13-V-2016.
On seventh we went to Čankovo, but went to by stools first. We'll need them for many things that need to be done on the ground, I don't know how to crouch, within two minutes several muscles in my legs start hurting. And I intend to pull out the vine roots from the orchard behind the left side shed, the mower snags on them. I intend to do that slowly, just like I did those two stumps in 2006, but then I had the old speakerbox to sit on. The lady at the shop kept offering me various drab, gray and mixed mousefart colors. No good, I said, I'd lose those in two minutes, they're hard to spot, gimme something in color. And she took off half of the stack until she found the red one and the smaller green one. And then couldn't find the ones she took off. What did I say?
The stools are good, carry 120kg yet they're collapsible. The smaller one broke around 2020, and the red one, somewhat faded, is still in mint condition. We used both when distilling brandy - the stoker (me) gets the red one, chief of measurements (she) the green, coffee goes on a lidless old hand fridge, still works as coffee table.
Security day... and I remembered it.
We started seeing Go and hers regularly now. Anita is such a sweet little baby, just like her mother was, and the aunts. We don't call over skype on zmajček, we aren't lit properly there, but rather on her phone. It's a bit of a trouble to keep the phone upright. So far we manage to prop it on decomp's screen. I manage to take shots that way - not proper screenshots, doesn't work on android skype, but using eos40. The only fuckup is the unescapable moire, and the little bits of tobacco that always stick to the little screen. *
On fifteenth, then, I didn't carry the Canon but rather the little lumia, because hey, now that I have a proper video camera, I should show off my movie skills. And the occasion was extraordinary - Lena and Milan found an apartment, on the other end of Novi Beograd, and will live together from now on. Also extraordinary but actually regular, it's Milan's birthday, so she made a cake and brought it. He asked how**'s the cake. I said „ummmm... strong. That is, ahemmm... (dramatic pause...)... there's no better word. Strong.“ Later he said the description was spot on.
Even more extraordinary, we're meeting his parents - Stojan (about whom later) and his wife are old reporter wolves, she even reported from the The Hague proceedings, but now they are practically unemployed, because fuckit the politics. She once wrote, on Face or somewhere, a caustic comentary on how Vučić made the big photo op of his heroic salvation of that kid in the snow storm at Feketić, where the regular teams were already intervening but now had to wait, and he came with helicopters and TV team to carry one kid 50m. After that, she was promptly moved into the night shift in Tanjug, which is for beginners mostly, and she realized she won't have a chance to write anything important anymore. She couldn't take it, „I can't imagine I'll never again write an article“. That is, Tanjug was disbanded, there can't be any press agency owned by the state, everybody got fired, but then it kept on working (still does), and some select staff were kept on the job. Dead duck, but still flies. Madhouse.
We walked to some splav on Sava, by the end of Nehru's or Gandhi's, I guess the aborigines distinguish them somehow. The splav is all white inside, finely spruced up not in peasant (aka rustic) style, but rather riverboat. And the grub seems to be first league. Milan's mom wanted to have calamari. I remembered that I ate that, twice - once in the army, when Morkec knew a place and took me there, once in Cueblo. Ouch, the difference. While the first was just incredible, all the little squid were about three bytes each, young and tender, the other was no tentacles, just heads cut into 40mm rings or larger, then pohovano. Chewy, like skin of an old fish, no better than the frozen we once bought (okay then, thrice). So I joined her (was a pridrug - see house dictionary). This was just slightly better. Milan, we just learned, orders Karađorđe's steak whenever he can, and, his words, this is the place where they do it right. Confirmed again.
And, ah, they're both very happy that it's Lena. „Our Lena“, they said with pride.
The downside of the lumia camera is that the little trigger button has no feedback, and I'm blind enough to never know whether the little red dot is on or off on the little screen*. So there were several accidental shots of my jeans and table legs, and more missed shots that I thought I made but didn't. Too bad.
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* in serbian version of this paragraph the word 'little' appears not at all. Each noun which has it in english is in one of its several diminutive forms. Sorry about your language.
** the word is „kakav“, and exists in almost every language except english. A word which excludes answers like „the cake feels fine, thank you, had a bit of a fever but is well now“. It should be „wuch“ and answered with „such“. Sorry about your language.
Mentions: Anita Jennifer Berger (Anita), Cueblo, Čankovo, Damir Molnarić (Morkec), decomp, eos40, Gorana Sredljević (Go), house dictionary, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Milan Nastić, pohovano, splav, Stojan Nastić, zmajček, in serbian