Wednesday but it feels like Saturday...

So the phone saga continues and the kitchen looks like a graveyard for ancient Blackberries!  I have my old old one which does work but having got wet (explanation in yesterday's blog) the sound quality is appalling - people can't understand what I say and I can't understand what people are saying to me.  I have a 'spare' which was given to me and is still locked to a UK network and I have mine which I use.  I did manage to get the battery from mine charged by putting it in the spare and everything seemed to be ok until I kept getting notification of text messages but no text appearing in the list - this is clearly no good and possibly dangerous if someone thinks they have contacted me and I haven't received the message.  I am now in search of a new phone but with keys as I really don't want a touch screen.

We had a visitor in the conservatory today - in fact we get dragonflies in all the time but generally they are battering themselves against the glass in an attempt to get out.  This one was hanging from the plant in the corner and at first I thought it was dead.

We mainly get red ones darting around the pool but this was a grey/blue colour.  They must all be pretty confused at the moment as John has emptied the pool in readiness for its refurbishment.  We haven't really made much progress on that front as we are waiting for samples of a new 'finish' to come into one of the shops in Paphos so we can either rule it out as not suitable or include it in our decision making.

We are a bit in limbo on the maintenance in general at the moment as we are waiting for Bassam to finish at Elaine's so that we can have him here to help with the tiling of the flat roof and we are waiting to hear from the painter Tony as to whether he is going to be able to paint the outside of the house otherwise we are probably going to tackle it ourselves which would mean that the inside painting would be put back a while.

In the meantime John is working his way through his list of more minor jobs when he has a spare moment.  Today he was rearranging the light fittings - new lights in the kitchen mean that we have moved the spotlights there into the bedrooms and the spotlights from our bedroom into the toilet.

I used to have the letters L,O, V and E propped up on top of lights in the spare room and they can't go there anymore so I decided to recycle them and put them somewhere else so I am doing my tissue paper thing to decorate them - will show you the end result in due course but hope to find a space for them somewhere in our bedroom as I am choosing colours that will go with the paint we have chosen.

I had an audience watching my crafting (was doing it in the kitchen as my Amazing Space craft room is still in the ideas stage).  Chivers was clearly very interested and watching my every move whilst Boris was finding it all very boring.

It amazes me how he can just sleep anywhere - and I mean anywhere - today he wasn't even really on the sofa and he was sound asleep with back legs hanging off the side.

I could fill this blog with pictures of the cats they are just such characters - each one very different from the other - Chivers is the stoic, gentle one, Minnie the skittish one, Charlie the bruiser and Boris the talker!

Anyway with the day at home it felt very much like a Saturday especially when I shot off down to Polis to do some shopping - shopping and take my poor old laptop down to Kyriacos to see if it can be raised from the dead.  It has one of those annoying intermittent issues - when it is up and running it is absolutely fine but if it has to be switched off for any reason the screen decides whether or not it wants to spring to life and without the screen you are buggered.  I took it to another place in Paphos where they replaced just about everything and it still didn't work so I gave up with them and thought I would try somewhere local instead.

Before doing the food shopping I took the opportunity to take a good look around the Home Concept Shop which is opposite.  I met the woman who owns the shop Dora and made sure she was ok with me taking photographs and I am now very hopeful that I might be a recipient of one of the goodies she puts up to win each week on Facebook!!

This is a lovely shop which so many nice things in it and we are lucky to have it in Polis.  Ok so some of the stuff might be a bit more than you might buy it in Jumbos but then you haven't had to drive down to Paphos to get it.  Anyway I reckon she will do very well with Christmas coming up as there are all sorts of nice little gifts in there.

 It is the middle of October and the weather is glorious - we benefit from cool evenings up in Drouseia which makes sleeping much easier - still only a sheet and a throw on the bed and no sign of requiring the lightweight duvet just yet which is good - there have been all sorts of rumblings about it being another hard winter here - let's hope that isn't the case although we will be prepared as John is busy sorting the seasoned wood ready for the wood-burner and the PV system means we have electricity in the bank to fund the use of our electric panel heaters when the time comes.

We were visited this afternoon by the local goats although the field next door doesn't appear to have much for them to eat - when we first came we used to panic when they appeared next door because Chivers hated them and would dash into the field and we though he might end up getting kicked or he would follow them beyond his normal boundaries.  Now he doesn't bat an eyelid when they arrive.  Boris was a bit more interested but sat at a safe distance on the wall watching them.  There are two rather large goats with magnificent horns in that herd - maybe Boris had an encounter with one of them the other week when he had that awful injury.

It was Sean and Sharon's last night in Drouseia and we decided to take a walk into the village for something to eat knowing that there is now at least one taverna that is open every day and we don't have to notify in advance.  It was a little cool sat outside so once we had eaten we took the cribbage challenge indoors much to the amusement of the locals who were completely confused by the proceedings.