We’ve had a quiet few days, but we have had some visitors. Shiner and Fiona came round last night, and today Angela has popped in with her new laptop.
The keen-eyed will have noticed that the new machine is an Apple Mac. Val has never used one of these in her life, but all the Rocks bar accounting stuff needs to be recreated, so between us we learned how the Mac works and got it done. Prosecco was consumed.
How hard can it possibly be? Today’s challenge is to ski 30 metres on the flat part of the nursery slope. The problem? It’s 30 metres of water. Every March we have an event called the Pool Race. A 30 metre pool is dug and filled with water, and skiers and snowboarders can try to cross the pool. Speed is the essence.
The water is about a metre deep and it’s absolutely freezing. If the weather’s good it’s a really popular event, and the Figeller bar on the nursery slope does a roaring trade.
This afternoon Aminaa was back making more brownies, and I made a Thai curry.
Anne-Marie popped in this morning, and she brought takeaway coffee and a selection of croissants from the bakery. They were lovely, but we could hardly manage our lunch afterwards.
This afternoon Aminaa came round with the ingredients to make brownies and cookies. An hour later they came out of the oven.
They were delicious, but our plans for dinner are in jeopardy as we can’t possibly eat anything else! A welcome but very unhealthy day of visitors.
The spring-like weather continues. It hasn’t snowed for well over a month now. My winter jacket has been consigned to the big wardrobe upstairs.
Val is passing the time with jigsaws and her German homework. This afternoon Rachel came round with another distraction.
She taught Val how to crotchet, and in no time at all Val had produced a knitted square.
Every few years we get a peculiar event – the whole region is enveloped in dust from the Sahara desert. It turns everything a sort of yellowy orange, including the sky. Bob got this pic from Eigergletscher.
Here’s Ben’s photo from Männlichen.
Ibe washed his car over the weekend. Look at it now!
And of course the dust gets everywhere around the house too.
Last night Emily made her legendary fish pie.
The sheer amount of food that goes into the pie is amazing, but we never fail to polish it all off. Val won at Yahtzee.
Apart from visits to the doctors, Val hasn’t been out much lately, but that’s about to change, as she has an appointment at Interlaken hospital. To get there we planned to get the train and a bus, but we bumped into Patricia at the station, and Patricia has a car. We therefore got a lift from Lauterbrunnen to the hospital, which was great. Val went in to get her MRI scan done, and I popped back to Interlaken to buy sandwiches for lunch. The views from the hospital are absolutely stunning.
Once that was done, we caught the bus back to Wilderswil and headed back to Wengen. Val has an afternoon appointment with her physiotherapist. It’s only about 300 metres from the station, so we thought we’d walk.
It took 55 minutes to get there, mainly because we stopped to chat with so many people.
We have Val’s MRI scans on a CD, but CDs are pretty old-school nowadays, and we don’t have anything that will read it. Hopefully the doctor does.
Colin’s friend Henry arrived from the U.K. recently. He brought with him several gallons of English ale, all the way from Bath. Unfortunately Henry had to leave again at very short notice, so Colin ‘volunteered’ to drink the beer. Here it is on our garden wall keeping cool.
Colin had also procured a splendid joint of beef at a bargain price. Beef is really expensive, so we hardly ever have it. Last night therefore we turned it into the full Sunday lunch experience. Colin cooked the beef at his place, and I did all the trimmings, including some very successful Yorkshire puddings, courtesy of Ali’s recipe.
A super meal, and a great night in. Now that high season is over and everyone is getting a bit more free time, we’ll be able to do more of this.
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