Sunday - we return to normal...

After the rotten weather yesterday it was a lovely surprise to wake to a fine bright morning although the wind was a little bit keen.  Sunshine pouring into the conservatory means that the house warms up much quicker and of course we can rely on the sun to generate us some electricity which is good because now we are using more as we need the panel heaters, the immersion heater and reluctantly tonight we are going to put the electric blanket into our bed - John will say not before time as he has to put up with my freezing cold feet after a nocturnal trip to the bathroom!

It is Sunday and we are gradually returning to our normal routine so today we were going down to Emba for lunch with Mum and Dad.  When we left this morning it was just 8 degrees in the car even though the sun was shining.  By the time we got down to Emba it was 15 degrees and I was sweltering in my boots and extra thick tights!!

On the way down we followed a wagon transporting shoats/geep - there is a big celebration on the Island on Wednesday as it is Epiphany the time when the Three Wise Men visited Jesus and also when John baptised Jesus - the locals get out the souvla big style so I am guessing that this will be the fate of the animals in the wagon.

As I said it was glorious down at Mum's - when we arrived she had walked down to Paps in search of the TV magazine and I decided I would walk down to meet her so I could make the most of the sunshine and get some fresh air

The driveway to Mum and Dad's (and Effie's) is a mass of colour at the moment with some beautiful roses out in full bloom.

It was a really pleasant stroll down to Paps and I caught up with Mum at the checkout where she was buying up their stocks of Best-In catfood - a favourite of our four and one which Fred will eat and it is about the cheapest we can get.

On our return from the supermarket Mum and I sat outside for coffee - by this time John had retired indoors because he was too hot, Dad had retired indoors because he was too hot and I was boiling alive in my winter woolies!!!  I am pleased to report that Dad is now feeling much much better which is a huge relief.

We had a really lovely lunch - Mum had gone to town and did some minted lamb hunks in the slow cooker with potatoes and carrots, it was a bit of a cross between lamb shanks and kleftiko and was delicious.  This was followed by some lemon sponges and custard.

I thought I would have been fed up with food after all the eating we have done during the festive season but this really hit the spot.  So much so that I am going to dispatch Mum (my personal shopper) off to get me some of that lamb because John said it would be close second to fillet steak when we have one of our Friday film and special meal nights.

We played NOMS before and after our meal.  I would have said that the large printed cards had not added anything to my game but I managed to win the second one.  There must have been some mistake because John tells me that the scorer always wins otherwise the world stops spinning or something equally bad happens.  He must have known that we were going to experience some massive storms less than 24 hours later.

On our return home we were greeted with a fantastic sky.  I had hoped that this meant we were going to have another glorious day tomorrow (how wrong was I).  We had arranged that we would finally meet up with Diana and Rob and have a little drinkie down at the hotel.

It was a bracing walk to the Hotel but oh so warm and cosy inside and we were very happy that they had in Kolios so we could have a carafe and even better it was served at a good temperature and it was a particularly good one.




It was a lovely couple of hours in the warm catching up on the events of the last couple of weeks and talking about our hopes and plans for the coming year not to mention the ups and downs, mainly downs, of supporting lower league football teams!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR VEASEY'S xxxxx


PS I have to admit that the electric blanket was a good move - toasty bed mmmm mmmm