Monday April 8th - HAPPY BIRTHDAY LAURA...

The weather did not seem too bad this morning although it was very blustery - it was a bright start to what turned out to be a cold and stormy day.  John had brought the chairs and cushions from the decking furniture indoors overnight and this was where the cats had decided to make their beds for the night - no wonder everything we have gets covered in cat hairs!  Top tip - don't where anything black to our house!

We had breakfast and Mum and Dad made their way back home to Emba.  As we were looking across the fields we got very excited to see the yellow of a CYTA wagon makings its way (hopefully) to ours to fix our internet problem.  I ran out to make sure that the man found out house.  He was a slight thin man of few words with a miniscule fag butt dangling from his bottom lip.  He came into the garden and demanded to know where 'the box' was.  We think that primarily he wanted the shelter of 'the box' to enable him to light his miniscule fag butt and only secondarily to look at the 'problema'.  He did something with wires and a meter and a handset, moved two wires and declared that 'it is fixed'.  John asked if we should do a speed test on the internet but skinny fag butt man said that if all lights were on the router then 'it is fixed'.  All lights were on the router.  

Chuffed that we were once again in touch with the outside world John sat down with the laptop to perform a CYTA speed test in anticipation of our 6+ meg bandwidth to be faced with a paultry .2 of a meg - worse than before.  Time to ring the fault line again and give them hell.  The only thing was that we could not ring the fault line as, once again, we had lost our home phone and my mobile was fast running out of charge.  We eventually managed to get through to the fault line who promised that skinny fag butt man would be back 'within the hour'.  We were not impressed.

SFBM returned within about 15 minutes with fag butt perilously close to burning a blister on his bottom lip and buried his head in 'the box' once more and declared that the fault was 'in the house'.  John looked at him incredulously and said that as we had better internet and home phone prior to whatever it was that he had just done then it was unlikely that the problem was 'in the house'.  Unimpressed SFBM shrugged his shoulders and declared categorically that the problem was 'in the house'.  Anyway to cut a long story short (as Spandau Ballet would say) he made a phonecall to someone - presumably the person at the other end of the two wires that had been moved and hey presto we had internet and home phone again - internet but only at a speed of less than one meg.  SFBM shrugged and said that 'this was not his problem' and gave us the number of the fault line.  

Eventually we got phone, we got internet running at around 6 meg and we got a complaint logged with CYTA - it had only taken a week.

I managed to make it to Sheila and Klaus's for art.  John dropped me off as I was running late and I intended to walk back when finished.  John was going down to Badders on the bike as it needed a run.  I am getting very close to finishing my current project - I only have a bit of background left and then it is the fine-tuning to make the flower stand out and have a more three dimensional appearance.  As I worked away with Sheila the weather began to deteriorate and it got darker and windier and started to rain.  John text me to say that he would pick me up when I was ready for which I was very grateful.  He had gone down to Badders but only Trev had joined him - they had hung around for a while before John decided to make his way back home before it rained.  He was not so lucky and just as he approached Droushia the heavens opened and he got wet.

The weather calmed a little although it was still very grey.  John and I decided that we would take the bike for a spin and go down to check out exactly what was happening at the Vasillikon winery now that it has moved to its new location.  Just as we were getting ready I was stood in the conservatory when a flash of dayglo yellow going along the bottom of the road caught my eye.  There is only one person I know who sports a dayglo yellow jacket and that is Trev.  On closer inspection it was clear that in hot pursuit of the dayglo yellow man (DYM) was Vicki and they were heading our way!!  DYM was taking Vix on a little jaunt from Pano Arodes cross country to Droushia.  It doesn't seem that far by car and it certainly doesn't appear to be uphill for a lot of it but it is and Vix was in need of some refreshment!  We provided them with a cuppa before they remounted and made their way back home - at least if it had been mainly uphill coming to us then they would have the luxury of it being mainly downhill on the way back!

We went out on the bike down to the winery.  One of the brothers was there and invited us to take a good look round.  It is by no means finished but this is now where the wine sales are taking place.  He says that he hopes to have more facilities available before the summer.  It is a very impressive building with some outstanding views and it would be a great place to go to try the wine and have a meal a bit like they do at Agios Fotios (only a lot nearer!).

Having the internet back meant that we were able to go onto Skype and check up on John's family - his mum in particular after her recent stay in hospital.  No sooner had we fired it up than we were contacted by our old friends Darren and Marie Craig.  Darren was on leave in Spain from his job in Trinidad and Tobago - and apologies for the old photograph Daz but this was the only one I could find on the internet - the photographs I have of you and Marie must be at least 20 years old!

We are very excited because it sounds like Darren and Marie will be over in Paphos next year taking part in some sort of reunion and that means that we will get to see them - I don't know when they were in Paphos last - it could have been all those years ago when they stayed in Mum and Dad's maisonette in Mediterranean Valley!!