Well me ribs are still a bit sore but at least I can move a bit easier, well I can at the moment. I went to the park again today and I tried a few exercises to see if I can go back to my regular morning thing but I think I will have to give it a bit more time. I just hope I haven’t set the healing process back too much.
But enough of this, let’s talk about Brexit, I mean what a shambles. I listened to the news this morning and I felt very sorry for poor Teresa May. She has been in the firing line since day one and even although she did not side with the Brexit decision she has at least tried to make an effort to continue with it. They said this morning that the parliament does not want to leave, the rich folk that control the UK do not want to leave the EU and of course they have put so many obstacles in the way of the Brexit process. Instead of working for the will of the British people they have as usual done what they do best and that is to look after themselves. At every twist and turn they just shout at each other and blame each other for this and that when it’s got nothing to do with the parliament., all they have to do is to act in the best interests of the British people and not themselves. So many distractions, so many bullshit stories, smoke screens just to thwart this process. If they had actually worked together as a cohesive entity and fought for the UK we might be leaving with a deal and a platform that will set the UK up for the future, but instead it is going to go through many rough years before it will achieve a good result.
Fear of change is one thing stopping the process, and of course greed. I could not vote for Brexit because I haven’t lived in the UK for may years but I would have given the chance. But now it seems that it would not have made a difference, so much for democracy.
Better the devil you know and yet they will complain about that devil.
Procrastination is the death knell of the west…………………..oh and the underlying corruption and greed, I forgot to mention that too.
So I went to the gym the other day with Sissi to see her trainer and to ask him about how to get a better posture. He gave me, what can only be described as a cross between a Thai massage and a workout. However one of the moves was for me to lie on my front while he pushed quickly down on my back. After the first push I felt this jab of pain in my right side, he pushed again….Fuck that’s sore so no more.
I woke up the next morning feeling ok, although my side was a little sore. Months before I had bruised my ribs and this training session had brought the problem back. However I decided to go to the park because the sun was shining. I tried to do a few exercises such as pull ups but could not. It felt like a knife was being pushed into my chest.
I came home and had a shower and then did some work on the computer. After about an hour the pain was terrible. The slightest movement caused the knife to come back with a vengeance. It was crippling. I had to go out and get a few things and even walking down the street was an effort. The bus ride wasn’t fun either. As I sat in the bus arms crossed holding my chest I then realised what I had to do and I went and got a bandage to wrap around my chest.
On my return to the house Sissi was home and she was able to help me wrap it round my body. I could finally move without the stabbing pains shooting through the right side of my chest. And so I will have to take it easy for the next week or so until I can recover from this.
I can’t believe just how debilitating this injury is. One minute no problems and then you move your body a fraction and the knife is plunged into your chest once more. The bandages are really very tight and so I think I will have to forgo having a shower today and keep them on for at least a day to see if they can help.
This morning I went to the park for my daily exercise and also for my sanity. It’s good to clear the mind and get the blood flowing, however it’s still a little brisk. Often when I return my left arm gives me jip and this is due to an altercation I had with a Mark 1 green Ford Escort estate on my way to school, circa 1974. However my back was also giving me hard time too.
We lived in Corseford and I used to go to Johnstone High school. I’d leave the house as late as possible so that I could get to school just as the bell was ringing and most of the time this worked out just fine. But on this particular morning the shit hit the fan.
To get to Johnstone High we had to cross the busy Beith Road which was relatively easy if you crossed at the school gate, but of course that’s for big Jessie’s, and so we would cross the road a few hundred yards further up the road just to be different. So on this particular morning I was running late and I had to get across the road and so I decided that after the double Decker went past, I would sprint across, however I did not see the Green M registered Mark 1 Escort, until about a second before it hit me and the next thing I know I’m flying. I rolled over the bonnet and landed on the ground and quickly recovered my composure and headed on up to school as if nothing had happened. I have a vague recollection of the driver shouting at me but I have no idea what he was saying but I got that he impression that he was extremely pissed off with me and I couldn’t understand why because he was the one that hit me after all.
