Today is my designated cleaning day and even I will admit the house really needs it. So I have decided to catch up with my Blog instead. I know I am the worlds best procrastinator when it comes to big jobs but I actually think I have earned a breather today having already completed a 4.5km walk with the dog through the Buda hills and it’s only 9.25am. Aren’t I good? I recently discovered that we are spitting distance from a circular walking route, which is marked the whole way round with little red circles on trees and telegraph poles so even I can’t get lost. And since my new neighbour and I started sharing the school runs I only need to get the children ready for 8am on a Monday, leaving me free to don my scruffs and get out early with the dog. Which is good because we just booked our first skiing holiday for 2 years and I seriously need to build up some fitness before I hit the slopes. Luckily this new walk is a killer, Nobby and me call it ‘The Thigh Burner’ because it goes up to about 430m above sea level according to the map whereas our house is nearer 200m. It doesn’t sound like much until you realise you cross a snow-line on the way up - this morning I was getting pretty wet on the lower slopes as all the ice melts off the trees (at last, a thaw) then as we reached the peak we were trudging through fresh snow. This is such a far cry from the old English winters I was used to.

Anyway, I reckon I have earned a little blog, plus I was thinking what to write on the walk round. I do mean to write it down more frequently but every time I head for keyboard something comes up, like ice storms, gas shortages, power cuts and sleepovers… And if I ever do sit in front of the computer I always have something more pressing to look up, such as skiing holidays or birthday parties, or trying to find information in English about ice storms and gas shortages. See, due to the language barrier and lack of TV we are getting most of our news third hand and somewhat last minute these days. The first I knew about a weather alert last week was from the lady I was palming the children off onto while I went to a meeting. Ooh, there’s some other news – I have a little voluntary job now, clerking for the school Parents Advisory Committee. The head offered me the position last week in the full knowledge that I would take it because I wrote her a rather whining email the week before telling her what I thought could be improved at the school. So I rather had to put my money where my mouth is and muck in, although I have sent another whiny email about the chosen time for these committee meetings - 4.30 in the afternoon on a school day. It means that in order to do the unpaid work I have been craving to help stop me talking to the wall and the dog all day, I will have to pay a babysitter for 2 hours… I have a feeling this committee will rue the day they invited me to join them, but I have already been announced in the school newsletter so now they’re stuck with me, ha!

So, the second time I knew about this ice storm was 7am the day is was due to hit, when the school phoned to say it was going to be closed for the day because of the dangerous roads. So the children and I had a lovely lie-in and eventually opened the curtains expecting to see some spectacular natural phenomenon raging outside the windows. But it just looked like drizzle. You could have mistaken it for a typical English winters day. Until Tiggy took a couple of steps out of the back door on her way for a wee and slid off across the patio like a scene from Bambi. Poor little mite. It was truly treacherous out there, just like a skating rink, Nobby had a really hard time getting back from the bus stop that evening and its only 200 yards. School was closed again the next day although the ice was slightly better on the main roads so we made it round to K’s house and holed up there for the day, ordering in takeaway pizzas for lunch, yummy.

I think I just need to get used to being the last to know about everything from now on, case in point, the gas shortage. My neighbour mentioned something about her company turning off all the heating at the office to save gas one day, I think it was when I was telling her how our boiler seemed to be doing something funny. I subsequently called the landlord out to have a look at it and it turned out it was functioning perfectly normally, only I had never paid attention to it before. I looked a right numpty. But he said it was OK to be cautious during a gas crisis. What gas crisis? says I. It seems Russia had cut off all supplies to Europe through our neighbours the Ukraine several days before, over some argument or other between the two, and we were all living off reserves. Luckily Hungary has about 100 days supply in stock so we weren’t in any imminent danger of having to light a fire in the lounge to keep warm (which would have been fun seeing as we don’t have a chimney…) but apparently our other neighbouring countries were running short so Hungary started selling off some of their stock to them – ever the opportunist. The latest I heard is that the supply was switched back on after some high-powered intervention in the dispute, however the gas still isn’t coming through properly because they switched off a system that was never meant to be switched off and now they can’t get it running again.

And if you think that’s laughable, how about the directive that came through from the Budapest officials the other Sunday morning. Yes Sunday. At 10am they announced that because the smog/dust pollution in Budapest had just risen to some nasty high level, Budapest residents could only drive their car every other day from Monday onwards. The system was simple – ‘if your car registration number is even you can only drive on even-numbered days of the month, and if your car registration number is odd, you can only drive on odd-numbered days’. Unfortunately Nobby’s team had a 2-day meeting on Monday and Tuesday which meant that to comply with the restrictions, only those people with even-numbered plates could drive there on the Monday but they couldn’t drive back on the Tuesday. And those with odd-numbered plates could drive home on Tuesday but would have to hitch a ride there on Monday. I wonder how many other people’s Sundays were written off in frantic phone calls trying to arrange even-numbered buses and contact an entire work-force to change their travel plans? Or trying to invent the incredible shrinking car you can pop in your pocket and take with you? Personally I didn’t have a lot of options in terms of getting the children to school so I decided to flout the rules and take my chances if I happened to get stopped by the police. As I drove along absently noting number plates I noticed quite a lot of other people doing exactly the same thing that Monday morning. In the end the police were never given any sanctions to impose anyway and the restriction was lifted on Tuesday lunchtime. I haven’t yet heard if that means it all worked…

So, I suppose I should get on with the cleaning now and stop avoiding it. There were 6 children running around here on Saturday night, 5 of whom stayed the whole night, so the dust I have been content to leave until I can write my name in it has been considerably stirred and is floating across the landing like tumbleweed in a bad Western movie. It doesn’t help that the dog has started moulting again and recently developed a habit of coming upstairs whenever she realises she is alone in the lounge with Pickle. He likes giving her big, squeezy hugs and teasing her unmercifully to show her how much he adores her but I’m not sure she sees it that way and runs to Mummy, leaving a trail of fur behind her. I am not sure which one of them to enrol in Dog Borstal first for re-training.

Right, hand me that duster, I’m going in.