Saturday 5^th September, 2020 1100

On Friday I cooked a simple dinner of tuna with pasta, peas, mayonnaise and Thai sweet chilli sauce. You-know-who complained there were no “veggies”. I pointed out that the peas we had spent a fortune obtaining the day before were in fact vegetables. Deciding this wasn't enough, she went out and bought a cauliflower to boil up separately afterwards! Talk about boring. Despite her doubts, once she started eating my offering she declared it delicious. Presumably she meant it because she polished the leftovers off for breakfast yesterday.

She had a meeting at school yesterday (all teachers except, thankfully, me) and I asked her to get the dates for the national holiday confirmed as we want to finally take that break in Xining and I don't want to have to cancel it for a third time. You may recall a year ago the government commandeered the entire hotel and then this year Covid scuppered the second attempt.

She was told that it is possible there will be NO national holiday this year! Allegedly they are thinking of cancelling it and starting spring festival a week early, the thinking behind it being that because the students cannot leave campus all term, there's no point in having a week off and they may as well have classes.

I have a couple of thoughts on this of course. Firstly the students will come and go at will regardless by simply clambering over the wall – and don't tell me you wouldn't do the same if you were a student! Secondly, no teachers or staff actually live on the main campus so all of them come and go daily, rendering the infection measures utterly pointless. And anyway, they won't be kept prisoner in spring festival.

When we got back last night I asked Brenda about the rumour and she said it was nonsense initially, until I told her the apparent reasoning. Then it was a case of wait until next week and I will find out. I think I am a reasonable, rational person some of the time at least but when certain measures are taken that are completely meaningless then I rail against them. This is one such case.

So as you can see from the photographs, we went all the way to Wanda Plaza to dine at Charlie's Burger. Regrettably the only toilets are upstairs or I would have eaten downstairs. Those stairs frighten me. It's only one floor but a very high floor so I am knackered well before the top. Quite apart from it being Cardiac Hill, coming down is even more worrying. There is no bannister. All you have is a metal thing like an oversized ruler turned upright sitting on a horizontal metal shelf, thus preventing you from actually grasping it. Remind me never to get pie-eyed there.

For some reason they converted my half-price bottle of wine into two free glasses. Fair enough, they seemed happy to see me back. This time I had the fish and chips and Jody the American platter, consisting of a mini burger, fish goujon, chips, buffalo wings and nachos. Very nice indeed and we were left full. We were also astounded by two slim young women on the adjacent table who ordered likewise. But then more and more dishes kept coming. Tacos, a spaghetti dish, and a buffalo wing platter. We had to wait to see if they could actually eat this huge amount. I can't confirm if they did but we did tarry until they started on the final dish – the tacos. I wish I could eat just one whole course!