Sunday 4^th February, 2018 2000

This would be a somewhat poignant day were I to allow myself to dwell on it being the first anniversary of my Mother's death. I shall not. It is no different to any other day since then.

We left the hotel yesterday morning to take a taxi to Xian North train station and on the way I asked Joan (just to confirm) that she had all the tickets. She said she had so I asked what seats we had. She had 6C but couldn't tell me my seat so I asked her to look at my ticket and see.

She thought I was an imbecile. How can I get your tickets without your passport? I had forgotten this is the only place I have ever been where you can't get a ticket without producing ID. Ok, panic not, it's a forty minute taxi ride which will give us fifty minutes to collect my ticket (prepaid, just needed picking up).

But this is me so there had to be dreadful traffic jams. Our taxi driver was valiant, driving like Lewis Hamilton and using bike lanes and the like to carve a way as best he could but the best he could do saw us in the ticket hall with 25 minutes until departure. The queues were long and I said to Joan that we were stuffed.

In the UK I would have gone to the head of the queue and asked politely if I could butt in, explaining the reason but in China no, they would not understand me and would simply think I was an arrogant foreigner. Step up Joan. Give me your passport. SHE went to the front whilst I sheepishly stayed back. We made it with ten minutes to spare but it was a frosty trip all the way to Lanzhou. I thought it was excessive for not having quite been with it when she said she could collect all the tickets in her hometown (not twigging she meant hers but not mine) so when we arrived in this city I decided enough was enough – everyone makes mistakes and I am no exception. Was it because I made a mistake that we exchanged not a word the entire three and a half hour trip?

Nope. It was because she thought I was putting the blame on her! I was doing no such thing and in fact inwardly was praising her for having the courage to go and get my ticket when were it up to me I would have had to spend a fortune buying new ones for the next available train.

That little matter ironed out, we came home and shortly thereafter left to go and get some sweet pork and a dry prawn hotpot at my little place near BHG. My ideas of going to the bar after were fading as I was so tired (every time I had snored she smacked my head with a pillow) and imagine my sheer delight to find the restaurant has already closed for spring festival.

We were both so tired I even never bothered going to the supermarket (which had been in the plan) and I just said let's go home and I will rustle up fish fingers. She went to bed at nine, I just after ten. The difference was, she slept thirteen hours, I awoke at five and gave up trying to get back to the land of nod at six. You can guarantee next term when I need to be up at five I will be able to sleep until midday but not when I am tired and don't need to be up.

When she finally surfaced I made her bacon, eggs and fried bread. Not keen on the fried bread because of the oil so toast tomorrow. There then followed all the sightseeing she will do here, a trip to five streams mountain, change bus, glance at my little campus and a Japanese lunch after which I bought a hair dryer (40\) for use when other females stay and an extension lead to enable iPhones to be charged and used whilst sitting on the sofa.

Tonight I made, despite my own fatigue, chicken curry with chapattis and bread and butter pudding. They were both gratifying as Joan informed me she had tried to make a curry for her parents and it was awful and she liked the pudding so much she wanted to know how I made it.

The bad news for her was that she discovered she had failed her Bachelors exams. Now I know had I stayed in Chizhou she would have breezed through, not via the classroom but she would have been able to ask me for help any time and her oral English would have continued to improve. She constantly told me she was so busy studying. She may well have been but I do wonder whether having a boyfriend (who also studied, passed and managed to forget her birthday) may not have been her downfall. I don't know. It's not the end of the world, she can drop back a year and retake, chuck it in and get a job or any number of things, a degree is not the B-all and end-all, after all I have no degree. The first uni I set foot in was as a teacher. That still gives me a chuckle.

She will dispute it but privately I believe she spent too much time with a boyfriend who couldn't even remember her birthday.

We have tomorrow left. We won't make it to the bar, I am on stream for going to bed at ten again which means I shall wake well before dawn. It will at least give me plenty of time to figure out what to cook for dinner.