Sunday 18th December, 2016                   1230

Annoyingly, early on Friday evening I lost the internet. After spending half an hour fruitlessly trying to log on to other routers in my building and the hotel opposite (sadly there the signal is just that little bit too weak for me to connect), I decided it was unlikely anyone would turn out from IT to fix it before Saturday and settled down to watch a load of programmes I had saved on iPlayer.

Sometime later I received a text from Janet informing me of two things. The first was small beer, she had erred in telling me my last class was a week on Friday and it is in fact the Friday after. Well she says the Friday but in reality it will be Thursday seeing as nobody turns up any more on Fridays. It still means I have to waste three hours travelling and then waiting for an empty classroom but I shall still be able to get some cooking done for the party ahead of time. With a small oven, that machine is going to be doing some serious work over the course of two days!

The second stunned me. The kindergarten head teacher is not interested in a visit from Santa! They are, she said, more interested in spring festival. That’s understandable in China but the kindergarten will be closed so I fail to see how they will do anything anyway. I replied and said that I would not offer them my services again (I felt a rather good idea had been rebuffed) and that if anyone had any ideas about asking me to dress up as a chicken they could take a flying leap into the Yellow River!

Perhaps it had been explained badly, I will never know, but the plan had merely been to make an entrance, distribute sweets and pose for photos, then leave after a maximum of, say, an hour. Most odd.

When I got up late (1130) yesterday, to my dismay I found there was still no connection. Well with no other foreigner in my building to text to see if they had internet, I had no way of knowing whether everyone was affected or just me so I texted Brenda. This revealed another astonishing revelation. The campus internet had been deliberately switched off as Saturday was a day of important exams (TEM and CET) and it was off as an anti-cheating measure. The students would be unable to look up answers on the web using their phones. I actually think it to be a terrific idea but it would have been nice to have been informed in advance - being isolated and teaching postgraduates I had no idea of exam schedules.

It was almost 1900 on Saturday that connection was restored, by which time I had watched everything I had on iPlayer. I had visions of having to take my laptop over to the hotel but thankfully never had to.

Kevin’s dinner on Saturday was bangers, mash and onion gravy. By all accounts he enjoyed them and has now frozen the remainder until Christmas. In contrast, the bottom drawer of my freezer is entirely filled with the things, although that situation will change by next weekend. There’s something comforting about eating sausages that you know exactly what went into them. My Father was a butcher and he always told my Mother that if she knew all the ingredients she would never eat one again!

Last night I bought some ice cream to have for dessert. On spotting the large tray of “foolproof fudge” sitting in the fridge and which has singularly failed to set after a fortnight, I decided to spoon some on top of the ice cream. I reckon had it set properly it would have been good fudge, but as a “sauce” (admittedly very thick sauce) there is only one word that does it justice - yuk!

I do like these lazy weekends. In fact tonight I’m not even cooking per se. I shall buy some drumsticks and roast them to eat with some bread and butter - if the dough currently whizzing around in my bread maker produces something edible.