30th May

We have taken another leap. A different kind. I am learning new things to get along with our car. It seems I have been being overprotective. Now I know, I need to give it some air... but this isn’t the leap.

Children’s day came and passed. I don’t know if it is an international one, but definitely a local one. You could think that we didn’t bother ourselves with it but it isn’t true. When all things considered. Ernest and I – as planned – yesterday departed for Budapest.. Jen and Liliom were left behind at Szeged ( I almost wrote Oulu here). Lili couldn’t really come with us because she needs her final, stage practices before the ballet performance on Thursday. I had to come to bring the car to be checked over proper by some trusty workshop. Especially that we are gonna take it abroad for a considerable length of time. It would have been foolish to leave Ernest behind, Jen could have done no packing during the days whatsoever, time wasted for everyone.

Lili at first thought it was an unfair deal. Later she realised that she would have a few days without having to accommodate the mad needs of a 2 year old toddler. Besides, Jen promised her sewing machine learning experiences and perhaps other special events. And she could play sophisticated games with detailed toy layout without having to worry about imminent end. So a children’s day in a sense for days to come.

Ernest was rather nervous on Sunday morning. We were packing the car and getting ready to go. He is always worried he might gets left behind. Eventually we were sitting in the car getting good bye kisses from the other two. The realisation, that we were going, in our lada, just him and I… in that instant he lived children’s day.

After about a third of the journey he fell asleep. Not much later I picked up a man walking by the side of the road. Apparently he was going from Romania to Budapest, mostly walking because it is hard to hitch a ride here, and he will definitely find work in Budapest. He didn’t speak Hungarian, only a couple of words. A couple of words of English, Romanian, Russian, a Roma dialect from Romania. Our conversation exhausted after about three minutes, then he too fell asleep. A bit of a disappointment of a hitchhiker.

This morning taking the car to the service, driving on the dirt roads leaving from my mum’s place, at the first corner I picked up an elderly couple. Drove them to the nearest bus stop on the main road (actually not the nearest but the one near to Cora, more buses stop there). They were most surprised to be offered a ride by someone so young. Young people usually don’t bother themselves with helping others nowadays. Maybe I am just not so young anymore. Maybe I find it natural to give a ride to people, considering, I have travelled enough in other’s cars.
Our time here since we arrived is rather pleasant. I don’t get to do much though as the car is gone, and Ernest need to be kept an eye on in the garden. I filled up the little paddling pool with water for him, he gathered some flower-heads and petals into it and spent much of the day between the pool and the sandpit. Occasionally chasing some of the animals etc…

Before I post maybe it is time to explain what the leap is!
it is our car use, we travelled with our car, last time we went to Szeged it was a journey with a stranger. It felt different now. It was a travel with a car we now mean business with. We are adamant to take each other to places we go. It was comfortable. and funnily this is one of the most comfortable cars to drive I have driven recently.

May 10th

I spend my days with my youngest child, pretty much all day everyday. This afternoon when in the bathroom he scribbled a drawing than announced ‘It’s a cat’, in toddler’s talk and repeated it a couple of times. I missed his first drawing! I wonder if I should be gutted or it may be shouldn’t bother and it’s just one of those stereotypical stay at home parenting things. Don’t know, don’t really know what a stereotypical stay at home parent would look like actually.

Irony is that when I arrived to wonder in amusement of his drawing, some 31 seconds later, pointing at it and asking ‘is this a cat?’ in excitement he just looked at me as if i lost it. ‘what cat? It’s just scribble.’ although he appreciated my excitement.

We had to have a talk with Liliom this afternoon: In school they were experimenting with the primary colours mixing them a bit. As everything in her school it came with a nice story that was pleasant to listen to when she retold it. However it was once again painful to realise that she thinks this school of hers has no connection to her other life, that the attempt to build a well functioning community of learners with her was so successful that she forgets to check it against other aspects of her life. She told me ‘she never mixed these colours before’ and I actually answered ‘bullshit!’
When it comes to painting session Jen and I are at times painstakingly fixated on these three most basic of colours as a starting point. And we eagerly share our views with Lili, needless to say.

But she received some payback later in the afternoon. At ballet they are learning some dance for the big end of term show ad her regular partner was off today. This wasn’t the pay back but as I found out at home, her partner for the session. Apparently they couldn’t work together and Lili spent the way home complaining and ranting about her. In some twisted sense it was entertaining, and cute. Of course at some pint I had to start being the good and sensible parent and try to help her resolve her inner rage in a constructive and creative manner.

