Friday 20^th July, 2018 1415

In the end I stayed home for three straight days and on Wednesday finally tried out my pins.

I went to the mail room first because it was the closest and on my way back to the ATM and shops I had to pass home so if I had been premature I could always pop indoors for a crutch. I didn't and indeed managed to do everything I wanted, whilst not at full speed (which is geriatric bulldog mode) I was delighted.

I felt it yesterday and cancelled my plans for BHG, deciding to recover and go today. Too late did I look at today's weather forecast which predicted rain all day! And it was right. By Lanzhou standards it bucketed early morning and has been constant, albeit lighter, rain ever since.

I also could not have known that at 1830 yesterday the school internet would crash and indeed it remains that way now. I am rather hoping they will finally fix it when they come back from lunch – I have nothing left stored on my laptop to watch!

Speaking of laptops, I am now regretting buying an Asus. After the reset I still can't activate Windows even though I managed to find the product key and Asus support seem to have given up on me. I had intended to buy another HP model but Alice's friend's shop didn't sell them. And last night – even offline – I still had two blue screens. Very disappointed, in fact the only two things good about it are that it's slim and lightweight and the battery has a very long life. I will not purchase another product from them.

2330

Well after going the entire day without internet connection and sending out a couple of messages asking for the score (I wasn't entirely sure by now it wasn't my bloody laptop at fault) I finally an hour ago received notification from Brenda that service should be resumed at 1000hrs tomorrow – only forty hours after we lost it.

Just as a final note before I post this (who knows when?) while I was walking back from doing my jing jo shop an old lady was coming the other way. Now, it is almost impossible to gauge the age of Chinese women, some twenty year olds look twelve, forty-fives look twenty-nine etc but one thing was for sure, she was the old girl who offered to carry my shopping the other day. My guess would be eighty.

Now I don't think I mentioned this before (maybe I did but forgive me) but there was a cabal of geriatric females that were always chewing the cud outside building 4 and I couldn't fail but notice their attention immediately switched to the disabled foreigner – when I appeared whether I was coming or going. I have nothing against that whilst going but the return is a little off-putting when you are facing them because pride makes you try to overcome pain and everything to put on a brave show regardless of the fact it is one crutch or two.

Well there were times (most of them, else I would not have been using crutches in the first place) when I had to halt a while before continuing and so I remained under scrutiny. It really was discomfiting but do you know what? The old lady tonight stopped and we had a “chat”. You do not necessarily need to speak each others' language to understand. She was expressing approval and saying how nice it was I was on the mend. I said yes, much better now.

Think about it. These old girls are all over seventy, their highlight of the day apart from dinner is sitting gossiping with their mates (and they do in the dead of winter too) and a crippled laowei is not something they get to see every day!

I lie not when I say that had I not been in so much pain by the time I got back those days, I would have gone and sat with them for twenty minutes and cracked a beer!