Day 375 ‘The Rise and Fall of Village Tailoring’

I started to write a book today about the rise and fall of village tailoring, which was the theme of my Master’s Degree. It has nine chapters and looks at my family’s connection with village tailoring from 1940’s to 2010 with lots of interesting facts about the history of business, economics and policy making, the effects of centralised communists fashion to the blooming western second hand clothes shops in Eastern Europe and the myth behind the cost of tailoring. So Exciting!!!

Day 374 The Beauty of Everyday Life

It was very busy and in great need of sleeping!

Day 373 Racing Thermometer in Atelier V.

Victory! The design desk and the sewing machine table got to their final position in the studio. Still a lot to do, but I have to concentrate on the dresses at the moment, and leave the craft bits and bobs for October. The idea of decorating and doing all the necessary gardening by the end of September was an ambitious plan, but lacked reality. I am just about trying to overcome this and making huge effort not to overanalyse it. Finally it is only 25C and funny enough I am a bit cold. After the heat-wave this is what I am left with, a jumper and a pair of long trousers on a normal summer day. I feel somewhat sad today, but most likely the temperature drop is playing with my emotions. Losing that most awaited 15C is not at all as easy as it seemed to be. I was so looking forward to this and now I feel a bit cheated that it happened from one day to another.

Day 372 Happy Birthday, Angel!

This day is our family’s legendary ‘Angel-Day’. It is my wonderful mum’s birthday. I cooked a French-English dinner for lunch: Non Alcoholic Fruit Infused French Onion Soup, Turkey Pie and Apple Crumble. I can’t believe I never made an apple crumble in England! I packed everything by 1pm and just before I was going to leave for the birthday lunch there came a summer storm. After half an hour waiting it started to slow down and I got on my bike, but half way through it started again, and this time it got me on my bike. I have never ever got so soaked in my life. We had a really lovely time and as we watched TV after coffee I told mum how much I appreciate her. ‘Not everybody does.’ She said with her very own disappointed modesty. And I just smiled as we carried on watching the film. The most mature kind of child-parent love is the one when we learn through rebellion to value the deepness of really knowing each other. Thank you Dear Mum to assist through my rebellion and waiting patiently for me to come to value you and now it is my turn to be patient.

Day 371 …And Ladies and Gentlemen One of the 7 Untold Affairs of the Past 10 Years…

Finally I got to the point when I can’t go on like this anymore and I can’t hide behind the excuse of exhaustion anymore. I must confess I need new glasses.

Day 370 Pear Jam with Vanilla Latte and the ‘Lost Praise of Singleness’

I had the most productive day for about two weeks. Yes, it is still extremely hot, but I got tired of being exhausted by the heat. I got up early cleaned and cooked and visited friends. I had a couple of home-made vanilla lattes, made some pear jam from my dear old tree in the back garden. It’s been a really good day. Truth doesn’t come in a first class ‘Multi-Futuristic Capsule’. It sort of sneaks into conversations we have with friends or people we don’t even know. This blog has very little to do with my private life, but this truth, which was delivered over a coffee has to be an exception, simply because it’s been making me laugh since then. Since I was a child, I had an image in my mind of my older self when I was going to be in my late 30’s. And I indeed became that image. Even though I have fought long battles that seemed endless and excruciatingly painful form time to time with a heartless enemy called The Fear of Loneliness. And something very small I can’t even describe happened last Christmas when against all my fears I simply became whole and truly content on my own. We all have different lives which carry different meanings in different times. Mine at this time of my life is living in peace with the very thing I used to think was my biggest enemy: singleness. And now after so long we became good companions. I have never been happier in my life. And the truth is it doesn’t matter how much we know and feel what is good for us, those around, even friends would question it. While I longed for love I was told to be happy with my singleness and now that I am happy with my singleness I am told that I should look for love. Even if we are content with our situation, there are always question marks following us. But another truth is as long as we are able to recognise our own truth as happiness, the questions will never become our enemies.