This one is a little older than the one that hit me. This is an H reg and the one that got me was an M reg.
I don’t remember having any blood on me, I’m not sure if I banged my head but I’m sure I must have because before the accident I was pretty clever, I’m sure of that…………. and so I think it was more than my dignity that suffered on that day. Someone was with me as I walked up to the school and I’m saying don’t tell anyone about this, but of course I did not really have a choice in the matter. When I finally arrived at school I think I was going into shock and I was taken to see one of the teachers and they were told about my flying adventure that I had had on the way there.
It’s all a bit hazy from here on in. I was sent home and the doctor was called to check me over and he gave some wonderful drugs that put me to sleep for about 24 hours or so. I woke up and thought,”That was a crazy dream”, but then I tried to move and the pain set in. I was battered and bruised but I had been extremely lucky that I hadn’t broken anything.
The driver even came to the house to make sure that I was ok and he of course was pretty shaken by what had happened. This is not something that I could understand then but I do now……….
However as the years have gone on I feel that there was more damage done than meets the eye. For example if I put any weight on it, you know like if you are having coitus, or doing some push ups, my arm would shake………….it’s a bit embarrassing.
If I picked up something there would be pain in my arm. The left side of my back gets so tight and sore and then it sends the pain up the left side of my neck to me skull. A good massage can give me relief from the pain in my back but only for a short time. It feels like there is a knot just below my shoulder-blade being twisted tighter and tighter to the point where it may split. So I have suffered some kind of nerve damage and it has been a problem from time to time.
The pain I now get in my left arm is sometimes like a fire inside and at other times just an ache, but I will not stop doing my exercise in the morning. I do reduce the intensity of the work out depending on the level of pain, but this morning the knot has appeared below my shoulder-blade and when I came home I asked Sissi to massage it a bit which helped but then after about 30 mins the knot begins to tighten once more. A combination of old war wounds and old age I’m afraid, but I will continue to do my morning jaunt to the park and adjust the workout based on the level of discomfort.
Years later I began to drive the double Decker buses and I even did the school run to my old school. Other kids have been killed on this busy Beith Road and so I guess that I’m one of the lucky ones on that day and maybe just maybe someone was looking out for me………………..
I met Lydia at Suzhou Train Station just before eight in the morn because we were going to Nanjing for the day so that we could visit the Nanjing Museum which is one of the biggest and important in China. It takes just over an hour and a half to reach Nanjing from Suzhou on the high speed train, it’s around 215 km.
It was a cold and rainy day and shortly after arriving we got some hot food, spicy potatoes and dumplings to keep us going.
The museum is vast and so we did not get to see everything. Some sections have an English translation but you can always hire an audio translator to help guide you. I think you could easily spend a day in here but I would recommend taking lunch with you because the cafe is not so good. some of the exhibits are exquisite, especially some of the jewelry, but I enjoyed looking at the bronze ware, such as the two models below of the horse and carriage and the ox pulling the cart.
Mind you there were a couple of dodgy exhibits which were just rocks claiming to be tools.
There was one mechanism that sets the ancient Chinese tech at the forefront of design and ingenuity and that is the trigger mechanism for the crossbow which they developed many moons ago.
Yesterday the sun came out and it finally looks like the weather has changed for the better. It was still a bit fresh in the morning when I went to the park earlier, because there were still white frosty patches of grass that the sun had not devoured yet.
The meeting point was at Mudu, the end of the line for the metro and the gateway to Taihu and beyond. There were about 12 of us meeting here and after 4 of us arrived we jumped into a “Didi” (Chinese Uber) and made our way to Guang Fu. Our good friend “Photo Guy” has organised the day for us. As his name suggest he is a photographer and he often comes to the Album of Suzhou events which this was today. Today however he had organised a gaggle of photographers and the foreigners were the “models” or subject matter for the day. Our every gesture was being captured by high resolution cameras, whether we were picking your noses, or scratching our arses, you can be rest assured that there would be a lens focused on you. However it is a small price to pay, I mean sell out your dignity for a great day out.
