Monday 25^th January, 2021 1900

So much for my forlorn hope the snow would melt overnight sufficiently to allow me to venture out to BHG.

Yesterday in true Chinese fashion an army of people were despatched by the school, armed with poles to which were attached enormous homemade shovel blades (which were probably plywood) to clear the snow from the roads around here.

All they achieved was taking away any cushioning should anyone fall yet leaving enough snow behind to turn treacherous overnight. This morning I was fed up with paying double price for my wine and after the fish clearout last night about my only options for our dinner were baking bread to toast and smother with baked beans or pasta a la luncheon meat. Either way I had to go out so it may as well be BHG.

However, we do live on a slight incline, and the hard packed snow/ice concerned me. These days if I go down I either break something or do other damage that takes weeks to stop paining me. And a frictionless “Whoops! Upsadaisy!” is going to hurt a damned sight more than a “normal” tumble, given the rapidity of descent.

Then I suddenly remembered the rubber shoe attachments I bought ages ago for the sadly-aborted Harbin ice city trip. It took some searching but I found them. First time of use required the strength of Hercules to stretch them over the shoes but I got there and lo and behold, I was skid-proof! Well on ice anyway, not so well on dry, shiny, tiled floors in the supermarket!

So off we went. On arrival it was of course the usual rigmarole of temperature and mask except one of the straps on my mask had broken! I could have spent five minutes trying to rethread it and tie it but for once, security were helpful. He pointed me to the next shop, which now sells packs of 10 for 10¥. I normally make one mask last a fortnight (because I hardly ever wear one) but this one packed up after two uses! And it cost 12p!!! Jody is happy, she wears one outside always and helps herself at will from my stash of what must be forty of them now whenever she likes.

We did the shopping and checked out. I have no idea what made me check the receipt this time, normally I don't – I don't even check what I have been charged, but it was only 257¥. it simply had to be more than that. For starters the fish fingers were 37¥, butter 70¥ and pork mince must have been over fifty to name just a few. New girl on the till.

I queried the receipt as best I could and asked if she had taken account of the three boxes (18 bottles) of wine in the trolley in front of me? I think that new girl learnt a valuable lesson today or maybe even two. One, pay attention and two, foreigners can actually be honest. Once she got her supervisor in to help I paid a further 357¥ - otherwise she would have worked for a month for nothing or I would have received frantic texts again imploring me to come back and pay.

Once home the washing machine was put on. Once done, I put on another load, only soon to be alerted by Jody to the fact the bathroom was flooding.

So much for whatever faffing about they were doing last week.

I had them here for two hours this afternoon. Trying to assure them that the problem was outside and not inside was like farting into a Force 10. Eventually they found the problem.

Outside.