Monday 22^nd July, 2019 1310

About two hours ago Annie left Lanzhou for the last time, bound for Chengdu to spend a few days before jetting off to Taiwan and ultimately home to Los Angeles.

Last night she and Alice came here. I had said I wouldn't be cooking but on Saturday I had batch cooked chilli con carne puff slices and frozen a load, so it was simplicity itself to simply bung them in the oven. With two lemons in danger of going to waste I decided I would bake a cake as well. So it turned into the Last Supper.

Alice had given her a scrapbook with messages from her, Eli and me, I never bought anything but did give her a memento of the university which will probably end up on her mum's mantelpiece. She in turn had bought me a piggy bank! It's a most odd-looking thing, sort of a cross between Baloo the bear and a reindeer! It was actually quite a thoughtful present because she knows I keep the coins I get in change in empty plastic medicine bottles, reserving them for bus fares in the city.

All too soon it was time for her to depart in order to clear out the foreign teachers' office on Peili campus (now the Foreign Language Dept has relocated it will become something else) and finish her packing. She proudly told me she had been “boogy” and for her last trip to the train station had booked a car.

“What do you mean, boogy?”

“Spending money!”

“You mean 'bourgeois'?”

“What does that mean?”

“Splashing the cash!”

And so life reverts to quietude, interspersed with the odd couple of hours when Alice comes to graze, next time being Thursday for that king prawn curry I promised her. I suppose I really should take the opportunity to finally empty the two huge cardboard boxes I had sent here three years ago but have been too lazy to sort out!

Still, fifteen days before the holiday hat comes out........