Monday 1^st February, 2021 2100

This article was on the BBC news website recently. I shall say nothing further except to ask you to read it. Regular visitors to my blog will need no hints as to what I was thinking as I read it!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-55830497

The day of my last entry I happened to ask in the jing jo shop if there was a parcel for me. Stupid really, Alice was always going to tell me when it was there, the couriers text every recipient and as it is done in Chinese there's no point them having my number because I will assume it is spam. But Alice sends me a message on Skype so while I was out I thought she may have done so.

Well that was a mistake of sorts. It took the best part of ten minutes to get across to them that I was expecting chilli sauce and then further time with Mr Jing Jo asking for my phone number. Utterly pointless unless he has someone who speaks a little Ingrish by his side but I acquiesced. Blow me, yesterday it arrived and he called me. Well, face to face we can usually get an idea of what's going on but on the phone? I kept trying to tell him I knew the parcel was there and that I would be calling to collect it later. He was very persistent and so I enlisted Jody's help. Not only had it arrived but he was bringing it to my home and was on the way! Very decent of him and to be honest it gave me chance to show him my last remaining old bottle to explain what I had ordered.

In the UK people go ape over Amazon using excessive packaging. Not so here. You can order a salt cellar and chances are it will arrive in a box big enough to fit a respectably-sized television. Thus was the case here although the reason was because the (well I suppose it was) bubble wrap they used was enormous. You could have used what was around each bottle as water wings for your kids in the pool!

This afternoon Brenda called me to tell me the leader will visit me soon, probably next week. Whether she meant the leader of the school or the foreign language department I know not but despite my protestations I will indeed be descended upon. As she put it, he has to give you something for new year. What would you like? A million yuan? Cue laugh. Do you need anything from the supermarket? No I shop every week. In the end I gave her the answer I used to give when asked what I wanted for Christmas in the UK – socks. You can never have too many. Anything else? More in hope than expectation I said boxer shorts but not Chinese ones. That flummoxed her. I then explained Chinese ones were unisex with no pee hole and western ones had a slit with a button so the indignity of undoing your trousers and dragging down your knickers is avoided. She now has a photo of “real” boxers but I will be amazed if she can find them. If she does then I want to know where she got them!

Not quite so cold here today although events lately in the Far East seem to be taking a worrying turn on a more personal level. Burma has been taken over again by the military, China is yet again sabre-rattling regarding Taiwan (not for the first time) but more concerning is the Hong Kong BNO passport which threatens a serious rift between here and the UK.

I can see both sides. I do not agree with things that have/are being done although I understand why. Not really my business but should things with the UK escalate it is not beyond the realms it could affect me and other British nationals here. I wouldn't be so melodramatic as to suggest Brits would be detained aka Canadians and I am hardly high profile but one never knows.

It's a volatile world these days, more so now I think than any other time since VJ Day. And I blame the Golfer for a great deal of that.