22-X-2023.
Aziri came with his son and another worker, who took down all those charred plasterboards and cleaned behind themselves, in bare two hours. Quick and efficient and didn't raise too much dust.
Meanwhile, Juliška gathered a gang, her late husband's brother and one more guy and one pro chainsawyer, to cut down her last birch. While the two worked on our salon, this guy climbed up and chopped of all the major branches, except one, about a wrist thick, somewhere high. He then took a while picking the right place and angle where to make the cut, went up and down at least ten times, because the place he picked to cut out a wedge contained a knot from some old branch, and the chain on his saw was loose and not too sharp. So when he finally cut it, at about 4m height, the trunk fell right between the terrace and the garage, but that branch caught a corner of the garage's roof. It broke two slats and disturbed a dozen tiles. I've made shots of that roof before, it's almost looking better this way, the slats were just rotten, these tiles could easily have fallen by themselves (which already happened to a few). Regardless, she fired up a barage, and the brother-in-law gave her no quarter, so the shouting contest/concert lasted some five minutes, noise on noise. As she said, Juliška is the same everywhere, the continent varies. Both of them knew to extend the tongue to elbow and dial it up to eleven.
Radoslav seems to have raised anchor, guess his exile expired or some such administrative thing, so it's back to Germany now.
She picked the first daikon radish for this season. Nice, big and not too curved. It ended in the allchinese for lunch. It will reach salad in due time, I eagerly wait. The allchinese, the stir fry* I eat using [chop]sticks, just to not lose the skill and the meal to last longer, fork does it somehow too fast. The sticks are also excellent at finely measuring the crushed bolivian [hot] pepper, because of that even the exact measure of „knifetipfull“ is too much, it's rather just the amount that stays on the tips, two or three times. Truth be told, the same measure is a fork, as much as it carries on its prongs, that's it.
Had a nice chat with Go and Stanley in the evening, via kitty tablet. Not bad, good sound, except when they'd walk to Požega, where the connection would break. The Požega is an internal joke, from Rambo Amadeus's song „Halo, Požega“ (which includes sounds from the WWII movie „Užice republic“, of a territory which was liberated in 1941, and among the sounds is a repeated attempt to call from Užice to Požega on a field phone, what with the inductor being cranked). That's about two meters out of the terrace door, exactly where the wifi breaks. When it does, they switch to phone web connection, which isn't worse. Anita finally lost two upper ace teeth, the new ones keep growing for quite a while. She invented words for forks, depending on number of prongs: fourk (4), threek (3), twook (2). Go threedy printed her heart shaped buttons in two colors, for the next sweater (after which she'll drop knitting for a while and go back to sewing).
Stanley's friend Samir visited his dentist, and got an estimate on the all necessary jaw work at around 20000$. „Is he normal? For that amount of money I can just fly to Bosnia and replace not just all my teeth, but whole head“.
Monday. Still quite warm. In the afternoon we went, like we didn't in quite a long while, with Linda and Sanda to Lidl and Roda. In Lidl there's no instant coffee, all of a sudden just like that, unless we count the decaffeinated shit. She bought a Jakobs in Roda, at twice the price. Reminds us of 1987, when the first sign was the coffee shortage.
Talked with Lena in the evening. She'll host a party soon, just to have people she knows get to know each other. Milan was kind of preferring to weather it out far away, but then she said he's a guest too, none of organizational stuff falls on him. She promised me her old desk (she's got the one with variable height now) and her old Mac (new battery and keyboard). Well, I very much wanted to have one, but that was in 1988. So I'll finally have one.
We scrape the soot from the walls in the salon upstairs. Mića didn't call. I called majstor Mile just the tell him the coast is clear so when he has the time, it's a go now. We tried this year's pear, it hits rightly, has a mild taste, is smooth, only the first swig is a bit weird, it will come to right measure in a couple of months. Linda has developed a case of „I liked this, but now...“ for the „peeling egg“, which is her name for gibanica. So we'll make that more rarely. My desire is more towards šlingeraj (v. house dictionary) but no, for a couple of years now, whenever I mention that it somehow turns into a gibanica, because it's got harder edges and the kids love(d) the giba. Well now it's my turn, though she'd make it with readymade maccaroni, our pastry being among the stock lost in the fire.
Tuesday, 24th. Đole pendžeraš called in the afternoon, ready to get the job done right away, except shades, which they'll do tomorrow. The fire inspectors (aka „center for extraordinary situations“) also called, the minutes are ready, pick it in the morning.