No it wasn’t that bad at all, it was really great to get a guided tour through the Qing Dynasty temple which is by far one of the most interesting in the Suzhou area. The temple grounds are vast. At first glance it seems like your average temple with all the usual things in place but then you go passed the Buddha shrine and out through the back door where it leads you to another garden rising slowly to a small tea house and it’s only then that you realise just how high this temple sits over the surrounding area. Below us suburbia and the spell is broken briefly but if you quickly turn around again you will be facing up to the multi story pagoda. Just in front of us is the tortoise pond and in the middle there is a giant stone tortoise connected to the banks of the pond by a series of large stepping stones and of course we all decided to put our lives and dignity on the line by making a crossing and posing for the camera.
The pagoda does not look very old, but at least we were able to climb to the top of it using the small internal staircase. The view from the top is very good, although the view itself was a little bit disappointing.
We left the temple and headed for lunch. As we walked through the car park we came across this old lady sitting there in the sunshine watching the world go by. I asked her if I could take her picture and she said ok. I then asked her how old she was and she told me that she was 92 years old. She seemed such a happy wee soul and I think very surprised to see so many foreigners. At first I thought she may be the car park attendant, maybe she was I forgot to ask……………
We then headed to a small restaurant and we all paid 100 rmb for lunch, but I did not enjoy it very much. Guang Fu is close to the lake and so most restaurants will offer the bounty that the lake has to offer and I’m not too keen on much that comes out of the ocean or the sea or the lake for that matter. Now if it was fish’n’chups then maybe I would have been a bit happier, but seeing the poor wee fish lying on the plate, mouth open, eyes looking skywards, and its flesh exposed for all to see is not my idea of lunch. Neither are the chicken feet, shrimp, fatty pork and the several dishes of oily vegetables that were dished up. Luckily there were some dumplings on offer and so I scoffed them. Quick Fact: I happened to comment on the oily vegetables and the young lady beside me said this…….”in days of old many Chinese families would use way too much oil to show that they had wealth, that they could afford to waste oil which was such an expensive commodity and so this is where the tradition comes from” Well now that everybody is better off than before, why can’t the Chinese become more frugal and be kinder to the planet and themselves and use less oil………..I for one will be very happy.
After lunch we headed to one of the largest collections of Plum trees. At this time of the year the plum blossom is abundant and it comes in many different colours and it attracts thousands of visitors. Everywhere you look phones are being used to capture the beauty up close and personal and it’s almost impossible to take a picture of just the plum blossom without getting a human photo bombing your attempt. I tried to take one picture of the blossom up close and noticed afterwards that a wee bee had photo bombed me.
It was a long day but it was great. It was good to catch up with a few friends that I hadn’t seen for a while. It was a really good day and even as we squeezed onto the bus with the other million folk it just wasn’t that bad. We were squeezed together like sardines. The driver was terrible but what’s new. I had left the house at 8.30 in the morn and I got home at 7pm and I was absolutely exhausted and also starving. After a snack and some mindless TV I headed off to bed and had no problem drifting off to the land of nod…………………
The winter seems to be dragging on and I’m getting fed up with the cold weather. The houses are so cold here in China and it’s only in the north of the country that the houses have central heating which is subsidised by the government. I think it’s around £150 to heat a 50 m2 flat from November to the start of April, which is quite cheap. The temperature is kept around 20C and so it is always warm in the home. I also think that many of the houses have double glazing which of course makes it better. My flat is only about 15 years old and there is no double glazing, but we do have air conditioning units but they are expensive to run all the time and so we end up putting on another layer of clothing to keep warm. Plus the fact I do not like to sit in the air conditioning for too long. The windows are so big and so I usually close the curtains to try to keep the heat in, but then you feel cut off from the outside world and so I usually put the heating on at night but rarely during the day.