The last ever episode of SGU has aired last night. After we’ve seen it Jen couldn’t stop swearing it was so rubbish. I was gonna say I bet she still going on about that in her had but she just told me ‘sizzle frazzle frizzle’. Late night studies do things to you

May 8th

No photo blog. Didnt go to the zoo today. I must have lost my touch of Scottishness: The all day rain bothered me, didn’t like the ida of spending too much time outside. So we were at home, the highlight of the day was probably a pillow fight then a fry up for lunch and an afternoon snooze. Liliom was bored beyond measures. She seems to have forgotten how to think.

In the evening I had a go at her which turned into talking about leaving. She is sad to leave for leaving her friends here behind. There were tears, in numbers. Jens asked her if she was scared of something going back to Finland to which Lili answered in the most matter of fact take no nonsense voice ‘what should I be afraid of?’ kind of are you mad tone in her voice.

We do have to make sure we are better at keeping touch this time around with friends here, at least her friends. Unlike with the ones in Oulu, although we knew we were coming back there. We know at most we will come to Szeged for visits. Altough I must have reminded her that while I spent the first 20 years of my life living in the same flat going to a total of 2 diferent schools and a daycare for 12 years hanging out with the same 2 sets of people through these institutions and another set through my parents’ friends, with not one I keep in touch today and call my friend. So potentially there is a possibility that moving about leaving people behind is not that big of a deal.

However, we did realise this morning that while w ehave planned to regularly skype back to Oulu, we never really did and it was really stupid. Oh well
Another small matter , the car. I mentioned when buyin a car here 3 things one needs to do;

a, get a mechanical check to make sure it is the car that is says on the papers
b, get an insurance for the car under the name of the new owner
c, go to the local gov. administration office to change the owner’s name on the car’s papers.

Logic says that one should do a, c, b,
At a, in person and at c, on the website plus various help you get trhought this websites say to do a, b, c,
The car insurance people tell you to do a, c, b,

Suggestions?

It’s interesting that in real life pillow fights rarely ever happens that the pillows burst and there is feather everywhere.

Chapter 14, or something like that

Chapter 14, or something like that

I wrote an entry yesterday, not the first time not posting. Chapter 14? I like how it sounds between my teeth. And it is a long entry, all those that failed to be posted recently.
Follows a succession of complaints. A now increasingly obvious addiction to blogging slowly revealed in my mind. When things aren’t written down they look often miserable. And everything could look more picturesque should I find the usb cable for my camera.

The following is from April 7th

Recommencing now with hope to have come to the end of a spring that has inspired us to let it go largely unnoticed ( the spring). I hope we will not be having such distractions in the future. The last time I engaged in some other writing, a blog rather than a seemingly endless writing of essays and online debates was a day short of a month ago. Since…

Ernest has been imprisoned for a brief period of 2 nights. It’s a long story, I should have written it exploiting the emotional heights but I feared to do so.
It is a fear that probably similar in experience of moments when I cannot avoid engaging in ‘communication’ with holocaust denying anti-Semites. Although rationally thinking a foolish fear. It is a different emotional response. Its magnitude however is so great that I stop being accountable, or at least I feel such way, so I make actually a rational decisions to halt communication – with the crazies – and I made the same choice when not telling about the toddlers’ prison. Hospitals here can be
Another emotional moment and the subsequent event came when Liliom hit a car while cycling. Unbelievable luck that it was not the other way around.
In the morning Ernest stood at the table …
…At this point the writing finished until about April 20th

Last week Lili’s grandparents, Elisabeth and Gordon were visiting, from Scotland. They stayed for 10 days, it was a pleasant encounter. We don’t meet often, especially I. This post is not about their staying, I think I am maybe too self-centred now for that.

There was a small incident that describes well this entire year we have dedicated to our Hungarian ‘roots’.

