Saturday 15 December 2018

Better days...


After a really horrible 36 hours of storms we woke today to a much better day.  Fingers crossed this lovely sunny weather will last long enough for Wendy and Bill's short trip next week.  We have the goats visiting this morning.  The goatherd always sounds really cross - he shouts constantly but then I realised he was on his mobile phone!!!  I like the goats but they smell quite a lot and fart and bring the dreaded ticks with them.  Anyway at the moment they are eating the garden waste that I have lobbed over into the field.


John was getting himself ready to watch the Mighty Blades who were the early televised game on Sky and as I cannot quite share or understand his passion I find it quite uncomfortable listening to him screaming at the TV so I opted to go out and do some food shopping (there is little else open in Polis on a Saturday afternoon!!!).  It was warm and I had the windows open - just past the Scrimmers house the boys have put the horse that we thought kicked Charlie.  You can see from how wet the ground is what kind of rain we had.  I slowed down because I realised the horse was loose and he came over and almost put his head through the window.  He looks scraggy as his coat is long and muddy.  I say He although I have no idea what sex it is!


We appear to have a new addition to the village in the form of a bus shelter - that should keep the kids happy as it will provide them with somewhere else to graffiti - I am hoping that this is not its final resting place as it is at a weird angle right in front of the church but knowing the village that will be it - functional but with no thought for aesthetics.  There will be little point saying anything because we have just learned that come Brexit we will no longer be able to participate in any local elections so there will be no requirement to court our votes come election time but to be fair we didn't vote last time because it had all got so political and caused massive rifts within the community.


We received an email this week announcing that the Droushia Heights Hotel will reopen for a function on 20th December so as I drove past I took a look at the extension to the bar area which looks like it is going to have to get a wiggle on if it is to be ready and waterproof by that time.  Having said that they will probably be slapping on a coat of paint just before people arrive.  We noted that the builders only painted the outside of 3a the day before the Syrian family moved in - they were lucky it dried in time (if it did) but we reckon the works had overrun so the family were moving in whatever.  Today we see they are having the solar panels fitted - we guess that the landlords are doing it rather than the tenants but don't know.  It gave John the opportunity to point out to Mohammed things he needs to rectify on Lakis side of the wall and also in so doing realised that their house has no electricity for some reason.  We rang Lakis and Argy and they think that their bills are still not being paid properly by the bank despite them trying to rectify the situation when they were here so it could be they have actually been cut off.  John will investigate with Stelios to see if it is a mechanical failure of a fuse or the meter.


It was a beautiful drive down to Polis this afternoon.  It is such a bonus after the storms to have a glorious day like today - so lovely that we had piping hot showers late morning and then sufficient hot water in the evening to do the washing up and John checked the PV monitoring and we had made almost 10Kw.  We had the meter read only last week and we have a healthy 700Kw hours in the bank to supplement our usage over Christmas.  This really has been a great investment for us particularly because there is now bugger all interest being paid on any of the accounts available to us here on the island.


The nice Home Concept Shop was still open when I passed by so I called in to have a look around - more to waste time than anything else - there is currently a sale on with 30% off the Christmas Decorations and 20% off everything else.  Some of the stuff appears to be quite overpriced but a lot of it is reasonable and saves a trip to Jumbos.  I picked up some lovely serviettes for Christmas in shades of grey (although not 50) and really wanted to try and support the shop a bit more but there was nothing else I needed.


I know the car had been stopped for a while in the sun but this was the temperature when I got back in - compare that to the 12 degrees of yesterday!!!  I headed off to Paps where I met so many people that I knew!  Firstly Yve who I hadn't seen for ages and have now bumped into three or four times and she is coming to our Ladies Christmas Meal on Wednesday.  Then Anastasia who has recently done some pretty complicated clothing alterations for Liselotte and who I bumped into at about the same time last week and in exactly the same place and then Di and Rob.  Di, Rob and I blocked up the fruit and veg aisle for a while having a catch up!

I got home to catch the last few minutes of the football match - Big Mistake as the Mighty Blades conceded in those minutes to their arch rivals Dirty Dirty Leeds.  I don't think that my purchase of some award winning wine which was to accompany a very tasty duck (for which I must thank Mum) and spicy noodle dish compensated in any way for the dismal failure of his beloved Sheffield United.  John pee'd off???  you betcha!!  Next time they are playing on TV I must try and stay out for the whole 90 minutes.

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