Thursday

Today I had to go down to Coral Bay to bring to a close the sorry tale of the present John and I had hoped to bring over for our Silver Wedding.  We had ordered a special solar water feature for the garden and having done our homework decided to get it brought over by the quickest means possible so the item was supposed to take two to three working days to come over from the UK which it did but unfortunately in transit the box got somewhat crushed and we were advised not to accept it.  What followed was weeks of negotiation (through the company which was organising its shipment) with Fedex who handled the transit stage until we finally got our money refunded.  The final part of this saga necessitated me going down to hand over some documentation which would ensure our money was put into our bank account.  It is such a shame because I have always wanted a water feature and found exactly what I wanted which ran via solar and which also charged a battery which meant it could be run in daylight and in dark (with a light which was incorporated into the design).  We have now been put off trying to get it over from the UK and don't think we can find anything similar or remotely the same price over here so it is back to the drawing board.

We were having a quiet day today because we had decided to go down to the Droushia Heights this evening because David Locke has persuaded Alice Zawadski (a renowned internationl Jazz singer) to perform for an amazing price of €10 which included a free drink.  I met her several years ago when she sang for the Barry Rowe Big Band with whom our great friends Hilary and Keith used to play her in Cyprus and stayed at Orexi.  The performance wasn't until 8.30 so we had the remainder of the day to ourselves.  I put in some extra work to the picture that I am planning to give to George and Pam if I think it is good enough when completed and providing they like it.  I haven't done watercolours for years and the technique is so different from the pastel pencil work I do with Sheila.  I think it is ok, but only ok at the moment - more work required.

We had persuaded Di and Rob to join us this evening - the music was probably not to their taste and some of Alice's more avante garde works posted on the internet did nothing to change their minds but it wasn't going to cost and arm and a leg and it was a real live international singer rather than a tribute band which is normally all you can get over here plus we had organised to get a pitta at Finnikas beforehand which is probably what swung it!  The pittas are great and the hand cooked chips are fab and they are very reasonably priced.


The evening with Alice and the three musicians flown in from Greece exceeded our expectations by about one million percent (if that is at all possible).  She sang recognisable old favourites but with a twist and her voice was phenomenal.  We were all converts by the end of the evening.  Blimey I reckon an intimate evening like that in Ronnie Scotts would have set us back three figures.  Thanks David - you said that when you retired you were going to put Droushia on the map!  I think we were all surprised by just how much we had enjoyed the evening - what a success!


A very successful evening was topped off by an amazing sky as the moon started to poke its head out of the clouds and lit the edges eerily - I didn't think that I would manage to get a photograph that managed to capture the atmosphere so this was the best I got - not too bad as I didn't have a tripod to stop hand shake!

We had a very pleasant walk home - Droushia had managed to avoid the rain which looked like it was on its way and we had taken jumpers just in case but happily they were not needed.

It felt like a Friday as we were out late on a school night and we had thought about going to the gym tomorrow morning but I could have put money on the fact that if the cats allowed us we would be sleeping in!!