Day 368-369 Paradise Lost?

I tried to catch up with some e-mails, but it was too hot. Downstairs: 29.5C, upstairs 34C. Outside almost 40C. All I did today was picked some pears once it was cool enough to be able to sneak out of The House and made lunch a bit earlier somewhere else, where I had to cycle in this heat. The things we do to see people and have lunch with. We also discussed what to do with their garden from October. And my Garden. The idea of being able to make both of them a paradise of herbs, fruits and vegetables makes it almost real that it might have never been lost.

Day 367 In Memoriam of His Gentle Smiles

And that strange feeling which cuts into one with the coldness in the shape of a feared blade of a knife: he died. And the silence followed and all one can remember is the gentleness and smiles of the person in the echoing word: suicide. And of course everyone was shocked and nobody suspected anything. And I set and chat and on the way home as the wheels of the bicycle sang on a continuous rhythm I was indeed still shocked. And still can’t believe, that we laughed so many times for so many years in those cool rooms of an old house, where I used to go as a guest taking cakes. And it will never happen again the same way.

Day 366 Lake Balaton

Hot, hot, hot. Once again I am roasting on the top floor and had to get the fan going otherwise I would faint. The heat-wave is going to last until next week and it is only Tuesday. I know soon enough we are all going to think about the wonderful hot summer nights when the temperature drops to 0 or minus. The Garden is so thirsty, but there is no point to water now, almost too late until the delayed August summer storm comes. And we wait… One dress is in the post with a modest enough cover of cleavage added for a lovely friend. My brother invited me to Lake Balaton but I have a few things to do this week and wouldn’t make sense to travel so far for only 2 days. Maybe another time. I haven’t been since I was a teenager and almost forgotten how it looks and feels like. Maybe another time. I have memories of a high school trip there and an essence of happiness locked in a photo with a smile I loved so much. It used to be inside my wardrobe in the dormitory and been asked many times if I fancied the guy I was on the photo with. No, I said, but I love the freedom of expression in the laughter which was captured so well when the person taking it asked us to cheer. I don’t think most of the people believed me. Maybe another time…

Day 363-365 St. Stephen’s Day and The New Bread

I could easily call this post ‘The Power of TV’ for the simple reason that I got a bit hooked on watching it since I got to Hungary. It played very little part in life for years, but now I feel like I am feeding a kind of ‘modern-day’ starvation with all sorts of Hollywood movies otherwise I would never watch. And if I hadn’t got a TV I wouldn’t really care. That is why I left a few days gap on the blog and doing all sorts of other important things with Vondores. This was a short season. And because this is the day when we celebrate St. Stephen our first Christian king and the New Bread there are so many amazing historic films on TV. At the moment I am watching ‘Feherlofia’ ‘(The Son of a White Horse)’ which is a famous animated film by Marcell Jankovics in the memory of of Hun, Avar and other people of the plains. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dN_vwI8Vqg This is a real piece of art. Symbolic, beautiful and truly engaging. Apart from watching TV too much. I went to Szeged with Lili and Angela on Saturday and to the village Gastronomic Day yesterday. It was good to meet friends and got invited to the After Church Coffee and Cake Club. I had no idea it existed. I have to fix a couple of dresses now while watching TV, I really feel the need to start doing things again after a couple of days resting  Yesterday someone asked me in a very concerned voice what was the matter that I came back. I told her there was no problem, but a decision after 12 very hard years to take some time out and think through what’s next. Most of the people I talk to want to know if I have found a job yet if I am looking for one or what I am going to live off. Because this is Hungary and not England it is normal to ask such private questions I just have to deal with it, because to say it is a private matter is considered rather rude. So, I just say I am taking time out to see what’s next. That is true but gives the false expression based on Hungarian standards, that I must be very well-off if I can afford to do so. Of course, I am not well-off. I did Inner City Mission during the last 9 months of my stay in London and it wasn’t easy. I just learnt to live off very little. And I know I need this time for Vondores…

