The Fifth Monday in a Row it is horrid...

So we woke to a miserable Monday - in fact looking back this is the fifth Monday in a row that has been miserable - everything is grey and wet and even the angels in the garden have had enough and look bored!  Klaus and Sheila were due to have a power cut again this morning so I needed to wrap up warm in case it was a lengthy one. John was going to drop me off and then go on down to Polis to get some money for the month and to get the petrol that I didn't manage to squeeze out of the pump on Saturday.

I am itching to get out into the garden as it is all looking a bit sad but it is too wet and too cold and there is still work to be done round the pool so it is a bit pointless at the moment - All the weather seems to do is breed big spiders - John has a corker living in his gas store with massive hairy fat legs (a bit like me really!!!)

We are having new doors on our wardrobes and we had a phone call to say they were ready but we need the holes put in them for the hinges and no two hinges are in the same place so John decided he would take the doors off and take them down with us tomorrow so that the hinges and the door handles can be put in the right place.   This threw me into a right old guilt trip because unlike John's wardrobe of military tidiness mine is a bit more from the out of sight out of mind school of clothes storage and with the doors missing I had nowhere to hide so my task this afternoon was going to be sorting out my wardrobe and being a little bit ruthless with the contents!

I also want to sort out all the throws and blankets and beach towels as we seem to have far too many and then swap where they are being stored with the spare bedding that I have got - again we seem to have too much but bedding can be quite expensive over here so I am loathe to get rid of any.

With all the doors removed it meant that the 'loft' space that houses our water tank and immersion was exposed to our bedroom and it was freezing and it was noisy when the pump went off.  In fact it felt so cold in there I couldn't work out whether things were cold or damp - cold I hope!  Dehumidifier will be definitely be moved into there even if it upsets Minnie!!

One of the gifts that Lou-Lou brought me back was a little statue of the Hindu God Ganesha - he is supposed to be the remover of obstacles which will be good for me that's for sure - I have found him a home out with the buddhas I have in the garden - not sure if Hindu and Buddism go together but they do in my house - I will take help and good luck from any quarter.

 So I went off to Art - I went and paid our water bill and walked from Marianna's down to Sheila's.  Marianna has kindly offered to provide some bin bags when we do our village clean up on Saturday which is a bit of a result.  The power cut had been and gone so I was able to remove my multitude of layers!!  Sheila is currently working on a black and white study of an old man's face and this is her progress so far - she is finding his hands a challenge and periodically she will emit a deep sigh as she concentrates on his digits!!

My current picture is of a little boy playing in the sea - it is not a photographic reproduction of the original but will be near enough - I have only done one person so far (the old lady collection water) so this is my challenge.  Skin tones are a mystery to me as is hair!  Still I made some reasonable progress this morning and think it will be a nice picture when it is finished. Then what???

Most of the afternoon was wet and miserable but just before I got ready for belly dancing which recommences this evening after a break of nearly two  months the sun was going down beautifully and the clouds over the mountains were tinged with a lovely pink.

Sofi our teacher was there when we arrived taking a class of little ones for ballet - bless them.  Most seemed to be free-styling but a couple were concentrating soooooo hard!!!

We are given the coined scarves to wear while we are belly wobbling and, if we wanted, we could get fully kitted out with the tops and the bottoms.  This is a step too far at the moment!!!

There were only three of us dancing tonight, Cara had hurt her back and Elena had to be up early to go to Nicosia today but as we started to loosen up we realised that we were being watched by a guy who I thought was just there to pick up his child after ballet dancing.  It would appear that he was interested - don't know whether it was for himself or someone else!  Maybe we will get another wobbler with us next Monday!!!

This week we danced through our old routine just so we could practice the basic steps before we moved on to a new routine.  Thank goodness for that I was getting a bit fed up of the piece of music we danced to every week - we have moved on from Buddha Bar to Bar Vista!!!

This week we would begin to start working with a veil.  How difficult can that be?  Very difficult as it happens and what good exercise - Diana, Jutta and I all said we would be aching tomorrow.  It had been a bit of an effort to go out this evening and leave John in front of the fire but afterwards I was really glad I had gone and am now looking forward to next week.

Below is a bit of video where Sofi is trying to get us to dance backwards - we none of us seem to have any hand eye co-ordination when it comes to moving!!!