The first weekend our visitors were in Hungary we all stayed at my mother’s house outside of Fot, nearby Budapest spending the days in the city. On Sunday the three of them, Lili, Gran and Gordo we took into town. They were going to take a ride on one of the sightseeing buses of Budapest. It’s a convenient way to have a drive by and description of most prominent touristic sites of the city. The plan was to drive them to the city park dropping off at the stop for the sight bus. The section of the park where the bus would have stopped was closed for traffic. We then drove around to another part of the park from where they could have gotten to the bus or take a subway fairly easily to another bus stop. On weekends the no parking signs on the side streets there are generally ignored for a lack of adequate parking and an obvious high demand. Not that day however, parking tickets were vigorously applied to anyone daring to leave the care unattended. We couldn’t stop there. So as an alternate plan to the alternate plan we had to drive back to the neighbourhood where the end of line subway station is from where they could go into the city centre to take the tour bus.
We spent the entire year like this. Plan, plan B, improvised alteration for plan B, improvised plan C…

I am looking forward to go home, so to speak. I have been talking of Oulu as home sort of half serious but I have come to realise that at the moment it seems home is rather there than here. For some time I have felt that the environment in which we enjoy our lives in Oulu is home. It is largely the people, similar semi-rootless bunch, the progressively inclined department at the uni, but also the way of life which until now, or at least the time a year ago has certainly bore the marks of a tolerant society where being different at worst brought a reaction of polite indifference.

For some years now I have been watching what has been happening to Hungary, the political consequences of the new order. The backlash; how it so eagerly as a society resettles into pitiful hatred, racism, anti-semitism. A path towards nationalist fascism seems to be the preferred response, protection against corporatist capitalism and a reshaping form of sovereignty. I thought it was still important to me somehow, ‘my people’ governing themselves into a form of madness that seemed incomprehensible to come again in Europe. I realised I watched this as an outsider, or rather, as a soap on tv; interesting moral dilemmas but little real significance. Witnessing the elections in Finland helped me to this realisation.
I felt touched, we both felt touched with grave concerns. Is this menace coming there too? Is it really possible? Of course one shouldn’t be surprised if reading the signs beforehand but our gasping for air caught us of guard.
The climate in Szeged, using the word to mark the weather patterns, is just ideal for someone who loves the continental European weather. The cyclic changes of the seasons, the modest, gradual changes are wonderful to experience as the months flow by.

Lili enjoyed being Hungarian for a while and perhaps this time has asserted, or to be more precise shaped a new part of her identity which she wasn’t there before. As a family we have learnt to rely on one and other more than ever, probably. Considering we haven’t managed to make much if any contacts otherwise with locals and outsiders here. I have enjoyed and still do spending time with the kids more than I ever had time for. I am looking forward to spend another year of the same from when we are back in Oulu, more so that we will have a familiar environment, familiar people. At least for me. Ernest and I will most certainly will miss the market. There is nothing that can possibly replace it.

A recent event is an example, I believe of the uncertain life that is probably every day for people who are accustomed to life here.

There is a case running for a minor offence against Liliom at the police. When the offence took place, the police informed us that there will be an investigation (because of the road traffic accident) but they haven’t bothered to tell that she would be charged with a minor offence. This offence is that she was not pushing her bike across the road but rode it. There was a green light for pedestrians which would have given her the right of way but because she was riding, she has lost it and it is therefore the car’s which was turning and almost run her down. Luckily she has run into the car at a slow speed and she wasn’t injured apart from a scratch and a scare.
…
It was an endless rent but also something else. A first attempt to summarise staying in Hungary. I realise that some of those who call this place home will find it disturbing, as already have had probably often, but I am never easy on the place where I reside and stay, the place that even if momentary is my home. And Hungary actually still happens to be one that I know in most detail. It isn’t personal. Although there may be a degree of frustration over inability to be acultured and content.

As it happens, I repeated the post from April just yesterday intending to post it but ending up not bothering. I will attach it here although it is the same message in a very similar structure and speech. But I think once out there, I can move on the stopping panicking, and getting on to the otherwise wonderful and challenging process of moving our lives now 2000kms north.
May 4th as follows:

I shall begin without promise of joyful happy pretty stories but perhaps still asserting I shall not engage in political blogging regardless of the now obvious unstoppable advance of European fascism.

We are going home in the middle of June – at long last - to a place that may have changed significantly since we have left it. Last time in Finland the university reforms have shown a sign of things to come, in the far future, and we still believed that while bigot conservatism lurks beneath the grass, of a direction where social cohesion is largely enforced rather than negotiated, we believed it was still far out. Recent elections have shown that fascism is on the rise in Finland and the near future registration of the Nazi party shows a rapidly changing sentiment. It used to be a state which prided itself on tolerance. By the time we get home this may not be the case anymore.