Day 363-365 St. Stephen’s Day and The New Bread

I could easily call this post ‘The Power of TV’ for the simple reason that I got a bit hooked on watching it since I got to Hungary. It played very little part in life for years, but now I feel like I am feeding a kind of ‘modern-day’ starvation with all sorts of Hollywood movies otherwise I would never watch. And if I hadn’t got a TV I wouldn’t really care. That is why I left a few days gap on the blog and doing all sorts of other important things with Vondores. This was a short season. And because this is the day when we celebrate St. Stephen our first Christian king and the New Bread there are so many amazing historic films on TV. At the moment I am watching ‘Feherlofia’ ‘(The Son of a White Horse)’ which is a famous animated film by Marcell Jankovics in the memory of of Hun, Avar and other people of the plains. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dN_vwI8Vqg This is a real piece of art. Symbolic, beautiful and truly engaging. Apart from watching TV too much. I went to Szeged with Lili and Angela on Saturday and to the village Gastronomic Day yesterday. It was good to meet friends and got invited to the After Church Coffee and Cake Club. I had no idea it existed. I have to fix a couple of dresses now while watching TV, I really feel the need to start doing things again after a couple of days resting  Yesterday someone asked me in a very concerned voice what was the matter that I came back. I told her there was no problem, but a decision after 12 very hard years to take some time out and think through what’s next. Most of the people I talk to want to know if I have found a job yet if I am looking for one or what I am going to live off. Because this is Hungary and not England it is normal to ask such private questions I just have to deal with it, because to say it is a private matter is considered rather rude. So, I just say I am taking time out to see what’s next. That is true but gives the false expression based on Hungarian standards, that I must be very well-off if I can afford to do so. Of course, I am not well-off. I did Inner City Mission during the last 9 months of my stay in London and it wasn’t easy. I just learnt to live off very little. And I know I need this time for Vondores…

Day 362 TTV

I started to translate TTV (Perfectly Imperfect World) yay!

Day 359-361 Mikrokozmosz and The Gift of Happiness

I am so happy to be able to stay at The House with The Garden. I know I keep going on about it, but after having to live in flat shares and halls of residence abroad for 12 years it is so amazing to live in my own house in my own country. I love Hungary! It doesn’t matter for me what is in the historical past any more. All I need to do is to let God work through forgiveness and love within. And He does it so gently. There was no dramatic culmination so far just progress. He just brought me in contact with an elderly foreigner couple living in Hungary and made me listen to their historical negativity during a dinner party. At the end of the walk we took after the meal and discussing the long list of 20th century misfortunes Hungary had to face from Trianon to communism and the transition economy we still live in I very calmly just said I felt it was time to leave all that behind and do the best we can in the present whilst looking in the future with hope and simply by doing this we need to forgive and learn once again to live with dignity. And I didn’t only mean it for the rest of the walk. I meant it for my whole life and for that of my country. And this is pretty much in line with the book of Ecclesiastes I’ve been reading since I got home. I cannot fully enjoy my life here if I feel resentful towards those people, who are long dead, but made decisions which has heavy and long lasting effects on a nation of 15 million chopped into pieces, oppressed for almost a century and dramatically decreased in number. The children and grandchildren of those got nothing to do with their parents’ and grandparents’ political views and acts. And who can judge a child to pick up on his parent’s patterns? Nobody, apart from God Almighty. And we should remember that there were also times when Europe feared us. I just want to enjoy the present and look into the future with hope. I am actually relearning to appreciate my history and culture. There is so much to see in this little country. I’ve been watching the a series which was done 32 years after Pal Rockenbauer and his team filmed the ‘One and a Half Million Steps in Hungary’. It started in 1979 from Nagy-Milic to Irott-ko and the crew walked more than a 1000km on the ‘Kek Tura’ (Blue Route). I remember watching this as a small child with great excitement and it is so wonderful to see what happened after 32 years on the same places. We had an amazing time with Ruth, visiting the spa in Gyula and eating Munkacsy cake in the Kezmuves cafeteria. On the way to the airport the shuttle bus driver asked if she liked Budapest. ‘We didn’t stay in Budapest’ I said. ‘But there is so much to see in Budapest’ he said. ‘I know and in the rest of the county, too.’ The sky is vast and blue at the Great Plain (Alfold). There is nothing like the flat land for one who was born here. There is no hill our heart would long for so deeply throughout a life time no matter how long we stay in cosmopolitan cities and on sea sides, but the ‘puszta’ with its herds and cornfields. I love the trees greeting braches and the Lilliputian shades of the bushes. It is home.

