09-IX-2023.

Overyester we went to Čankovo to spruce it up for the party. Less of it every year - there's the insucker*, the water filter one, left from last year, and I didn't even think of plugging it in. She picked the leaves and some of the dust by broom, I'll pour water over it before we take out the tables. And about mowing I didn't overdo it, I moved it just by the blacktop and the driveway, what's behind the trees I mowed a dozen days ago with švorceniger, and under the trees... who fucks its mother.

Yesterday we sat the kids all day, because Lena was lecturing on some two days long convention (which was just the occasion to add its false friendly couple in serbian, the simpozijum), so Boba and Nina organized themselves to go see her do it. It took all day (actually day and a half, was supposed to last three, but then... the organization, an exercise in snafu). Lena spoke last in the regular term (i.e. around 18:30) and then there was a bit of a mix and Nina had her three minutes to present the tool she's working with.

The regular maturski of IV_5pp in Čankovo was today. I packed the gear again (refilled nanovo with more photos and music; the speakers are still packed in that tote since 24-VII-2023.) and managed to forget only the large pot for the ready barbecue. Did all my shopping around the community center - tomatoes, bell peppers (had onions already), meat, ready shaped ćevapčići, sausage, kulen, pečenica, salties, a kilo of trappist cheese (if this is trappist I'm Napoleon, but it's sold under that name), a sixpack of knjaz in the kiosk, stuffed it all into Joda and drove straight to Dragana. We didn't sit at her place, she didn't turn the AC on and it was rather stuffy, even the staircase was palpably cooler. She again didn't recognize the route I took, even though it was the same as last year.

As usual, this is the hour or two in a year when we're alone, having a drink. I dug out the last 0,15l of the 2014 apricot, which I thought was extinct in this universe. Of course, work first - we brought out the tables and chairs, I plugged in the sound system, she laid out the cold cuts, I chopped the cheese (wouldn't call that chopping, it was more of gnashing, it's so soft and chewy it can barely be cut), and then we took it slowly. Just around the end of that shot, Staša came by, so we poured him the third shot. Then Bajlo brought Baki, then Jasmina came (her husband drove her and left) and Borko came in the end.

Except that was not the end. Just when I noticed that it's past noon already and we should be thinking about the food, and went on to start the fire in the barbecue (which didn't work on first try, I got spoiled at home where I use the gas burner as starter), there comes Sredljak. He leaned on the apricot (don't know which one - we had four, not counting the one that was already gone - Jasmina brought a 2019 last year and a 2020 now; from Mima we had one, year unknown, and Staša brought a fresh vintage). He was in good mood, so when I declared my lack of inspiration and asked for someone to man the barbecue, he volunteered. We moved it into the apricot tree's shade, managed the dishes (old romanian plates instead of a big pot, fuckit) and he hit it. His technique is quite different - for one, he never had one with a lid, and for two he doesn't stop the flames when they appear, he just quickly reshuffles the ćevapčići so they don't char. He did really well. We plan for the next year to not buy the ready shaped ones, but he'll mix the meats, salt and pepper the old way, just the recipe that was once in kantina, and I'll cut the funnel from a plastic bottle and shape them on the spot.

Around that time Borko spotted the bottle in a bag that Sredljak brought, and took out of it a bottle of... kokta. Asked what was that for, to which Sredljak replied „well it was meant for later, but now that it's out, here goes the story... When we were kids, lower grades of elementary, I asked my best friend who was his best friend and he said it was so-and-so, because he buys me a kokta every day before and after school. So, Borko, here's a whole liter for you“.

We seriously thought Mima won't be able to come, having fallen from third stair and broken the bone just above the wrist, she must be still in a cast. But it turned out her son could drive her here, and so she arrived when the lunch was half finished. The cast she got off, but she doesn't like how the bone set, as if it's somehow wrong, the wrist is far less flexible than the left one. Still, she was in very good mood. I sat with her for a while, wanting to ask about MPSŠC, where she worked the last years (and some part-time from retirement too), is there still anyone I'd know. Well yes, the chief accountant, the girl who was the young expert who got the old wolves in order. Well, obviously succeeded there, being still in the same spot after almost forty years.

Then some bespectacled younger guy from up the street appeared, to ask us to move the cars away from the road, so he can drive his combine harvester through. It's too big to turn around, and while the street is quite wide, the road itself isn't and there are rain ditches on both side lawns, plus our cherries, so there were four cars which needed to be moved. Of which one was Borko's, and he moved it into the ditch, which I remembered was a foot deep with water when we came here that winter 2010/11, and got quite shallow now, and this maneuver was no problem at all.

Bajlo brought a thumb drive to get a copy of all the photos, which he once had and lost. I had technical problems with it, not having brought spectacles, so I put Borko in charge of it, and he succeeded, but nanovo is old and so is the flash drive and it took more than an hour to copy all that. I saw him and Staša messing around it for a while, probably trying to make sense of the playlist, because Baki decided to shoot the piano player, i.e. asked for some specific song which he wanted to hear again... Don't know what they did, but the Foobar player stopped working. Whatever I tried, it would complain that „the object lost connection with output channel“ or some such content-free message. So they started playing music on their phones. I tried to plug the speakers into Baki's phone, but its protective sheath had holes in wrong places.

Then Jasmina's daughter came with her daughter. Cute kid, calls herself Sosa even though nobody told her what that is nor nobody called her that. They sat with us less than an hour, and then they went, also giving a ride to Mima. And ah, yes, she still owns the pharmacy and even the bicycle shop's space next to it, tried to sell it but there was always some snafu, each time, a proper chance turns into a triper somehow.

Soon others followed suit. We cleaned up, the last ones who remained - Borko, Staša, Dragana and I, and I had enough presence of mind to get a 100l barrel we'll urgently need at home. Then quickly split - Staša in the opposite direction, as there's a field road at the other end of our street, whereby he's 7km away; by regular road it's about 20. So we maneuvered a bit to pass each other, and left Borko and Dragana to negotiate their way out of the ditch. Don't know how that worked, he did drink, I didn't see him in retrovizor**, so „maybe they're still there“ was dispelled when I processed the shots and she replied with „we were good, good mood, good shots“.

I forgot to pack my tozna, it stayed there. In the evening I understood how tired I was. I can be on foot all day, but then not the night. So I threw the corpse on the bed at some insanely early hour, and slept nine hours.

Meanwhile my dear chopped the pears for brandy. What we bought from the neighbors on 31st as firm and green, ripened and softened meanwhile. She meant to just pick the ripest ones and maybe fill one 60l barrel, but no, that's how many were not ripe - the remaining 280 kg were. I joined her the next day and we went on hacking it until dusk.

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* usisivač - can't honestly call it vacuum cleaner, the vacuum can't be dirty by definition, and this works by applying a somewhat lower pressure, very very far from vacuum, but no amount of logic or semantics can stop an honest commercial mind looking for a bombastic name.

** the meaning should be clear, in english it's the rear view mirror.

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Mentions: 24-VII-2023., Branislav Rade (Baki), Čankovo, ćevapčići, Dobrivoj Gunaroši (Boba), Dragana Vitas (Dragana), Gradivoj Sredljev (Sredljak), IV_5pp, Jasmina Vlajin, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Joda, Kantina, kokta, Mališa Borkovski (Borko), maturski parastos, Merima Tabarski (Mima), MPSŠC, nanovo, Nenad Bajlo (Bajlo), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Stanoje Serdarević (Staša), švorceniger, tozna, triper kombinacija, in serbian