Thursday 11th August, 2016                    1400

Anna never changes. Having told me she would be back in Chizhou today, yesterday I had a text to say she would be back yesterday. This was followed later by another text informing me that she was at the train station and had discovered her ticket was for today after all! She had to change it and told me her train was 1511.

I took that to mean she would arrive at that time but in fact she was LEAVING Shanghai then, with an ETA of almost 1900. I offered her accommodation for the night. Shortly afterwards I went to get up from the office chair in my room, pushed it back and the wheels locked.

The chair (and I) fell over backwards, I ended up on the floor but only after cracking my head on the wooden bed frame, which resulted in my lower jaw hitting my chest, my molars biting the back of my tongue and a sore neck which of course is worse today. I spent the next half an hour periodically shining a torch in my eyes to make sure my pupils worked - it was a hell of a whack and I could have walked over to the hospital in two minutes!

I had arranged to meet Molly, Sally and Molly’s friend Jen at Yumeic’s for pizza. They were all late so it worked out perfectly for Anna to join us later. The others eschewed pizza in favour of the three pasta dishes they serve but I was determined to have some pizza and ordered seafood on the basis the girls would help me finish it. In typical Chinese fashion the pasta meals arrived five minutes apart from each other and the pizza took forever.

The Bolognese was completely different to the one I had a few days previously and the reason was given as due to the fact they have two cooks. Ok, fair comment but when the pizza (seafood remember?) arrived, it was the meat one! Not a sniff of anything that had ever even seen the sea, let alone lived in it! The reason? Yes, you guessed - two different cooks!!

I did become somewhat annoyed with this because I know of no cook who classifies pork sausage, bacon and salami as seafood. It was identical to the one I had the first time I went on the 1st of the month. The girls then went to work on them (by then Anna had joined us) and half an hour later a semblance of a seafood pizza arrived. I say “semblance” because the prawns were complete with heads and shells and it had mussels but no tuna, anchovy etc. At least it smelt fishy! I have two more dinners to go so I won’t boycott, I will stick to the pasta and hopefully tonight my favoured waitress will be on duty so I can get the cheesy Bolognese I rather liked.

The evening, whilst enjoyable, was a trifle bizarre because Anna was wearing dark glasses at night and Molly couldn’t see anything further than a yard. They have both recently had laser eye surgery, Molly presumably for convenience, Anna due to army entrance requirements.

On the way back to the hotel on the bike I suddenly realised I had no idea where I was. As I had been talking to Anna behind me I had taken a wrong turn! Thankfully I know this city well enough by now to have been able to swiftly rectify my error and we stopped for a quick wet at the office.

I did half expect another police visit but it never happened. Still two nights for them to REALLY annoy me!

Anna got up at stupid o’clock, availed herself of the included breakfast (which I reckon would have been quite a good one for her tastes) and departed to go and stay on campus with a classmate.

When I woke up and showered, I realised I had dropped a ricket. Having left my laundry until the last day for getting it washed and returned before I leave (I wasn’t going to pay a premium for same day service) I found I had but one shirt left. I don’t wear them two days running. I had to pray that RT Mart had something - anything - to fit me. To my delight they did and not a bad quality one for 78y. Phew.

No idea what is going on with my bike but ever since I have been having to use a pay charging station instead of the dedicated trickle charger, despite pumping in more than enough coins to fully charge it, when I ride, one minute it is showing as full, then it drops and today en route to the shops it showed it was completely empty and yet still maintained speed. I can only pray that it makes the trip back to campus tomorrow and doesn’t give Joan problems next term. At least if it does, she will be in school and not stranded and can call the repair people out.

My experience with e-bikes is that most problems are simple electrical or switch faults so fingers crossed the same applies here. And of course that I am not left out in the heat with no chance of salvation.

I am leaving Shanghai in five days and still have no idea where I am leaving for. To exacerbate matters it looks as if Capt Orange is on various travels to marine casualties this weekend (although with luck and a following wind we may get a bowling session and dinner on Sunday) such are the vagaries of his job and Rinka won’t show. Evidently she is now married and her other half is in hospital. It may turn out that I would have been better advised to go to Shenyang instead but life is full of twists, even if at times I feel I am getting more than my fair share of late!