Still, perhaps in Finland we still have a fighting chance , making a stand before it’s too late. Here in Hungary, it feels even by the time we got here almost a year ago it was too late. The country now has a constitution that no longer recognises the equal worth of every individual in its political community and one that opens the doors to a constitutionally enforced (and often defined on racist terms) class society. Of course I know that the setting of new rules is always, as in the case of the Finish university reforms, merely an adjusting to the discourse, the sentiment and the practice that is already present and valid (in the sense that society largely functions along such values).

To remain non-political perhaps it is best to turn towards a brief assessment of this past year.

Weeks before we were due to depart from Oulu KELA broke the news to us that staying home with Ernest I will not be eligible the social benefits. I would have been should we have stayed in Finland instead of Hungary but Jen has been sent abroad as a student by a Finish organisation and not as an employee. We lost about 40% of income for this year with a stroke of a pen. Anyone in their right minds – now I think – would have called it off. We didn’t out of some real or perceived duty to grandparents, my parents here in Hungary. After a tight stay in Szeged now we are experiencing the difficulties to raise funds to make it home where we can start raising funds much easier (here we aren’t even allowed to take up employment without losing our Finnish social security).

It has been a most interesting year perhaps in many ways but also a most disappointing. Ernest perhaps the one who realises the least what he may have been losing. Of course, he has benefited from spending more time with my parents, at least with my mother, and hear a lot more Hungarian than he would have otherwise but he didn’t have anyone his own age to hang out with as I failed to make contact with local stay at home mothers. Liliom perhaps is the sole beneficiary of this excursion. She has enjoyed the school year here although Jen and I at times concerned should she spend any more time here she would grow up to have difficulties accepting difference even if spending years at the Waldorf-Steiner school. Jen stated today, she has just wasted a year. Professionally certainly, she has managed to learn barely anything here and as a family we have no longer the resources to fund another exchange studies to universities where they offer courses that are along her professional and personal interests. Returning to Oulu she will have to retake a bunch of courses that were inappropriate here one way or the other. We haven’t managed to make friends in Szeged, I have tried to rekindle old friendships but my developing anti-nationalist and neo-Marxist, slightly syndicalist manners have gotten in the way. Jen I think made fairly good friend with a fellow exchange student also from Oulu. I spent the last year with an amazing array of bureaucratic encounters that I eventually got bored of noting down, dodging conversations that were potentially racist, fascist or at least based arguments on a mix of pseudo-scientific origin myths that on a good day I laugh at on a bad one I bite my tongue. The last year talked openly to Jen only without being concerned of or outright offending people.

The hearing from Lili’s car crash has been today. We thought for some reason that it was going to be tomorrow so we missed it. It was a hearing of the two witnesses, the driver of the car and the person driving behind him. When I was at the police station couple of weeks ago I found out the case will not come to much. The traffic police started the process against Lili for braking some paragraph of traffic rules and crushing into a car causing some 60€ worth of damage. It will probably be a closed case since she is a minor and cannot be made legally responsible for her actions. Although they – the police – thought it was likely that the driver will not accept this and will claim damages on us. Never mind it was perhaps on a split of a second that it wasn’t Lili crashing into his car but his car crashing into a cycling 7 year old. In most other European countries I lived at before, this would be a case against the driver, or at least I want to believe that After all, the accident happened on a pedestrian crossing while the pedestrians had the green light and Lili was perfectly visible to the driver at all times, even before he started moving with his car (as previously he was standing at a red lamp). But this is the country where I spend running in circles, from office to office until I learn better that whatever the state does is perfectly logical and it is its subjects that are out of line.
I right now feel I will bless the day I eventually have packed up house and family. Shipping is on the way and kids are in the car. We are on the go. Maybe a roadtrip, a summer just the four of us, no huss and no fuss will help us to relax.

But honestly, we bought a car. It’s a nice car although good Hungarian paranoia tells me we were cheated somehow and trouble will strike us. It’s hard to believe that the previous owner may have been a mostly decent, honest person telling as everything to the best of his knowledge.