Outside the window there is this tree which lost its leaves many months ago and it has these very large buds which have been dormant all this time, but this morning I noticed that there seems to be new life and they are beginning to grow which is a welcome sign indeed. This of course means that the temperature is rising and spring should not be too far away………….well this is what I am hoping for. When I arrived here last March it was still pretty cold. This year, according to a few locals, has been very wet and so it always feels a lot colder than it actually is. I think this tree will look very spectacular when it’s in full bloom.
Throughout Suzhou the plum blossom is also making its presence felt and it comes in different colours and is also a sign of the warmth and new life that is returning to Suzhou and it is very pretty to boot. For many years I have not had a winter at all. Living in Australia near Brisbane the winter, if you can really call it that, only lasts for about a month and usually the temperature still reaches 22C during the day and so it’s not really cold. It’s very green, but you don’t get those wonderful autumnal colours………..
We have two new guests in the house, they arrived two nights ago. I haven’t met them yet but I did get a brief glimpse of them this morning. I got up at 6.30am and wandered into the kitchen to make me brekky, where was the kettle?…..someone has pinched the kettle. Now this is not the first time that this has happened, the first time was 6 months ago but it was not such a big problem because we had a spare kettle and now we only have one. I need coffee in the morning or I just don’t function that well and so there was no other option than to knock on the door and wake up the guests at 6.30 am to get the kettle. After a few minutes they began to stir and were not very happy, but they understood what I wanted and I got the kettle back. I don’t think they will do it a second time………
Now they are either stupid or selfish and I’m not sure which trait it is at this stage. I would never think of removing the kettle from the kitchen, especially when there are other folk in the house. The Chinese certainly think on a different wavelength at times……….
The Airbnb guests never cease to amaze me. Just when you have seen it all they go and trump it. Oil Lady came here with her two young daughters. They are staying in Suzhou for one month to go to the Ice Skating. They are staying with us for the week and will stay at another home for the rest of the time. The kids are well-behaved and so they are not the problem.
The other night Oil Lady was washing clothes by hand in the bathroom, can’t use the washing machine. She washed a handful of the kids clothes, a few pairs of socks and underwear and two small pairs of trousers. About an hour or so later she comes from the back of the house and says “I wish to use your shower” I said “you have your own bathroom to use” “But there is no hot water left” Well I wonder why you stupid bitch, you have just used a whole tank of water on washing a handful of clothes…….these were thoughts and not actually what I said. But she walks into my bathroom as bold as brass and turns on the tap. I tell here that the water pressure is not good and it takes a long time for the water to heat up and if you must use it then you need to make sure that the floor is kept dry because we don’t use this bathroom like a wet room. She huffs and puffs and says” I guess I will have to wait till the water heats up” I guess you do, I said to myself. Chinese people waste water, as long as the water flows from the tap when you turn it on then that is fine, they do not think of any form of water conversation. Well when I say this I am basing that on the guests that we have had here and the percentage is high,,,,,,maybe 70% don’t seem to care.
When Oil Lady cooks, the shit goes everywhere. Sissi had to tell the other day to clean the cooker because there was oil splashed all over the place. A few days later it seems that everything I touch as a film of oil. In fact she has used a litre of oil in about 4 days. I would be lucky if I used this amount in 6 months. The kettle has a smooth feel to the handle, the dishes that have been washed have a film on them, the cutlery……….I mean it’s just fucking disgusting. The floor is also looking shiny and new.
They leave tomorrow and when they do I will have to dig everything out that they have touched and used and clean it.
I’ve seen many Chinese prepare the food for cooking and they take a long time to do this. They soak things, they marinate things, the food is sliced and diced and it seems that so much care and attention is put into the preparation only to be smothered in oil and cooked until dead. everything is soft, no crunchy vegetables. The dishes are brought to the table swimming in oil. I go to many different places to eat and I have now found out the places that use too much oil and I don’t go back.
