even more miserable over the summer.  He seems to have moved on now, so she is back to her normal level of misery, though I do seem to be able to make her smile, probably at my terrible attempts at Hungarian. She has always been nice to me anyway.  Pretty cool really, postal service at your door. There are also as you know the various food trucks that come through the village.  But I will stock up on corn for the birdies for the winter. 

5^th November

There are now lots of cheeky little chappies trying to pinch the chicken’s breakfast.  They perch on the top of the open hen house door and dive bomb any little morsel of corn that has been kicked into an accessible position during the bun fight between Lilly, Mrs Duck, Flopsy, the hens. Rambo and Zebra.  It is quite amusing to see these little sparrows darting in and out between feathers and legs, much to fast for the bigger birds to catch them. There are usually several of them waiting and they play tag.  One darts down to distract the cockerels who seem to be the only ones who don’t like sharing with their little cousins, typical cockerel attitude, and the next one dives in for a grab and run, followed closely by the third. Then they reassemble in another round of out flanking. chicken corn pinching aerobatics. The top of the chicken house door had lots of miniature bird droppings on it which confused me until I witnessed the reason for it. I had never seen the chickens up there and obviously the ducks can’t fly no matter how hard they try, being big white Hungarian versions of the Peking variety, they have short wings and can only manage a raised breasted flutter.

I am hoping to see the robins and magpies soon. There are also usually pigeons and doves that nest in my huge fur tree stand, and they coo-coo when you walk through the field. It’s very sweet. I have to say that I call them doves because I am a romantic soul, but I have a running disagreement with my neighbours about them being pigeons which is far less fun and opens them up to being sport for the young children around here who all have air rifles.  I think the child protection people would be horrified at the old fashioned country survival principles that the children are brought up on here. Anyhow, the whole village knows that the strange English widow that lives in the orange house doesn’t like children with guns in her garden, and doesn’t eat her birds, which obviously they find peculiar but are indulgent of her oddities.  She also doesn’t keep pigs, drink home made wine or Parlinka every day, bake cakes or plant fields of her own vegetables!  So I am definitely in the minority.  But at least they aren’t frightened of me anymore and I get the traditional greeting of respect when they pass by which sounds like choc-a-lom but is spelt csókolom and literally means ‘I kiss your hand’ but also is a formal respectful way of saying ‘good morning or good evening’ to an elder, usually a female.  They also call me Tania néni (nay-knee) which is like Auntie Tania.

So anyhow, these are the bird signs for the winter.  At the other end of the year, you know when spring is coming here when you see the huge storks making their nests on top of telegraph or electricity poles. By the way, there is very little underground electricity supply or telecommunications cabling here because of the weather I think, or that it is cheaper with so many outlying small villages, to run cables on poles.  Of course this does mean that there are frequent power cuts in the countryside, but they are extremely fast at repairing them.  The towns do have underground cabling I think, but I’m not sure.

So back to the storks.  The government actually put nests up on the telegraph poles for them.  It’s a metal open basket type affair and the storks build their huge straw homes in them in the spring.  I have never seen wild storks before, these are very big and it is odd to see them pirched up on top of thin poles.  The male storks are huge.  When I was in the car last year with my dad, we were about to cross a bridge over a river in a big village called Paka when this huge golden male stork swooped down in front of us and glided low crossed the road only about three meters from the car, raised itself over the bridge parapet and swooped down along the river and round a bend out of site.  It was amazing.  I had no idea that the males were golden and so huge.  I would estimate his wing span at about three metres or more from wing tip to wing tip. I couldn’t help thinking ‘pretty pterodactyl!’ But now I am waiting for the robins. They are big and fat and round here. I don’t know where the flocks of little fork tailed swallows go during the winter. There are thousands of them in the spring and summer, gathering from tree to tree in a set pattern at dawn and dusk.  They seem to just disappear during winter. Maybe they fly south, I am not a bird expert, maybe I will try and look it up on the internet.

