Sunday 14th September, 2014              1230

The cold is slowly leaving me I am glad to say. Yesterday I went and collected my delivery of ground cloves (one of the ingredients needed to turn pork into ham) and then onwards to town and shopping. Of course, this weekend sees the thousands of freshmen stream through the south gate, many with their parents in the family car. This, in a land where people drive in the same manner as they walk, means that at times it is impossible to get even an e-bike through. There is never any consideration given to others as they simply abandon, not park, their vehicles.

I did escape though and bought some food. I even bought a small (well, they’re ALL small!) chicken for myself but annoyingly Lottemart never had any bones for the dog. Certainly afterwards I was going to pass RT Mart but going in there, even if you don’t buy anything, takes fifteen minutes by the time you have gone up the escalators, down them again and then gone to look at the goods. I may go there tomorrow.

I was too late to have lunch at Ke Bi Wang so McDonald’s it had to be. As I entered I looked to see if the little signs about lettuce had been removed. They had. That didn’t necessarily mean they had lettuce so I asked. They had! Great, a big Mac meal please. Since the “shortage” it has been cheeseburgers only for me because at least they still had gherkins. While I was tucking into my burger a waitress with zero English rather foolishly came over in an attempt to get me to complete a survey form written entirely in Chinese. I have no idea whether someone in the shop was winding her up but her tenacity is to be admired. She found someone who spoke English and enlisted her help and by coincidence she is also a teacher here but in a different department. For completing said questionnaire I was rewarded with a voucher for a free ice cream cornet, which ten minutes later I donated to a small girl with a balloon and who probably enjoyed it more than I would have.

Then it was back home to get Pepsi and battle my way out again to go shopping for liquids. Incredibly the sweet pork place has been closed for two days now and I say incredibly because they know full well armies of newcomers and their folks are rolling in so they could have done a brisk trade in meals. Instead, as yesterday, I had to go to office three near the fish shop. I think Pepsi prefers it there as she does wander a little when she isn’t hiding in the undergrowth. Sitting on my bike with a bottle under an overcast sky, my mind was wandering over many things. I was trying to figure out which of the campus shops would return. We finally got to the bottom of the fiasco. What happened was that the company that had a five year lease on the entire bottom floor never lodged their paperwork to renew until it was too late so the school put it out to tender. The highest bidder offered 1.2m yuan for the coming five years and now (as of yesterday evening) the supermarket, post office and fruit shop are back in business.

My thoughts were interrupted by movement in the dry grass in front of my bike. What on earth was it? Curiosity piqued, I dismounted and went to investigate. It was an escapee from the very restaurant whose beer I was drinking, one of the little lobsters that the Chinese so enjoy. It was a long way from the illusory safety of the lake so I decided to give it a hand. These things have eyes in the back of their heads and their arms go back further than you might expect. The owner of the restaurant and his friend who were sitting chatting seemed amused by my tentative efforts at picking the creature up. Now the claws were hardly big and probably wouldn’t have hurt me at all but I didn’t want to find out. Eventually though I did manage to grasp it in the right place and deposit it in the right place, at least until it gets caught again.

When I returned home I had an email waiting from the translation company. Aside from one tiddly little job I got in the hotel in Huainan I have had nothing for about seven weeks from them but apparently that is normal as Ollivier hasn’t had much either. Talk about getting you back in the swing gently - 18,000 words to be done by Monday morning! Bearing in mind the 10,000 word one took me about 4.5 hours I thought it would take 8 hours of solid work to get it done. To my relief it wasn’t in PDF format this time so I started on it and never stopped until it was finished and sent back two and a half hours later. One of those a week would be very nice thank you!

Later this afternoon I know I need to collect at least my lasagne and the oil free chip maker although the pickling spices may also arrive this afternoon. If they do I may well have pop to town again regardless and buy a lump of pork so I can have a dabble. The first time is going to be annoying as I won’t know for a week if it is successful.