The boys really came the same afternoon, and finished before dark. They did it with incredible speed, mostly thanks to having cut the old window frames with handheld reciprocating saw, and then pulling them out with a crowbar. Three panes stayed intact, of which one has both glasses whole. Well, then, there are no frames to these... We'll most probably discard all that. They'll come install the shades and handles tomorrow. Đole's brother came too, and didn't even look for the entrance, came up the ladder to the terrace. Some time later Đole himself comes as well, and also goes for the ladder... Must be some in-joke.
In the afternoon we took all four upstairs to see the new windows. Sanda fired up a legendary statement: „it's clearer than my vision!“.
Wednesday, 25th. Went to the firemen and picked up the statement. The whole finding is this
(„the fire occurred in the mansarde of the house, and in the fire burned the inside of the room, namely furniture, clothes and electrical and TV installations.“)
Well your cop's mother, where have you seen me TV? Here we are about to celebrate 15 years without television soon, and you found me a TV. Just like when Eči's aunt went smuggling with her friend, and being completely clueless, bought the lei on the street, 500m from the border, where the money changer (or his neighbor) had extra income from snitching to the cops. And the wrote off the trouble of having all the lei confiscated after a full body search, and of giving up on crossing the border, but the statement was too much, because it said that „the aforenamed had the incriminated currency hidden between the udders“. The guy from Jeptel told me to take a shot of the statement and send it. Can't do, pal, no Viber on my phone, Telegram or email please. So he gave me one, but, ahem, zmajček is still incommunicado, and the image processing is on it. So okay, took the eos70, made the picture, processed it, put it on a fleška, took it upstairs, navigated on nanovo to mail.sGradlj.com, sent it that way. Not too much email accumulated in these two weeks, well, well. Told the guy to drop by and rewire my UTP, but by response I saw he ignored that part... eh, the times, when you can't fish a majstor for a kilo of brandy to do a ten minute job... So I remembered Žorž (v. 12-VIII-2016.). Yanked him, and he responded right away, is in Belgrade now on a gig, will drop on friday, glad to help. Mića also called, we stay scheduled for tuesday, but he may drop by on friday to scout and estimate the work.
On the way back from the firemen I dropped by that colorful paintshop to get a new floor broom, the one upstairs lost half the handle. The brooms they had are all either too soft or the roadwork type, that I already have, but look they have handles separately, and there's an reinforced handle... which is just a somewhat less bad metal. But the wooden one is ash, gimme that. Came home with the statement and the handle, and she's all cunting for being left without a proper downstairs broom. „Hold [this]“, I said, gave her the handle and pedaled off to detelina, where they had exactly what she wanted.
The windowers came in the afternoon, just Đole and another guy, put the shades and dripboards as scheduled. Đole wanted to come in like yesterday, asked „where's the ladder?“. „We put it back before it gets legs, and you may use the guest entrance now...“. Good guys, fun, both he and the brother. We're really satisfied with how it looks now, and how, look at that, there's no draft between ground floor and upstairs unless we let it. The mosquito nets they'll bring tomorrow, when they make them, as the material arrives, and they'll ustrečovati them and then come in the spring to mount them. What's strečovanje? Well the foil, we wrap them up. Ah, the cling foil. Learned a new word.
In the evening I didn't feel like grazing by the computer, I'd be sitting on the bed and nanovo on the chair, while for twenty years already I am used to having a comfy chair. So I took the vekšmajzl and leaned on scraping the soot of the remaining stretch of the wall, between the terrace door and the beam where the router is. In the end only half a meter was left, she was amazed at my persistence. I guess I had a bout of counter-gustav**, going for white instead, or something.
So the evening brandy, it's an odd date, we had in the saloon. Lacked the music only, it was somewhat audible from the bedroom, but didn't want to overdo it, didn't amp it up. We planned what furniture we'll bring in from the old house and from the garden, what we'll put where, and how half of that furniture we'll let just sit there empty. The last one we drank in the bedroom.
Thursday, mostly nothing all day. Scraped the remainder, started cleanup, but just a bit, don't know whether I did more then five square[ meter]s, out of thirtysome of the salon. Until bedtime we just sat and gazed at gugolj and nanovo, and then I had a bout of unconsciousness after dinner, guess that's because of the piece of cake after it (she's making them now without a pretext, need to use up the surplus eggs), so I just lied behind her on the bed and slept it off. Around 23 she lied as well, and I stayed to watch on yoochoob various falls, stumbles and spills, and hit the hay around 1:30. Some time later she said „you aren't sleeping, I ain't sleeping... I slept maybe a dozen minutes just like you did... let's go light one“. So we got up, went to the salon, had a smoke, went back, 2:30.
