04-X-2021.
To Čankovo on 28th. Only the džezva (coffee pot) got stolen meanwhile, not the pumpkins, though there is a trail through the weeds on their side, and through the band we let grow on our side of the fence. We picked the pumpkins and loaded them into Joda. Pumped some water for Nina's aquarium, says that's the best one around, confirmed by both her aquarist and her own observation.
On thirtieth we completed the season, distilled the last two batches, which ended by dark, but was worth it. Wasn't quite raining, just a drop here and there, neither cold nor hot, just the right feel to it. The season's summed up at 96 liters.
On second there was the annual gathering of the rasejani, same place as two years ago. She didn't feel like going, the kids would go mad with boredom there, there's no playground... The weather promised to be bad, but turned out to be perfect, not a cloud. Still, Raja and Violet slid into night shift. Could be crammed into daily, but would be cranky all day.
Zlotvor and his wife picked me up, as agreed, at the tavern across the little train station, exactly on the mark - he pulled into the parking just as I made last five steps to it. She was fresh from the airport, her first takeoff was at 1:30, from Jordan, where she's overseeing some EU project, not as a construction engineer (which she is) but more to check where money goes and that it serves the designated purpose. I carried only the speakers and a liter of tutifruti, no camera.
She needed to pee so we stopped along the way to have a coffee. Saw that MXM's petrol pump is up and running, but the nicely put together restaurant is gone, not a trace. Too bad.
Once there, found the gang in full composition - Stinge, ajVar, Škrba with maam, the host with his (sister absent, didn't hear where), pLazić, Magi. Of course, Kunta at the kettle, comes as default now. The only one missing was Maltez, in Dubai, some construction, design bureau, whatever. Didn't see him since 08-VIII-1995., though they should be about, their daughter is a student in Prague, but no, his maam is on ugly terms with Škrba, devil'd know about what they cunted up, and they won't be coming when he's present, and he always is.
A proppose the Pest concert, Stinge told me how he then looked at Go and me. It was a huge event for him, to see an old rocker bring his 16 year old daughter to a Stones concert, and he swore that so will he, if he ever had a female child. He did and he did, when his daughter was fifteen, took her to Copenhagen, dunno whose gig it was, some big name for sure.
Kunta also got me into such roundabout pedagogy, his son runs linux („dad, can't help you, you suffer from them windowses, only yourself to blame“). So he'd drop a hint about me here and there, to pass few bits of wisdom along, but his son was finally sold when he mentioned solitaire and how I kept rewriting it in each new language. Don't know whether he got him to play it.
The gulaš was on the level, even though he missed out on tendons and knuckles again, but made up by including some bit of smoked meat, hitting the taste just right.
The tutifruti remained practically untouched, only the host sampled it a bit („smoooooth... must do one more“), so I gave it to Stinge, as I promised I owed him for the advice to buy the C4 instead of C3.
We split around sunset, Zlotvor's wife finally crashed, confessed she couldn't even stand anymore, heart asleep, and I joined them, and Stinge too. Around Kikinda it was already dark. Heard another bunch of stories along the way. Day passed well, all in all.
I took them through my shortcuts through the town, to avoid the center, though it's evening and not congested at all, but at least I didn't have more than a kilometer to walk, and they had to make just one turn to hit the road to Belgrade (as I saw that Zlotvor was prone to some confusion).
Bilja sent some email on sunday, to meet on sunday or monday, which led me to think it's the next weekend. Turns out she's here already, with daughter (older one). Sparse and confusing communication as usual, I miss half of needed information, but this time we don't even think of looking for her, see you at Dragana's tomorrow and that's it.
The weather is still nice, second miholjsko summer, not to go in just shirt but an unbuttoned jeans jacket suffices. No socks, just clogs. Sanda and Linda warn me that the right clog has a hole at the thumb. Tried to go to Springfield but there was some kid's birthday party, so we settled for the park behind the community. The girls got into a fight among themselves, so we called it quits and quickly packed to go. A bunch of kids were playing with a little drone (with a camera or not, dunno and don't care), and as I got up from the bench, found it hovering a hand's breath from my face. Just nudged it with the back of my hand and it fell. Didn't hear any complaints. They were running it by an app in a cell phone. See that, it doesn't even need a controller anymore, what for when everyone has quite a computer in his pocket, with several radio connections - ethernet, phone, blutooth, even a classic radio receiver. All of which is included even in my ancient nokla of ten years and a half.
On monday it was still so warm that she filled a tub with warm water and let these two wade in it for a while, as if it was still summer.
Škrba did the photos (as nobody else brought his canon, only he, he acquired a new lens, even stronger on the wide end), no more than usual amount. He got good shots of me a few times, and doing the duty of the group shot turned out well too - now he also has the remote, same sa mine, but I took the opportunity to pull mine from the pocket and do some shots between his shots when he wasn't looking, so it made for a few interesting situations.
In the evening, of course, at Dragana's, the 55th frendz parti. My rucksack was quite loaded - the eos70, flash, kilo and a half of apple [brandy], (... 45 words...), and a kilo of wine we bought along the way. Not in Roda this time, they're digging around there - they started from our old street, on the bager side, then crossed the street around Roda and... can't pass there on foot, and during the summer there were times when some places were impassable by car too. They are replacing the heating ducts, and while doing that they broke the water mains, so they'll have to do that too now, won't finish this year. We didn't go that way.
Though she stayed in Lidl for a while (bought a pair of jeans for herself too), we still arrived first. Soon Bilja and daughter came, then Borko. The daughter is a chick and a half, all kudos, and speaks serbian quite well. We drank as much as we drank, and the dinner went by, nothing big was said, which is a message in itself, and the message goes as „it matters not whether we last saw each other thirty years or three days ago, we'll still behave as if we saw each other yesterday“. Which is the way things are around here, the drama is off. Still, we felt that something was off when she asked the daughter, for the third time, whether her back hurts again and if she wanted to go. We saw the dog wasn't barking for village's sake but for dog's sake... She explained that, later, by our smoking (no matter that the window was open all the time), and the daughter is fully american, and Bilja is rather americanized. They left around 22:00, and we continued the usual way, bla bla until almost three. Borko didn't do himself like previous few times, though once he did stay in the toilet for some time, so Dragana sent me to check on him, see if he tore off the toilet seat cover again. When I got to the door, he too got to the door... so, nothing.
Our cabbie said he spent only that one night in jail, no big deal.
Mentions: 08-VIII-1995., bager, Biljana Lajković (Bilja), Čankovo, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), Dragojlo Kuntić (Kunta), eos70, frendz parti, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Gradivoj Škrbić (Škrba), Joda, Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), Mališa Borkovski (Borko), MXM, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), nokla, pLazić, rasejani, Ryu (Raja), Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), solitaire, Springfield, Stinge, Violet, in serbian