6^th November

It is 9.30am now and the wind is getting stronger. It is still wet and horrid, this is the third day of bad weather. Just as well it isn’t Guy Fawkes night like it is in England today.  All you would get is a damp squib!  I must pop out to check the nesting box because flopsy was sitting on it before I had even finished putting the feed buckets away this morning. I hope to have a nice fresh egg waiting for me.  I also got up the courage and opened my very dark, dank, spooky cellar door this morning and put my plastic garden chairs and table down there when there was a break in the clouds for half an hour.  Even if the cellar floods they can’t come to much harm, but I did heave them up onto the home made, bits of tree sort of bench that goes down one side.  I was amazed. It was really warm in there. I was very surprised.  I didn’t realise that shutting the ill fitting hand made double doors would keep the warmth in like that.  Everyone has been telling me to put my geranium plants in there for the winter and I just didn’t believe them that they would survive in that cold dank place, but obviously it was because I didn’t shut the doors every time I went in there.  So now I will take the local peoples advice and put my plants down there all safe and snug for the winter.  I did see an article once, I think it was about someone doing the ‘Year in Provence’ thing, but somewhere like Bulgaria, my memory is rubbish but you get the gist.  These people didn’t make it to a full year, so a journalist was asking the locals why they didn’t settle, and one of them said “Because they never asked us locals for advice or help, and if we gave them advice they didn’t believe us”.  So I will try harder to follow my Hungarian friend’s advice.  After all they have lived here successfully through generations of harsh weather, economic collapse, Russian occupation and many, many invasions, so they are pretty good at it by now! I’m off to check for eggs and grind some corn now.

7^th November

Very uneventful three days. Mostly because it has been rain, rain, rain.  Every time I say something about the Hungarian weather and how different it is to the UK weather based on my two and three quarter years here, it proves me wrong.  Sheesh!  The last three days have been very English, although somewhat colder I think.  Today it hasn’t gotten much above 6 or 7 degrees, and it has been raining all day.  It is now late evening and it is still raining.  If it carry’s on I may wake up to a white or slush filled village as the temperature always dips before dawn.  At the moment it is just awash.  I hope my cellar doesn’t flood again.  I had an underground swimming pool for about a month in the spring. The ground water was so high that there was no point in pumping out my cellar, as it was equal depth with the water in my Well which is only about four yards away, so if we had pumped it out it would just have run back in.  I am going to see if putting sand bags across the porch that covers the steps and doorway down to it will help. My mum suggested this, she is very clever.  Then I can see if it is seeping up from below or rain falling down the steps. I can’t really use the cellar because of the flooding so it would be nice to find out if I can cure the problem.

My eggstock family don’t seem to give a hoot about the bad weather.  Lilly and Mrs Duck are permanently covered in mud and look extremely un-pretty but soooo happy.  They thought their puddling days were over last week when the water bowls froze over, but now they are back with vengeance.  Have I explained what puddling is? I don’t think I have.  It is of course from Beatrix Potter’s fantastic children’s books, one of the characters is called Jemima Puddleduck. So I use the expression puddling to mean the rapid filtering of muddy, translucent water or any liquid through their beaks.  They dip their heads in, extend their necks and plunge their little flat beaks into the dirtiest puddle or water bowl they can find, and with the nostrils slightly above the water they kind of vibrate the two bills together, causing a pump action to be activated, that sucks the water in through the front I think, tasting it with their tongues (I think they have tongues), filter out any tasty bits, and squirt out the rest through the sides where there is a slight curve inwards to the bill before it reaches their cheeks. Then every once in a while they lift up, do a strange imitation of chewing and swallow. You can clearly see their epiglottis doing its work and pushing down the yummy muddy whatever-it-is they have found. It makes a wet slapping noise when they puddle but very rapid. So now you know what ‘puddling’ is and you will never be the same again.  Anyone eating badly or making a noise when eating soup and you will instantly think ‘Aha, puddling!’