sunday - chilling...

What better way to start the day than to lie in the sunshine and read a magazine?  and how fabulous that you are able to do so in November!

After a busy day and an enjoyable but late night it was a quiet start for us all today and we had a little trip out planned for this afternoon but the remainder of the day was to be spent in and around the house with a stifado bubbling away in the slow cooker for later after John had watched the Mighty Blades playing Chesterfield this afternoon.

Our guests have found the complete darkness in the bedroom courtesy of the shutters, the lack of road noise, the food and the wine a heady combination and have managed to sleep in which hopefully means they are relaxing into their oh so short break.  They both lead very busy lives working and bringing up their two children who were quite small when we left but six years have passed and they are now getting quite grown up.  Tom had some great pictures of Freddy in his sea cadet uniform at the Remembrance Day march today - he looks to be head and shoulders taller than me now!

Mindful that we have been over eating and that Sally said she felt like she was so fit to burst she couldn't get off to sleep we just had brunch outside this morning and then this afternoon went for a wander around Kritou Terra with the intention of revisiting the waterfalls and the taverna for a coffee before settling down for the big match.

So here we all are at the waterfalls before it was invaded by two jeep loads of people!  No sign of the goldfish that were there the first time we went - John thinks the recent storm might have swept them away and although we had a towel in the car we couldn't get Sal to repeat her swim of yesterday!!

It is beautiful there and it was still quite warm as we got there before the afternoon started to chill.  It is so nice to be able to share these little corners of the island with good friends and for them to appreciate exactly why we have chosen to live where we do - I think Sally and Tommy get it better than most having moved from where they used to live in Yeovil (2 doors up from us) to a beautiful old farmhouse situated in the most idyllic part of Dorset .

We made our way to the taverna and stopped for a coffee - once again the little resident kitten made itself at home on our laps moving from one to another - it it a real cutie and Glavkos told us we would be welcome to take him home.  No more for us but I do think Mrs Veasey could give him a lovely home!

John was a very happy bunny at the end of the football because even though the Mighty Blades went 1-0 down within two minutes they triumphed 4-1 in the end - a most unusual result when John is watching them as they normally put on a dire performance and he shouts at the TV for the whole 90+ minutes.  By way of celebration he lit the log burner - only because we had guests and we were going to batten down for a cosy evening in.  Once it got going we had to have the doors and windows open as it was far too warm inside!

Thank goodness for the old slow cooker - I had made the stifado earlier in the week and had just decanted it into the slow cooker this morning and stuck it on low so it was just about perfect when the footie finished - just the hasselback spuds and the veggies to go and I had promised a self saucing citrus souffle for later so John and I knocked that up in readiness.

After dinner things began to become a bit hazy - I blame the wine - here we are trying to name hit songs played on a stylophone, apparently John had one as a youngster. 

Then we got the old beetle game out and followed that by a game of extreme UNO which is the one where, in addition to the normal forfeit cards you choose two others which when played mean you either rotate your hands once clockwise or swap seats with someone whose hand you think you would prefer to own - all of which brought back fond memories of weekends together camping or staying in my boss's lovely cottage in deepest darkest Cornwall when eight of us had our own pre-Christmas Christmas day together.  We reckon we have known each other about 17 years - blimey where on earth has that time gone?