November week 3
15th November
This afternoon, Lazi was outside and he was barking as usual but I could hear that he was coming in and out of the open sunlounge door trying to get my attention, and very excited. I guessed it was a ‘Mum come quick, Alarm, Alarm’ type bark rather than the ‘someone went by on a bicycle’ or ‘The gypsy woman opposite is hanging out her washing’ type alarm, so I went out to investigate. I have to decide where the emergency is by which direction Lazi is running to and from. If he is trying to stretch the lead around the corner to the right, to see up the side path and to the front gate and the road in front of the house, then I turn right out of my door. If he is trying to reach the end of the Well and barking at the chicken pen then there is a problem somewhere straight ahead and down the garden. If he has stretched the lead around the corner to the left and gotten it stuck under the drainpipe for the umpteenth time then it is a problem in my neighbours garden which I usually ignore being as she has two very well trained dogs to do the barking for their side of the fence, and Lazi really doesn’t need to worry about the neighbours garden. However, he then barks because he thinks he has to protect me from my neighbours barking dogs, so it’s a lost cause really to try and stop him barking. His doggie job of guarding is far more complicated than these humans think it is. Anyhow. This time it was definitely a problem in the back of my garden or in the chicken pen. I looked and looked, checked the front just in case and looked again, and low and behold I spotted a dog in the goose field, flat on its stomach stalking George and Mildred who unbelievably were ignoring it. George was hogging the lace trimmed, straw filled, upturned box and having an afternoon snooze, and Mildred was playing teapot cosy, having a snooze with her head all tucked up into the soft down along her back. The chickens however were well aware of the problem and kind of panic flocking around the coop. First they would all run to the left and then all run to the right, with Mrs Duck and Lilly up on their haunches quacking loudly trying to warn their big relatives of impending danger. I grabbed the wrong broom. The inside broom is made of reeds, but I was in a hurry and only just managed to think clearly enough to don my red squiddgy plastic slip on shoes which as you know are entirely not enough protection from cockerel foolery or goose attack, however, I was in a hurry and feeling brave with my big broom in hand. I had to get through the chicken pen in a hurry which is never advisable because the cockerels were already on high adrenaline alarm. So I kept the broom between them and me and gingerly, but swiftly made it through without a panic attack from Rambo. The geese looked rather surprised to see me, but they behaved and stayed put. I could see the dog crouching down near the new bit of fencing I made the other day, he was flat down and actually looked more like he was resting than stalking. Then I realised it was the very cute little boy dog from the old couples house two doors over. He really is a friendly little chap, and I don’t like to frighten him as I know he lives quite happily in the same area as their chickens and ducks, but I just couldn’t take the risk with my geese, as George was likely to show off and panic which might cause the dog to attack, so I ran at him brandishing the broom and yelling. He hoped over my fence into my parents grounds and then through a completely impossible to find by human eye gap in the wire fence to his own garden. I am not sure what I can do about it because I had a handsome young student working for me in the summer who tried for four months to find that gap, unsuccessfully. I will just have to keep an eye out for his ‘visits’ and hope he doesn’t have a falling out with George or Mildred. On the way back through the chicken pen, Rambo decided that his adrenaline needed releasing and attacked my broom. With his pretty black and white stripped, collar feathers opening out like an umbrella from his neck, he hoped, skipped and jumped at the inanimate object until it came to life and attacked him back. My adrenaline was also quite high by then. One broom, two cockerels. My odds were not good. But Zebra tends to take a rear guard stance when Rambo goes for it, and sticks to gesturing and hopping on the spot with no forward motion, or running to the hens for protection, or rather to protect them!!!! In the end I had to go for Rambo and bat him sideways a few times before he felt the need to use the fallback position between the fence and the stinging nettles. So I was pretty fast exiting, expecting a thump on the back of my legs as I did so, which never came, thankfully. Because I had to leave with one cockerel on either side of me and it is necessary to turn your back on one of them to open and get around the gate. My nerves have calmed down now. I read somewhere that if you do something everyday which frightens you and makes your heart race, that it is good for you. Well at this rate I will live to 101 years old. Phew! Maybe cockerel keeping would be a good therapy for people with low blood pressure! 16th November I discovered something very strange today. My friend Iren and her husband came with me to the garage for the M.O.T. test thingy on my car so that I did not have to come back by bus, which was very kind of them. Iren came with me in my car and then we met Feri in the town centre after we had dropped off the car. Iren was suffering with a headache and had not slept well last night. She told me that her blood pressure was high this morning. I think that waiting around by the car park for over fifteen minutes for her wayward husband probably didn’t improve the reading either. Almost all the older people in the village have a blood pressure machine so they monitor it to the point of obsession. Well, after we went shopping on the way home and dropped in at the ‘natural remedies’ and beauty products shop, we go back to her house and she had two bags of dried herbs which she said were for her blood pressure. It is very common here to treat things with natural remedies which I think is fabulous. They don’t convert them to pills and even the doctors will recommend such things as soaking a wound in Camomile, which you buy dried in a bag and make tea or an infusion with it. Camomile has natural antiseptic properties as well as calming and healing properties. So when my friend put down her bags of some dried substance, I looked up the Hungarian name and to my astonishment discovered it was dried white mistletoe. Now in the UK we are told from a very early age that