Romania's very own John Prescott ( sort of..)

The last two days have been spent tramping all over the hills, and making sure all our plans are actually happening. The last job today was to go to look at an orchard as far away from Mosna as it is possible to be without being in the next Mayor's jurisdiction.
There are about 19 owners in total, and ( because we have to buy ALL a seller's land so they can get the extra pension from the government) we already own 2 bits of it. Some of the orchard was completely derelict and other parts were well maintained, and the access is mostly overgrown to keep the uninitiated out. Many of the trees still had apples that noone had bothered to collect, but many more of them were dead with huge balls of mistletoe having strangled them to death. I can feel an EU project coming on...
As we made our way back we saw the Mayor's car at the Forrest Man's house, and dropped in to say hello. The TV was on and there was huge excitement. It was a news programme, and they were about to show the film of Basescu hitting a small boy at a 2004 rally. We all watched fascinated as he punched the boy in the face. It has apparently been shown endlessly, which is understandable. The difference with our own JP ( as Tony Blair said at the time, Hey, that's John) is that the boy had only asked for his autograph.
The report went on to say that the boy, now older and living in Italy, had gone into hiding as he had had threatening calls - including death threats. Basescu at first denied it happened, then said it was a doctored video, and his latest is that he doesn't remember the incident. As Alin would say, we shall see.
As an aside, Basescu was a ship's captain, and was recently asked what he would do if he lost the election. When he replied that he would probably return to being a ship's captain, he was gently reminded that as Minister of Transport, he had completely sold off the Romanian Merchant fleet. This was very much akin to our own Gordon Brown's brilliant decision to dispose of most our gold.
We ended up having meatball tarragon soup and sarmale with them, whilst the TV endlessly debated the pros and cons of the incident. In the UK nowadays I suspect such an incident would immediately lead to prosecution and imprisonment, but this is Romania. As many people will now NOT vote for him as those who were not going to vote for him WILL.
We will see.
PS
I just heard a weather report on the BBC. Aparently there is flooding in Puddletown....