An Antipodetember Evening
The last few days the temperature has been nice, warm, even a bit "muggy," with big purplish clouds rolling over rumbling with unseen thunder and dropped random fleeting showers. When I got home from work it was one of those pleasant reverse-September evenings as I walked across to the other side of my village to for the last day of some training with the firebrigade. My walk takes me first across an open park area that used to abutt an open field with cows grazing in it, though now they've built two houses on part of hte field (urban encroachment!), across a little bridge, through another park, and then along the shopfronts of Main Street. As I was walking past the Historic Center I saw one of the staff of the local newsletter in the open doorway, and stopping to talk to her saw others of the staff in the room inside in which they meet. They waved me in and greeted me with "we were just talking about you!"
It turns out they want me to write an article about a recent bee incident in town that I was involved in. I'll spare the details here for now and just share the finished article. It should be fun though because I'll get to interview my friend Joe and his kids (appx 14 and 10?) for it. Then the staff invited me to go to the pub with them but I told them I had this training.
The fire brigade training has been to wear breathing apparatus ("BA"). We met for five Wednesday evenings finishing today, learning everything we need to know and practicing putting the gear on and off (but mostly on), over and over again, as the final test would be to be able to put it all on in 100 seconds. The biggest struggle for me was not getting straps tangled, just trynig unsuccessfully to grab the other end of the helmet strap at the very end could take ten seconds, but in the end I felt I got it seemlessly for the final test. When the instructor said it had taken me a minute and twenty seconds for a moment i thought I'd failed before realizing I'd finished in 80 seconds.
With everthing finished the members settled in to chat a bit and I was debating weather to socialize more with the brigadees or the newsletter staff, though the fact that I hadn't eaten yet was compelling me towards the pub. When conversation turned to puss filled growths their cows get and "look I have a video on my phone from when I popped it its so gross!" I decided to make my exit.
At the pub I caught the newsletter staff somehow having only just ordered so I was able to order only slightly behind them (through some sort of oversight in the kitchen one of them actually got their food after me!) and ate this "double baked pork belly" --
Now I'm sitting at my computer, obviously. I have a livestream of a bunch of different live feeds around Kyiv open on another monitor, which I've been doing lately. At least one of my friends has been trying to pretend the war isnt' happening and apparently muted the group chat due to "too much war talk" but for me it's most comforting to "see that Kyiv is still there." Most of the cameras actually show life seemingly going on as normal, cars drive down the streets, pedestrians walk around.. but every now and then you can hear booms in the background, or the air raid sirens go off... followed by even louder booms. Makes it feel very real. It is very real. To each their own and what they need to do for their mental health but I'm over here sitting with Kyiv.
Though after a long day of filling 10 liter buckets with honey at work, before I go to bed I need to do one more things ... fill some 10 liter buckets with honey for an order of my own honey.