10-VI-2022.
On 8th, we picked more cherries in Čankovo. The acaccia has grown wildly in many places, got to mow next time. Nina also went to the old house (perhaps the day before), to find the abacus (Raja's exams are near). She hasn't visited there since dad died, says it looks sad there. So it will, when it's empty. Didn't find any abacus.
On 9th we all went downtown, to get everyone dressed up for the swimming season. Went through the same old routine - park the van on Žitni, walk over the pedestrian bridge to the glass box once wholly held by the bank, which now hosts a chinese department store. Same chinese junk as in the main stores, just cheaper. We still have our old stuff - my speedo-like pants are nine years old now, but since I generally don't sit everywhere in them - I hate sand sticking to wet skin - they're like new. So they all went in and stayed there for a while, the young ladies are growing and now pay much more attention to their looks and picking the right model, color and pattern takes longer than before. So I stayed out, picked a wad from the serekeš, made a few shots, had a smoke, sat on the low fence, pretty women walking down the street (Štulić), beautiful. Except there aren't too many of them, the city feels deserted. And then about the third cigarette Raja comes out, then soon the girls, while she stays behind to pay.
Ended up having coffee and cake at Prleski, as usual. They don't have chestnut puree, at least I finally remembered to ask. It was the same girl, whom I last year promissed cherries, who told me „nema“. Okay, I didn't forget about the cherries, you did.
So on 10th we opened the season on Peskara. No crowd, the season is only officially on, but the school mostly ends on 20th, and the older folks think it's too early, so the crowd starts around 1st of july. And it wasn't too hot, the water just right, actually cleaner than the water from the pipes. The weather was nearing the end of this spell of short afternoon cloudbursts, and of course one had to come to shoo us away. We didn't get rained on, we saw at what speed it was coming so had enough time to get regularly into the van, which found this day to develop stiffness in the turn signal stick - which wouldn't move into position, so I had to hold it... and also the windows were getting foggy, because the inside was warm and humid, with seven bodies and lots of soggy clothes, and outside was at least 10 degrees colder.
On eleventh, the last of the cherries in Čankovo, but then we'll have the cherries next time. This rain fucks them, wherever they are bunched, in wind they press or beat on each other, one or two get squished, they rot in place and their immediate neighbors get affected soon. And they still aren't quite ripe - but in a few days they'd all rot. Too bad this rain wasn't ten days earlier.
On twelfth I redid the FTP send routine for pages in Byo, in python. Easy, fast, and far less code than in fox, because this not windowses, python has all of it ready. The speed of thansfer is at least fourfold or tenfold compared to what I have in fox code, or to what DCommander does (linux clone of TotalCmd). Perhaps doesn't reconnect between files or whatever, but it's rapid fire.
In the afternoon we squished the cherries and I picked the big cherry in front of the house - I parked Joda at neighbor's intentionally, so I'd have the floor to dance with the ladder. Got some 18kg, excellent quality, dark, very ripe and tasty. Nina climbed onto the tree (or okay, in this case I'd agree that it may be said „in the tree“, though it's not a hollow trunk, she's just in the crown) and picked some for the girls. She first wanted to do something else with these 18kg, they're too good to make brandy of, but then the girls were finding some of cherries rotten, some worm enriched - put all of that into a barrel. Brandy soon. The girls started liking the fruit this year - Sanda likes strawberries (the ones that we grow, which should bear fruit all summer, just presently have a pause to grow the so-called moustaches - the group in the bucket on the wallnut stump has reached the ground now with one of those), while Linda and Violet love cherries. Violet has learned how to extract the pit in her mouth and spit it out.
On thirteenth we went to Peskara again, the crowd is a bit denser but only for parking, the beach is still half empty. The van's turn signal lever is sort of stuck, won't get into position, I have to keep it pushed. There's a certain position when it would work for the right, if I manage to find it. And the seat by the sliding door has its backrest stuck, so Raja and Violet have to jump over, which they don't mind, they're big enough. They do leave some sand on the middle seat, but that's expected, vacuuming is practically mandatory by the end of the season.
Didn't do the frendz parti in the evening, this time it's her birthday (she's exactly two weeks younger). For this summer we mean to make no long break, but rather lower the frequency to bi-weekly, so we don't get out of the swing.
On tuesday we opened the season, made the first two stills of cherry (not pure, there's also some 10% of cherry in it), got 5,8l of it, much better than last year's 4l. The next barrel is full already. The new burner contraption works better than the old one - with butane it took me about three hours a batch, this time it took exactly two hours of fire for the first batch, two and a half for the second. But then there was maybe 10% more mass in the second, and when it began cooking it created a little storm inside, so I had to lower the flame for some 20 minutes. The valve will need some practice, half a millimeter makes a visible difference in the flame. And it's open about one quarter.