But watching the Oil Lady this week lets me see first hand the amount of oil that they go through in less than a week. I’m thinking I should buy some shares in the oil making business.
We have had many different guests come to our Airbnb, but every so often one or two will stand out. A doctor arrived last night; mind you I wouldn’t feel very comfortable if he was treating me for any affliction. He was as you would say “a little bit creepy” He had come from Nantong, a city about 90 mins away from Suzhou. He was 36 years old and he told me that he had recently found a girlfriend but he wasn’t really sure if it was the right thing to do. I asked him why he thought that and he told me that is was an expensive exercise which I can totally understand. I mean it can get very expensive when you get into a relationship and of course it depends on who you get to join you in this venture. In China of course there are certain expectations shall we say. The guy must have his own house and if possible a car also. Two very expensive purchases in anyone’s language, but in China they are extremely expensive. Compared to the UK a car will cost you at least twice as much. A two bedroom flat in Suzhou around 100 m2 will cost about £775,000 and so it ain’t cheap. I mean that is a lot of dumplings.
He asked me many questions and I tried to answer the best I could without being totally biased which can be very difficult if the subject matter is America. I’m sure by now you will have realised I don’t have a lot of time for this part of the world. Although I still do like some of their old cars, they were rather flamboyant and so was our doctor it must be said.
So why are you coming to Suzhou and only staying for one night? Why did you arrive so late and what are your plans?
I’m coming to Suzhou to meet one of my former students and we will go for some beer and dinner and then he will come back here and stay the night. Well that does sound nice…………..
I have just started to form a new opinion about our doctor friend. I change the subject but it’s not long before we are back on the subject of tonight’s adventures. We have another guest here with her two young daughters and so I said to him that when you come back this evening we would appreciate it if you could be quiet as you are intending to go out on the randan as one would say with your young student friend. He replies that he doesn’t think that is very good to have two guys in the room when there is a young family here also. I couldn’t agree more.
Anyway before you know it he is off to meet his beau………
Shortly afterwards I go to bed and tune into the trusty BBC Radio 4, it always sends me to sleep and I have also managed to become extremely hateful of the Archers theme song. But I couldn’t believe it, I was no sooner in me bed and heading off to the land of nod that I hear the front door being opened and our lovers have returned.
In the morning I’m having a cuppa and the doctor appears in the kitchen and asks if we have any milk and I get him some from the fridge. He fills two small bowls and as he is doing this I ask him what his plans are for today. Well we will go shopping to “Guanqianjie” the main shopping street in Suzhou and then go to the best fish restaurant. Now this sounds more like a dirty weekend more and more.
Eventually the young boy shows his face and comes to drink one of the bowls of milk. He looks very young indeed, maybe 20 if he is a day. The doctor turns to me and says “see, he is just a very young boy” Again he had this very creepy looking look on his face. Now I know that this might not be what I’m beginning to think it is but it’s kinda hard not to. The young boy does not make any eye contact; he just drinks his milk and then buries his head in his phone. A few minutes later they both head for the front door and they are away and I’m very glad about that.
I went and checked the room and everything seems ok, only one towel was used and the room was left tidy. The key was on the table and all looks ok. Maybe this is just looking at life through the jaded and cynical eyes of an old guy that’s seen many things in his time and knows what a dirty old man looks like and I don’t mean when I look in the mirror. Maybe it’s also that things get lost in translation. Chinese is a very direct language and when someone uses English and it’s not the best then some things come out a bit misconstrued and maybe that’s all this was and I hope that’s all it was. I also have to remember that many Chinese, like our Doctor friend, are really very naive and not very worldy and maybe it would never cross his mind to go down the path of my thinking. Maybe it was just two friends catching up for a night and then going shopping and having lunch. If of course it was two girls there would be nothing strange about it at all, but when it comes to two guys doing this there still seems to be an air of suspicion.