mistletoe is poisonous. Here however, they buy it dried from the Herbalist and soak it for a day into an infusion and drink it to help with blood pressure. I am all for natural remedies but I find it hard to turn over forty years of poisonous warnings into a willingness to drink an infusion of the plant. Obviously my friend has been taking this remedy for many years so it can’t be harmful, but the cultural differences here do sometime confound my sensibilities. They go and pick these yellow deadly mushrooms from the forest here too and boil them for I don’t know how long and make them into stew. I personally can’t face it and in fact even my immediate neighbour Gisella who is a sixty year old professional cook made herself ill a few weeks ago with mushroom stew. So I have to say, the extent of my ‘going native-ness’ is affected by my English upbringing. I will try most things, but poisonous potions, soup with the feet, eyes and crops of chickens floating in it and deadly mushroom stew are definitely off my list. I will stick to the fabulous cakes and buns that everyone makes. Oh, an its 20 degrees and sunny. Nice but a bit odd for mid November. I am intending to enjoy it while it lasts. 17th November I consulted everyone about this lovely little dog problem. My neighbours know about it. My friend Iren knows about it and just shrugs her shoulders. My mum said maybe a fence would be the answer but it is going to cost lots of money, and as I have just had the first MOT on my car which turned out to be expensive, I am hoping that the left over bit of fence from Stalag 19 will be sufficient to stretch across the field, but that is about twelve to fifteen metres so I’m not optimistic. I then thought of asking a friend who’s grandfather was a Hungarian hunter (still a legitimate job here). So I emailed him. He taught me a lot about how my presence in a field radiates a certain distance out, my smell (even if I have washed!) frightens certain animals away, like wild boar, gophers, deer or foxes. I’m not completely convinced about the wild boar but I will certainly say I have never seen a gopher, but they dug big holes in my parents side of the garden last year so I know they are here. The deer I have seen sometimes but only when I have taken them by surprise. And I have seen foxes but only at a distance. Anyhow the point is, how do I put off a very cute and friendly, not wild, neighbours dog. So I have emailed for some ‘Hungarian Hunter’ advice. I am staying indoors today. It is a nice day, but I have a bit of a bad back so I really need to rest it. Boring, but TV and Spider solitaire day, here I come. 18th November The geese keeper is feeling better and knows that a bit of fresh air and physical exercise can do wonders to restore. As long as you don’t over do it and slip a disk whilst wellie flinging in the meadow, or put your shoulder out climbing twenty foot ladders. So the geese keeper will attempt to erect a 30ft long 6ft high chain link metal fence on her own instead. I braved the constant cockerel crowing, duck quacking and geese honking this morning, and left everyone in bed while I struggled with the fencing roll. It has hooks everywhere and is very hard to handle……. Narration suspended whilst confused geese keeper takes appropriate inhalers and lays very still for a number of hours to recover from said fence erection duties. 19th November It should be my wedding anniversary today, but as my husband died three years ago, it feels odd to say it IS my wedding anniversary today. Although to be honest that is what I say. I think that it will always be my wedding anniversary on this day, every year. unruliness turned into 5 hours of fun for the Goose Keeper. Did you know that Hungarians celebrate their birthdays but even more of a party is held on their ‘name day’. Some arbitrary person (actually I think it might be the Pope because everyone here is Roman Catholic, so please don’t tell him I called him an ‘arbitrary person’ because he might take offence and I won’t get good brownie points with ‘him upstairs’ if I go around dissin’ his rep. dude, (I hope you speak American Pop video too, Geese keepers RULE JA). Ok, one day of trying to speak Hungarian and I forget how to speak ENGLISH and go into some weird not cool U.S. pigeon rap language. I do apologise. I am back now. Anyhow, back to the name day thingy they do here. You get a calendar and if your name is for instance Steven (Istvan in Hungarian I think??) then on St. Steven’s day you get to celebrate your name day, whether it is your actual birthday or not. It’s cool, because effectively you get two birthdays or more. The Hungarians are extremely unimaginative when it comes to naming their children and have been for many generations, so you can pretty much count 99% of the population names on one hand for girls and one hand for boys. Of course the MOST common name here for girls is Maria, so to account for the fact that you may be called Maria, your mother, your grandmother, probably both of your aunts and your first daughter will also all be called Maria, the Pope has kindly provided about 5 different name days throughout the year for the name Maria so that it doesn’t get too crowed at your house with all the Maria’s celebrating on the same day. Very considerate. The other really common one here is Gyórgy or George, and generation after generation will name their son after their father. It does cause a small problem here though because the officials also know this, so even if you want to get a fishing licence you have to give your mother’s maiden name and your dates and places of birth about three generations back. Of course if your name is Mary Smith – Kovacs Maria or George Taylor – Szabó Gyórgy then you are in trouble because every fifth house probably has one. So I think they use the welsh thing, like, Jones the tailor, or Jones the butcher, or Jones the spy. Of course everyone knows everyone here and is related too. When I told my friend Iren that there was a lovely young lady in the little shop in the slightly bigger village of Báza Kerettye who spoke English, I could tell she was saying to her daughter. “you know, the one with the gammy leg, his wife’s, cousin’s, friend’s daughter”. So I am probably, “you know …. the English woman, not Maria the one with the Hungarian father, not the one that moved next to Maria who used to work in the hospital. The one that moved in opposite Maria who used to be married to the bus driver, she has two huge geese.” C’est la vie! Maybe I should have called the female goose Maria!!!! Oh and Geese, chickens and ducks are fine. No eggs today. Probably upset I was out for most of the day so went on strike.