Day 357-358 Food, food, food

I’ve been having an amazing time with Ruth since she arrived. We talk a lot and take little walks. My amazing mum cooked some delicious meals. I am not surprised I look like someone who is expecting.

Day 356 ‘Expecting?’

I can’t believe I started this blog about a year ago!!! This is just amazing. I just checked, my first post went out 08/08/2011. I must have miscounted at some point that I am 3 days behind, but that is absolutely fine. I am so proud of the Hungarian sportsmen and sportswomen at the London Olympics. They are doing so well from this little country which has the population of London, this is amazing achievement! Not so amazing: someone asked me today again if I was expecting! I seriously have to think about losing weight if I don’t want to keep saying: ‘No, I just put on some weight.’ I told Ruth this morning, I was going to tie a cardigan around my waist in case we bump into some of my friends at Bekescsaba and they would ask if I was expecting. She laughed. And she laughed even more, when someone did ask me. I did have seconds at dinner and ice cream with seconds. And we laughed that they might be twins or triplets so I must eat enough to keep going. People are so funny when they jump into conclusions, when they are sure someone is having a baby in there and after they are so apologetic and embarrassed that often make it worse, once the real the simple reason is nothing else but ‘weight-gain’ :-) We went to Munkacsy Mihaly House (http://www.museum.hu/museum/index_hu.php?ID=187) and Museum after to see the Hudak Weaving and Fashion studio’s Exhibition ( http://www.munkacsy.hu/index.fcgi?rx=&item=&nyelv=hu&menuparam3=185&type=3).

Day 355 Golden Lobelia

The Olympics is so amazing! I love watching. It’s good to have some time off before I start the ‘Golden Lobelia on a Flowing Coral Bed’ dress for a wedding. It is going to be a great Vondores adventure.

Day 353 – 354 Honeymoon

Unbelievable but the studio is ready to receive my first quests arriving this afternoon from England. I have to say yesterday afternoon I had to take a break and watch the men’s handball game between Hungary and Iceland, otherwise I would have got stressed about the state of the room. The handball was so nerve racking at some point at the end I thought I might just go back downstairs to carry on with the studio. I am so glad I didn’t do it, but screamed through the whole double extension as a true fan. Apparently many people did the same in the village and I believe in the whole country what’s more beyond. We won and earned a well-deserved place in the finals or whatever it is called when only 4 teams are playing for gold, silver, bronze and the 4th place. I am so proud of my little country. Apparently we are the 10th on the medal list, but I haven’t checked it, so I am not certain. Today hopefully we won more medals in the kayak-canoe races. I don’t mind what medals at all, because it is such an amazing result on its own to get into the Olympics, so I am very proud of every single sportsmen and women Hungary has in London. This little country is amazing! I am in Love with Hungary indeed. Of course I know this is the honeymoon period, but I am hoping to be on honey moon as long as I am here. I know I have changed a lot since moving to England, but I can sense that the country is changing as well and its people. The economic harshness of reality lurks around everybody, but the days are ours. We rule the days by the grace of God and no recession can change that. The deepness of darkness of course wants to stay and garb the joy, but the joy is incredible strong and stays. Even though the train stations are empty, the shops are closing and there are no jobs, I am hoping. I hope and believe that there is a better future here and one day we will start to increase again in numbers and overcome. The chests we are carrying on our shoulders will suddenly drop and break with its contents evaporating like steam in the fresh air. I believe we are already overcoming the jealousy and anger, stress and rage, lies and pain that the last century brought upon us and we can once again humbly and truly become joyful as we were so many times before. These are nothing else, but testing times. And what doesn’t breaks us, makes us stronger.