I got up at 10:30, and just when I noticed the phone was turned off while being charged, turned it on and Žorž called right then, said he was in the area, where exactly should he go. I gave him directions and in less than four hours he rebound one green cable the right way, so now all of zmajček, Raja's box and the playstation have all 460 megabits per second. Why on foot, I asked, said it happened to hm one day before midnight that at the beginning of Miletićeva [street] he made a regular u-turn, and got into the gas station, and then the traffic cops were all on top of him, with allegation that he tread over the thick white [line], obviously they've got their sights on a pljeska (not exactly a burger, just better than) and wanted a thousand for that. But he wouldn't budge, knows he did nothing wrong, won't treat them even if they were twice the size, so they wrote down what they wanted and read it to him and gave it to him to sign but not to read for himself. He refused, and they duly wrote that he refused to sign without reading, but then passed the case to the misdemeanor [judge] with an additional note that he crossed the line and drove in wrong direction for a while, which then is a much heavier infraction and carries a few days in the slammer. He agreed to plead guilty to the first part, avoid the proceedings, pay a fine and deposit his license for 30 days. But the hounds didn't get any pljeska.
He said that Željko retired and now has all the fun, travels. He was here for a while, visited his sister in Trbnjevo, and then went on a tour. Rents the two apartments in Limassol, and maybe has one here as well. Says it's cheaper to stay three months in Thailand and Vietnam than to sit as much at home.
I burdened him with a bottle of 2019 apricot, though he said he's not drinking for seven years now, but nevermind, son't birthday is upcoming, he's gonna tell him it's from the famous Paće, of whom tales will be told around the bonfire once the apocalypse passes. Then about photography, and how the DC-99, of which he remembers that I gave it the name, had an exhibition on the main square, and how those photos don't sit with him, watched them from many angles and distances, found nothing in them. Word after word and I explained to him why I'm not going to the club anymore, because Brlja. Right, he said, there was an ivenat (our internal processed version of event) with lecture etc, by m$, and he was there with Brlja, and they sat through the presentation and then stood around for chat and snacks, and there three softies come to him, „are you that... Žorž?“. Sure amd, and then the guy explains to the other two that this is the legend who passed three m$'s exams in one day, and his name now adorns the top row of the memorial plate in our office, with precious few of other such legends. Well, fuckit, the buses and going there and back is such a drag, that I saw to cunt it up in just two visits - once two exams, few days later the other three. And during that talk Brlja kept inching in, by bits, to somehow push him back, then turned to pulling his sleeve, c'mon, it's getting late, let's go home, nudge nudge. Now whether he expected to cut some deal or had some other scheme in mind, or was just trying to push me out of sight, whatever, but really I don't understand what the fuck is wrong with that man.
And so I did near to nothing the whole day. I updated Byo to the site, which took a while, it seems I touched many articles in these two weeks. Didn't update the rest, because... found a bug somewhere, so I better fix that first, when I get the time.
Actually there is one ongoing thing which we regularly do whenever we catch a couple of minute - flattening the flies. At this time of year, when it's a bit colder and they're still lively, they seek to get in where it's warm, and our upstairs was open until tuesday. We had two flyswatters (slappers, in house slang, what you slap the flies with), so she remembered to buy two more in detelina, but one broke the same evening, when I hit a stinkbug with required strength. It's getting easier now, here this morning (28th), just two or three in the bathroom and as much in the kitchen. Interestingly, they regularly land in all the same places each time, so a real hunter, having once memorized those places, can quickly scout the area, dispatch a few, then wait for the rest to land on those places. They never learn, because they croak, and new ones have no idea and repeat the same. We're lucky that they're stupid.
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* which we sometimes call „STR Fraj“ - the abbr. meaning „samostalna trgovinska radnja“ - standalone retail shop - and „fraj“ being „free“ in german.
** the best episode of the hungarian cartoon about Gustavus, in which he's using a fine brush to fix the worn out „G“ on his cufflink, but he smudges it and decides to paint the whole cufflink black; at that, he smudges the desk, paints it too, then the floor, the walls, the next room, the staircase, the street... eventually there's a black blot spreading from Budapest.
Mentions: 12-VIII-2016., Anita Jennifer Berger (Anita), Byo (Byo), DC-99, detelina, Endre Felbab (Eči), eos70, gibanica, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Goran Staković (Brlja), Gradivoj Sredljević, gugolj, house dictionary, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Juliška, Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), Majkrosoft (m$), majstor, majstor Mile, Mića the electrician, Milan Nastić, nanovo, Radoslav Pajkov, Ryu (Raja), Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), sGradlj.com, Stanley Berger, Trbnjevo, vekšmajzl, zmajček, Željko Nikolović, in serbian