We made it back across the hallowed EU border, Sanja coughed up for a PCR test and I promised that we had no alcohol of fags on board and that was it, waved through. A relief for us, you never know what they might do to you at such border crossings but my relief is always tempered by my sense of guilt that the knowledge of what happens to refugees at such crossings is always infinitely worse.
The car came back from Belgrade with a layer Belgrade polution nicely covering its outer shell. A sobering indication of what is now clogging up my bronchioles having spent a week or more there.
So a quick reccy of the kitchen brought the joyous news that all my mugs had stayed on their shelves despite the big earthquake only 75km away a few weeks ago and the numerous smaller ones that followed it.
It was damn cold the first night and my desire to not use the wood burning stove heater anymore soon gave way to my desire to remain unfrozen. Sanja was refusing to come out from under the two layers of duvets covering our bed! Lots of emails, ebay and etsy for me to catch up on meant Sanja had to drag me outside for a walk.
Sanja drags me out for a walk “to get some fresh air” she says but i think she just wanted an excuse to wear my Subhumans hat again, she loves it sooooo much! Small samples of snow remain dotted around, sadly not sufficient for snowballing.Ena shows Sanja just how happy she is to see her again, or at least I think that’s what she’s doing!The little brook at the bottom of our hill is flowing nicely with freshly melted snow water.
We set up Sanja’s laptop with my projector and watched a few things on her Netflix account. Our eyes still firmly “squared” from all the “TV” gawping we did in Belgrade it felt a bit like taking methadone to come off heroin. Pretend it’s a City was however a suprising joy to watch. Whilst having one of our potentially dangerously divisive discussions about what to watch next I remembered having just listened to Radio 4’s Soul Music programme all about David Bowie’s Life on Mars song! Sanja is nothing if not a anglophile when it comes to “telly” and so I dug out some old discs with Life on Mars avi’s downloaded on to them. To my suprise they have played nicely in the DVD player and so that last few nights we have been transported back to Machester, 1973 courtesy of the BBC drama and Sanja is learning all kinds of language that I hope she doesn’t repeat when we get to play scrabble with my fathers friends!!
Amongst the mail waiting for me on the kitchen table was a copy of the new One Way Ticket to Cubesville from the venerable zinester Richard Cubesville! Sanja was engrossed by it for most of the next afternoon, needing only a flask of hot spicy apple juice to keep her going.
Then it snowed, properly and we got to finally have a proper snow ball fight!
The western view early this morning.A panaromic view of the non view down the hill! Snow and fog combine to blanket out the world!“I am just going outside and may be some time.” she said ….Soon this gate will be redundant, as we take away the fence it is part of, but I think I will leave it in place anyway.By way of an explanation for this tortured visage and indeed tis torturous to behold; the subject was still recovering fom a direct hit to her – well protected – head from a prfectly aimed snow ball that flew a good 15 meters before striking said bonce!This pretty picture hides the viscious truth that the bushes below are a spiky no go zone unless you are wearing all over body armour!One of us has been scoring bulls eyes with snow balls and t’other keeps missing, I’ll let you guess which.Painting this gate red was a stroke of artistic genius!“Yeah its just like ice cream, go on try some” I said, not for one moment believing she would…….Its quite fascinating how different a view is during different seasons. The area immediately on the other side of the red gate is usually impassably blocked by 7 foot high brambles and other undergrowth.You can see why we get on…. another example of Sanja doing what I would do without any prompting!Ok, who can guess what this is? Winners will be announced in the next post.For those of you, like me, who can’t get enough…