Ernest and I took the car to Szeged yesterday. The process to register it under my name will take a week or so for the car need to go under some examination of origin (making sure it wasn’t stolen or put together from a bunch of cars etc) and after that the insurance papers need to be changed and then the names on the car’s papers can be changed. Before initiating all these I hoped to get a monthly parking pass for the car as I am eligible as a resident in the inner town. I was told I can get that pass only once my names are on the papers and I should not kick up a fuss because it is really just a formality (at three different places which could take days at best). After reading the regulation issued by the City Council of Szeged I pointed out that none of the paragraphs administering resident based parking rights demand that the owner’s name has to be on the car’s papers, only that I either, as a resident have to own the car or have to have rights as permanent user of the car which I wish to park under my name . Since I have the contract of selling the car I have proven ownership of the car. Of course they asserted I was stupid and really just being difficult. I made an official complaint.

About three months ago I made an official complaint and a suggestion at the university library. I was kindly informed they are sorry for the inconvenience and were already working on sorting out the problem at the time of my complaint. Today I could make the same complaint for so far they have not managed to finish that process. Remember to know your place, subject as in ‘object of the authorities’.
But all is well. We have had a royal wedding watched by billions.
…
I fell now better although I suspect only few, if any have gotten to read the last lines of this post

15th March

This afternoon once again I had the opportunity to watch someone drifting out of consciousness. Although if I am honest I of course have to admit that he wasn’t exactly drifting out only but also drifting into another one, into dream world. And it was a real pleasure to watch. I think in many routine, daily rituals I have forgotten to appreciate their beauty and use the occasion to move on, do something else while… but every now and again it is nice to anchor back to the reality of that other person.

Ernest used to go to sleep on his own, even for day naps. He now proudly walks off to bed in the evenings and changes his mind only once or twice banging on the door. Day-aps at home are different. Once he gets really tired he would prefer to lie down on my lap, his legs tucked under my arms, his head balanced between my knees not quite rolling of either side, not quite hanging down but not resting particularly stable either. He used to be more relaxed about the posture but his recent experience with the Hungarian Health Care system (HNHS) made him a bit more fixated on these details. He would fall asleep like this while I read the papers (this would be news portals on the net), read some other article on the computer or perhaps play a game.

I watched him drift away to dream world today. Perhaps recent experience called me to pay more attention, don’t know, it could also be a case of Jen using the computer and I couldn’t be bothered to reach for a book.

In the morning, we were still in bed, just resting, relaxing, contemplating if we should get out of bed at all. It was the last morning before Lili is coming home, school starts and everything is back to normal. Ernest have been up for some time. He was hungry so I have provided him with some snacks. He kept bashing bread into our faces demanding we share his food. Eventually he got it, we weren’t hungry and it pissed him off so much he threw the whole thing in the corner. Than he sat down and pulled his socks off with a face ‘you called for this!’

He knows we prefer him to have socks on, it’s a bit cold for the feet otherwise. So he wanted to hurt us by removing them. But he is a very organised and decent rebel because after taking his sock off he carefully put them back in his clothes cupboard making sure they are easy to find for later use (once they feet will start getting cold).

But I was going to write about the big pompous celebration today. Some 150something years ago there was some kind of a revolution – there have been a whole bunch of them around Europe that year – which in Hungary turned to be longer war. The canon says it’s an independence war but I consider it more a civil war. (of course my perception is not that of the nation state, after all I look at WW1 as primarily not in inter-state but an intra-state war, a civil war as well between different classes within given societies)

It’s a big thing! People walk about with the tricolour pinned to their chest all day, some even does it for days before. I have quit doing it 16 years ago, my motivation wasn’t that of the conformist ‘don’t get into politics’.

But it’s a big day, even the prime minister has given a speech, and they say he really pulled out all the stop. Apparently he told the European commission to go and f#”k themselves, although he may have used slightly different wording. I bet you he enjoys all the pompous nonsense. He believes in some crazy stuff, they have a lot to share with Cameron. I couldn’t decide which one of them I would prefer. Probable neither.

Lili asked me today what do people celebrate. I had difficulties answering. It’s a ritual of the state to craft and make-believe an imagined community in order to get people to do things in the name of and for this imagined community that otherwise they wouldn’t do in their right mind. She claimed she understood. We went to the park then.

Yesterday, when I saw the communist party gathering on the square I wanted to ask them how can they match communism with displays of nationalism. It’s a question that could have been asked of those regimes this party is a remnant of. But I didn’t ask.

