Tuesday 19^th February, 2019 1605

Nine days until I get back in harness.

I know it has been a week since the last entry but little has happened, it has been (for me) a normal winter holiday time.

I've been The Good Samaritan twice, once for Alice in Guangzhou, penning her an invitation letter her new beau can use to hopefully assist her in getting an Aussie visa for the summer holidays. I hope it works so she can visit Brisbane and also if it does she will realise the stupidity of ignoring my instructions last year – she may well have been able to visit the UK had she paid heed. But they often find out too late in the day that perhaps sometimes I know what I am doing!

I also sent an email to assist Jody (she is currently in Auckland) after she complained to me that the kids' adventure firm in England/Wales had not responded to her email or phone call. I sent it on a Saturday and when they opened on Monday we both received a reply. It must be the wording......

The other night I decided to make a giant toad in the hole. I had my reservations because the pork breakfast sausages I bought in Metro hadn't tasted that nice when I cooked theose “ovenm with eggs and th” chips. I'm also going to dump a huge sack of those chips, they are not oven chips and they are awful. 

Anyway, as you can see, the toad came out fine and I filled it with gravy. The sausages were still vile so my dinner ended up being Yorkshire pudding and Bisto! I now need to buy bangers from Jinkou, theirs are actually edible.

I also two nights ago decided to bake a madeira cake. I quite like a slice with a glass or port or plonk instead of/as dessert. I used a different recipe from allrecipes.com and I must recommend it to tower block developers in China for use in the foundations. Should have stuck to BBC Good Food.

Talking of the BBC, finally I have connection restored. I have different DNS settings now and I am not sure everything is encrypted but it does allow me to stream , so fingers crossed, I can watch the 6 Nations this weekend. Having placed nearly a month's naval pension on England doing the Grand Slam and winning the Triple Crown, I have a keen interest now! I am not really a gambler but occasionally I have the odd flutter, normally biennially. If they come through though then this year it might be biannual, what with the world cup approaching.

Speaking of pensions, I have passed away (crossed the bar to my naval friends). I became suspicious on Friday when the monthly payment from the Merchant Navy Officers Pension Fund never arrived. I left it until yesterday and when it still hadn't shown I telephoned. I haven't completed the annual “signs of life” form they sent to me in October. I would have had it arrived.

Today on the off-chance they were open, after all students are already arriving back, I went to the mailroom but that's still not open and anyway a couple of days before they shut up shop in late December I had checked and there was nothing for me, not even The Cadet magazine (as usual).

So I got thinking and remembered I had this problem last year. Even better, I recalled that although previously they had used the correct address for other correspondence (and things took the usual six weeks to arrive) they had one letter wrong in the address they sent the forms to, which I pointed out at the time. It may sound unbelievable but one single letter out in an address to China means whatever you send will in all likelihood end its days in a dusty corner. Lanzho instead of Lanzhou and forget it.

I have now emailed them asking to be listed permanently for being emailed whatever they need so that I can fax back. As most organisations here (incredibly) still run on XP I have asked for a simple format!

Oh, last night I made “burger dogs”. Were hot dog buns available I am sure I would have loved them, the Frankurt sausages I got from Metro would be perfect. Sadly the ancient Chinese art of producing stale bread straight from the oven meant they fell apart. I suppose now in Metro I have found my Goldfish brand of flour I might be able to make decent bread and hence, have a crack at hot dog rolls.

Nothing much should happen between now and work.