Wednesday 7th December, 2016                         1830

Well that’s just typical. Harriett sent me a text earlier to say that she had my expenses for the gas I bought and the school needed copies of my passport and residence permit. They already have copies of the passport, they stored a scan on the computer when I first got here and  they got passport back before I was given it with the residence permit and had plenty of opportunity (and undoubtedly did) to do likewise with that.

No skin off my nose seeing as she was going to come and collect it and do the donkey work to “present” me to the local police station but it was what she sent next that really made my day.

She had a letter for me that had gone to west campus.

There was only one thing it could be because I only gave the address to one place. My new debit card.

The card I had reported yesterday as not having arrived.

I swiftly phoned the bank, knowing it would be too late but had to try, and I was right, they cancelled the card yesterday and it cannot be reinstated.

Of course it was Harriett who gave me the address it went to and she swore blind it was the right address. It was - for another campus but when I pointed out that the street number she gave was 572 when Jacob’s parcel said 170 she had no answer. I can’t be angry with her even though the situation is frustrating. Everyone makes mistakes. However my banking success in Lanzhou has been markedly hypertensive!

I’ve had another lazy day, mostly indoors doing laundry - even swept the floors ready for tomorrow - and I decided to batch cook lasagne. Well I say batch cook but I only had enough to make two takeaway foil trays worth! Ok, one’s cooking now and one is in the freezer for another day.

Whilst sitting reading news sites this morning it suddenly dawned on me why my green pea soup the other night was a failure. It occurred to me when I told myself I must remember to soak the lentils overnight ready for tomorrow. I forgot to do likewise with the peas! Idiot.

I omitted to mention yesterday that Brenda arranged for a repair man to visit me to sort out what he could of my small niggles. He reaffixed the glass heat shields for the embedded central heating radiators (they were a mere trife, albeit unsightly) and then I showed him the kitchen tap. For three months I had been having to run the bathroom sink tap as well as the kitchen one, purely to get enough of a flow for the water heater to fire up and it took ten minutes to fill a (very small sink at that) in order to do the dishes. Even filling a kettle took forever.

When the people replacing the piping for the heating were here ages ago I asked them if I could borrow a spanner and they lent me one. I had guessed that the aerator filter was blocked and wanted to take it out and clean it. When they saw what I was trying to do they went potty and stopped me.

What did yesterday’s chap do?

He went one better and completely removed the aerator! Ok, I now have the sort of stream you get from a garden hose without a nozzle but I don’t care, the sink fills in two minutes!!

Happy days……………