March 8th

It's international women's day today. Jen gives it a different name but I am too modest to type it. Apparently I should have been blogging in Victorian times. It's funny though that there are such things as this day. I think so long as there is an international day for women we don't even have to wonder 'are we equal'. The answer is given.

I may have forgotten to mention about the flash mob some weeks ago. It was the first ever flashmob i have ever been to. And so far the last one but that is not the fm's fault. Simply there hasn't been another one since. So I am converted, yet, it was a pretty rubbish one, still I had been a lot more cheerful after it was finished, on a particularly moody day. The whole point of the fm actually is the cats who live on the ceiling.

As part of the activity we were prompted to point at the sky as if there was something amazing up there and be totally amused by it for a while. That was the part that Ernest really got into. Ever since he engages in the occasional pointing up and being amused here and there. When he did it at home the first time, pointing at the ceiling, being amused he made the connection. It's an Ernest thing, anything amusing goes 'meow'. So there are cats who live on the ceiling.

Today I invited one of them to come down for a wee while and she did. They are some small breed of cats so a comfortable fit in my palm and she purred away happily when I pat her back. We went over to Ernest and he had a go stroking the cat, it even went over into his palm. So i guess it was a particularly small breed of cats but hey, they live on ceilings. We were most amused. Every body joined in and taking turns we all enjoyed playing with the little creature until about some 37 seconds later Ernest realised that at this age this is how far his brain is willing to go on this. Never the less, I am happy, I was missing our friends (imaginary) of late and since Lili became all so not into imagining imaginary tings it's a lot harder to keep their company. Maybe for another few years she can be dragged back to it and I is going to be just that much better now; the four of us imagining things together.

One more thing on looking up in amusement. At our local food store above the vegetable aisle there is a rather large air-conditioning vent. Liliom is most amused by it. I discovered that whenever she remembers to look up when we are there she just cannot take her eyes of it, completely tranced.

She has been giving me some hugs this evening and at first I couldn’t imagine what is the sudden urge for the display of affection and love. Than I realised that just minutes before I have been recounting to Jen the conversations at parents' evening in school. I guess she must have overheard (ha-ha! Listening intently to) the part where I was bragging about how clever my daughter is.

Apparently her teachers find it amusing that now whenever, wherever she meets the English teacher, she automatically converses in English.

February 27th

http://who-knows-what-i-will-write.blogspot.com/2011/02/sunday-projects.html

January 11th

Around 11am I gave up and turned towards home. The coffee he drunk before we left the house some 2 hours earlier did not seem wanting to wear off. Of course he weas only waiting for this signal and fell asleep. There might be the odd question ‘why let a toddler drink coffee?’ but my comeback is Lili’s explanation on how she came to have drunk coffee when she accidentally revealed that she didn’t like coffee: she was walking with her tongue hanging out, she slipped and fell and her tongue accidentally got into the coffee cup sitting on the floor next to the sofa. Ernest’s explanation is so much more modest and straight to the point; I put my more or less empty cup on the table and i turned my back. Surely, what did I expect?

The past week’s biggest achievements are... hm, Jen is frantically studying for exams, writing blog entrie(s) and... well, she is having a stressful time. Poor little sowing machine is sitting on the side of the desk with the dustcover on. Lili is enjoying weaving and keeps talking about it all the time ( I prefer I recounts of school life). Ernest on our Sunday afternoon sunny walk and play in the park learnt to sit down on the slide all by himself and, well, slide down. It was so exciting eventually he stopped doing this in his excitement and would just throw himself down the slide. He had another one. Today while I was yet again talking to the greenpeace activist on the walking street, which happens sort of every time we walk there, Ernest discovered his tongue. Again. He does this at least once a week. And last but not least late this morning walking in town I caught myself thinking about my thesis topic! It was quite a surprise actually. Have been avoiding it for quite some time and now there it was!

In the afternoon I’ve found some old oranges in the fridge and decided to handpress some juice for the kids only to have the glass thrown on the ground. Was tempted to soak it up and squeeze and hand press the second time but i couldn’t.

Started watching river cottage, the very first episode. The pigs were cute. Or so we were told. Lili weaved. It was Jen’t idea, it’s a training video for our future rural life. We are setting up the online community as we speak. Just goes slowly with all this other bits to do.

And finally some politics too