Tuesday 28^th July, 2020 1400

Touch wood – every day since meeting Dean I have managed to renew my green code. I can do it for Gansu because annoyingly it comes up in Chinese and I recognise the characters from the car number plates, well the first one which is like an overgrown H – 甘肃 – and Lanzhou being the capital is the first city on the list. I'm hoping when I finally get to Shanghai the officials or maybe flight attendants can show me what to do next. Thereafter Joanna will look after me.

Everything is booked now except train tickets Chizhou to Hefei and I asked her to do that. I can book flights easily but I've only ever bought train tickets when I got to the station. Or I might yet get a car to take us.

Sadly despite my best efforts there is one flight of the six I/we will take that is at an unsociable time. I am meticulous in often paying a bit extra not to leave at sparrows' fart or arrive late at night but Hefei to Chongqing defeated me in the end. We are booked out at 0815 which means leaving the hotel just when breakfast opens. I waited and waited for the 0925 flight to reduce in price but it hasn't budged. So I've paid £93 each. The later flight is unbelievably priced at £190 – the prices being £259 and £589 respectively if you are stupid enough to use Skyscanner!

So as much as I love a Holiday Inn breakfast in China there is no way I am paying £97 each for the privilege – you can get a bloody good full English in Shanghai for less than £20.

What remains to be seen though is whether the VIP lounges will be serving free food and booze and even more importantly if business class in the air is still giving out hooch. Economy are still giving out bottled water so it will suit me just dandy if they substitute mine for red wine and I'll do the rest!

Now it's a case of sit back, wait for the trip to start and ponder on what could possibly go wrong. Again. I might just test out the code with a dummy run to the train station again. It unnerves me having to rely on a phone to say whether I can board or not and so far it has failed.

It could of course be far worse. Alcohol ban in South Africa again, Bumbling Boris in the UK making it up as he goes (Ok to go to Spain, oh no it's not now, 14 days quarantine, oh no, 10 days now etc).

My little local supermarket seems to have abandoned the thermometer and mask rule now although BHG still does it. Planes and airports, of course still in place. I now have a stash of nearly fifty masks ready for my tour. They cost 2¥ each (22p) in the jing jo shop, a far cry from the beginning when if you could actually buy one it cost all the tea in China.

Beautiful weather here right now, 29ºC and no rain. I don't know why but this summer break seems to be racing by. I'm off on my travels in nine days for two weeks and then when I get back school starts nine days later. I may be in luck, all my students will be freshmen straight out of the High School cardboard box and with luck will do their military training (for that read wandering around in paper thin fatigues and learning patriotic songs with nary a gun in sight) which will give me nearly another two weeks sitting on my backside. Every little helps.

I don't think I have mentioned this before but there is major building work going on close by my home and has been for a couple of years. Across the road a skyscraper is up (I believe intended as teaher accommodation) and now they are I think smoothing out the rough structure plus there is another school building going up no more than a hundred yards from my office window.

The work was sporadic before but for the past couple of months it has moved apace round the clock. And it's damned annoying. Let me be straight, my bedroom windows look out (or would do if the curtains weren't permanently drawn) on a courtyard surrounded by six-floor accommodation blocks and so is shielded from most of the racket. I still though during the night hear the odd H-girder being dropped from height. It seems I swapped the barking dogs of Chizhou for the builders of Lanzhou.

Complaining? Well yes, I should include that as an interest on my CV! Life isn't complete without something to moan about.