Day 352 The Race of Life – On Your Marks

I’ve been watching the Olympics almost all day whilst organising the studio. I feel ever growing respect towards all the competitors and for those who for some Olympics-politics reason didn’t get invited to the games, even though they should have been there by their performance on other championships. Decades of training, hard work and the expectations, the dreams can just go off as a fading shade of thin smoke in the wild quest of whys when a muscle is torn, a judge favours the other side and the wind blows with a whispering breeze of memories of coming second. How many hours of work is in a sprint, a water polo match or canoeing from the sportsmen, who is so passionate about achieving the best he can and the trainer who is so passionate about the sportsmen achieving the best he can that they both give years and years of their life to these dreams? At the same time, this is what we all do in our everyday life. We dream, we have expectations and of course others have expectations from us. We work hard, we try to achieve, we spend hours, days and years on projects from simply trying to be good daughters and good mums, good employees and employers. We try our best at work and we do indeed make mistakes as the girls at the water polo match. We share information with the wrong person as the girls miss the goals and we show attitude because we simply think we are right, whilst the girls push each other. We don’t get promoted and they get sent off. And of course those around us who are watching our mistakes easily ask why did you do that? As we do, watching the match. And we loose and cry and ask why. But when we win and laugh we even forget the existence of why because we experience for a brief moment: true happiness. Watching the Olympics is like watching our everyday life through a giant microscope.

Day 350 – 351 Big Things in a Small Place

350: Finally, I can rest a little bit before going back to my parents to feed the animals. 351: The hottest day of the summer so far and after some air ventilated sleep it is a lot easier to write. There is so much happening in this little place. Of course the scale of everyday life comparing to that of London is closed in a smaller space and time. And it has a certain charm, whilst we discuss the small things of life, which is great in that moment and have more importance than making decisions in the parliament. The piano is assembled and has its place in the music-library room. Once we finished with mum she said with a huge smile, it looked like an artistic corner. We had a coffee and spent some time to explore the instrument. When I came upstairs a couple of hours later, the carpet was burning my feet and the heat was unbearable. The studio still looks like a bombsite. I have a whole day tomorrow to make it safe and comfortable for Ruth’s visit. I also need to find time to sit down and write down some of the ideas I talked to Angela about. And I really need to make that a priority on Wednesday, otherwise it is the same as ever in London, where many things fought against what was really important for me: practising the skills I’ve learnt and was born with me.

Day 349 Back to Grass Roots

Sunday is coming. Still helping out on the farm. Dad is home from hospital. He nominated me to give him the injections he has to take as part of his recovery. I never ever thought I would be able to do anything like that, but given the importance of his healing, I am absolutely fine with it. We had an amazing meeting with Angela about Vondores. A lot of work needs to be done: researching market positioning, competition and all sorts. We looked at Dyson and Apple in innovation and talked through an idea going back to the grass roots of the birth of Glocal Trinnovation. I am watching men’s handball on TV. I love the Olympics!

Day 347-348 Heat-wave

Almost 40C. By 8am in the morning it is so incredibly hot. It is almost 7pm and still very hot. The piano has arrived. Yay! And tomorrow morning the Vondores meeting starts :-)

Day 346 Delay

I am so excited about a friend coming to visit me next week from England. We just finalised what time she will arrive. I love showing around in my most beloved Hungary. Praise God my dad is feeling well after his operation, which is really good news. I am off soon again to help out on the farm. The calves are really getting used to my presence there and happily take water from me. This of course changes my plans about the start date of Atelier Vondores, but as a child of my amazing parents it is my duty to help them when they need me. A couple of weeks won’t make that much of a difference anyway in waiting compared to many years past. I enjoy spending time with my mum and take part in her everyday life after so many years being away.