Spending Time with our Stalkers...

There is great excitement in the Wiseman household as the three tomato plants which we were given by Mel and Simon are now beginning to produce fruit - how exciting - nothing tastes quite like fresh, home-grown tomatoes. The only trouble is that in the heightened temperatures that we are experiencing at the moment they need loads and loads of water.  The weather forecasters were quite right about this weekend we are certainly in the midst of a heatwave.

Wendy and Bill (our stalkers) are coming up to stay with us overnight which is brilliant and I am cooking a meal for them tonight.  My trusty old pressure cooker has come out of the cupboard and I have a stifado bubbling away on the hotplate.  Nothing fancy tonight - we are starting with dips, salad and pittas followed by stifado, lemon roast potatoes and peas and finishing with baklava.  I would really like to say that I made the baklava but I cannot lie - I bought two of the biggest stickiest pieces that I could find when I was in Paps yesterday.  I have also saved one of the fabulous puddings that Galadia brought over so that Wend and Bill can have a taste of that too.

Wendy and Bill arrived around three o'clock having taken a bit of a misery tour around the back streets of Inea and Aroudes because they took the first turning to Droushia and not the second - a simple mistake to make and even I would struggle to find our house from Inea!  Still nothing spoiled and after a hot and sticky drive they were grateful to cool off in the pool.  All thoughts of dispensing with the pool have now gone out of the window - 30 degrees of loveliness.

With dinner under control we took a walk down into the village, bumping into Simon who was walking his two rescue dogs Cleo and Hector, who immediately embarrassed him by pooping on the road!  At least it was right near a bin so that he could clean up and throw away and not have to cart it round in his pocket in temperatures over 30 degrees - NICE!!

You get quite a lesson in foraging walking from our house into the village as at various times of the year you pass by trees bearing lemons, plums, figs, pomegranates, peaches and almonds - not to mention the vines, the artichokes, the wild garlic and probably a hundred and one other things that we do not, as yet, recognise.  We wandered down to Stathmos to enjoy a quiet beer sitting under the vines watching the activity in the village which is so much busier now that we approach peak holiday season.  It seems that many of the South African and Australian Droushian Cypriots have returned back to their roots for a while.







Dinner was a leisurely affair, you cant really go wrong with that sort of meal and everyone seemed to enjoy it - especially Galadia's pudding which was quite a revelation to Wendy and Bill.  The warmest night we have had so far this year we took our drinks up onto the roof terrace to lie on the sunbeds in the dark and watch the stars - with so little urban pollution up here they are spectacular.

We managed to find the Haye v Chisora fight and watched that before retiring to bed.