In the evening we leaned on the apricot brandy. At some point I complained about the christians, probably because of suština. I wrote a series of articles with photos of various gates around town, where the photos are only a pretext for the text, and this was mostly to fill the gap when nobody was writing. After six of those, mid april, Škrba noticed that he still hasn't seen any eye-catching pics in the series. Well you missed the point, pal. He also asked to refrain from publishing, we want to help Boća, his next article is important for his future relations with Kroacija Rekordz, so let it stay on top until may. Okay, deal, taking a break. But when he posted it, instead of one, he had two photos on the first segment (before the „read more“ link, both from the cover of the album of some guy, on which an actor is playing Jesus with the thorny crown, dragging that huge sign of death. For me, suština is a public square, where we hang out and hang the things we made, for others to see. Now when christians come and hang their stuff, it's not the same as when an ordinary citizen comes, it's a force that takes over and claims the space. They have to leave their pee mark everywhere. And then she goes „why just christians“ „it's not only them, most religions do that, and okay, let them, but that space isn't common anymore, its theirs, and I'm not visiting until they leave“, which means as long as this article is among the top eight, on page one. Here we are, two months later, and it's still $6... two more to go.
But we fired up a discussion, including in-house religion (i.e. while our parents were alive, we don't do religion) and that's where my tape broke when I remembered how dad wanted to bring a priest to sanctify (or whatever the term is) our house, when I likewise shouted at him. Because they just touch you in passing and then claim you as one of theirs, even when you affirm that you are not. I'm not giving, we built this house, the two of us, that is ours, and they can go fuck themselves with it. As Mile Kekin sings, „I am not yours“.
The miracle of the whole matter is that, despite all the noise I made and the fierceness that burst out of me, we weren't fighting, on the contrary. The next day we went on, without brandy, and had a good time. Grandparents...
That day we went to Čankovo to finally mow the 2nd time this year, and to guesstimate which cherries to pick next. The 2nd tree from the gate, by the road, which bears so small and so plentiful fruit, bore madly this year. We don't know what it is, I made a few shots and posted them on burundi, still nobody knows. We filled one little cipiripi (local equivalent of nutella, popular since eighties) bucket just to show to Nina. She was amazed, what is this, it's smaller than the smallest cherry, barly has any pulp, the rind is chewy... but the taste, what a taste. That goes into brandy too, has lots of juice.
Thursday I finally added the privacy statement to sGradlj.com, just to see whether the Gugao will budge. It says
This is my personal site. I gather no data, don't need them and wouldn't know what to do with them. There's no entry field here, no username nor password, only content. I don't know who you are, and I don't mind not knowing. For me, you are your highness The Visitor, and I intend to keep it that way.
Now, the cookies. There are none, unless you play solitaire, then there's one, keeping your highest score.
The other cookie is for the counter, so it knows if this is your first visit or not, and how to count it. I am in no way related to its content, can't even understand what it contains, the colleagues have made it incomprehensible.
There should be a third one, to remember whether you already read this text. I won't introduce it, so you can read this as many times as you want, including zero.
This text is perfectly unnecessary, but I'm putting it here just to see whether the google will relax its strings. Every year or two they get on the next crusade to condition the whole web how to behave. They feel entitled to it, as they bring more than 90% of traffic, so they should be in command. To an extent I don't give a flying damn for what they think, beyond that I'm just curious to see how little of the formal requirements will suffice to get them to open a bit. During 2021. and 2022. the number of visits was decimated twice, it's now about 15% of what it once was. And I changed nothing - they did.
Peskara again in the afternoon. Linda specially asked for a langoš, caught a whiff of the fragrance when we were leaving last time. Now she came running from the water to take a bite, ran into water again, came back when she finished that... dozen times so. Had to buy another one to take home, and then they cleaned it up to the last bit.
She kneaded the dough before the trip, so we made the thin noodles again when we returned. Finished at 20:45, not turning off the light, because our room faces northwest and the sun has set around 20:20 and we know what's where and are so trained by now that we can do almost everything with eyes closed. This reminded me of such dusks in the summers of my younger years, when turning off the lights was delayed as long as possible, everyone avoiding to pull down the shade and turn on the light. Only when someone comes from the outside and asks why are we sitting in the dark, then someone gets up. Not that the electricity was anywhere near expensive, it's that this spirit of frugality was best seen in this near darkness.
On 18th I finally published a link to Byo at sGradlj.com, to the story about the door seller (17-VII-1995.). Five takers, but didn't follow any further links. One of them is the Bleeding Blitva from Zadar, who was my test visitor previous couple of weeks.
In the afternoon we went to Čankovo to pick the rest of the cherries, including the mysterious small cherry, which we think is possibly the russian čerjomuha, or could be likewise related to marelica or maraska. It shouldn't be worth the while to pick that, the fruit is so small, but it grows in bunches - often a dozen stems grow from the same spot - and it's soo sweet that we had to wash our hands every 20 minutes, the fingers stick and it's hard to separate them.
Milan is gone to Frankfurt, Lena is now alone until wednesday, and said a visit would be nice, but we can't go, the van's turn signal is stuck. It's okay to drive like that to Peskara and back, it's a ten minutes ride which I know by heart. Driving to Belgrade is a different matter, and the guy from the repairs said „come wednesday“.
Mentions: 17-VII-1995., Božidar Sokolović (Boća), burundi, Byo (Byo), Čankovo, fox, Gradivoj Škrbić (Škrba), Gugao, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Joda, Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), Milan Nastić, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Prleski, Ryu (Raja), Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), serekeš, sGradlj.com, suština, TotalCmd, Violet, Zadar, in serbian