A Shitty Old Thursday...

We have got ourselves into a kind of routine which means that John generally gets up at some point between 6.30am and 7.30am (nutter) as he likes to make sure the cats are ok and to see if anyone loves us by way of emails and I have a bit of a lie-in and starfish in bed before he comes across with a coffee and the cats so that I ease gently into the day.  Today I beat him to it though as I felt a bit guilty and Angela's builders had pitched up and I could hear the cement mixer doing its thing.  

As I went to go across to the kitchen I met John coming in the other direction in a state of distress as he had got some chemical into his eye.  We had bought some very very strong bleach like substance which we are using to remove any mould that appears on the paintwork due to condensation before we treat it and then paint it.  John had spotted some on the kitchen ceiling and was using a sponge which dripped and went into his eye.

We have given it a damn good slooshing and it has settled down but we think it must have left a little ulcer somewhere on the inside of the lid as he says it feels like he has a boulder in his eye.  It was a bit of a worry and set the tone for what has been a shitty old day.

Both Minnie Mou and Chivers must have realised that John wasn't himself as they came to give him some extra bit of loving!

It was another miserable old day up here in Droushia and the weather must have been poor in Paphos as pickle-ball was cancelled for today as Tom had predicted yesterday.  He was hoping that he might get enough to play on Friday but hasn't been able to so at least I know that I have tomorrow free as John and I are desperate to make inroads into our to-do list.

The chemical incident made us realise that we really had to tackle the problem of condensation (which was causing the mould) once and for all otherwise we would be in a cycle of chemical, paint, condensation, mould.  Fortunately, Graham who is married to Jeanette (crafty Jeanette) deals with dehumidifiers and so we got in touch to find out what our options are.  We also checked out what other people were recommending on Paphos People.  He was very thorough and is coming up tomorrow with a unit so hopefully if it does the job we will be able to reduce the amount of condensation and damp in the property and the damage that it causes.  Reading other people's comments it would certainly seem that this is the best solution.

John always checks the emails with great anticipation.  I try and keep in contact with people regularly and hope that the blog goes some way towards making up for personal one to one contact.  Today we were delighted to receive an email from Yvonne (seen here wearing the hat).  In this photograph are Bev and Pete and Yvonne and Steve.  We spent a wonderful holiday with these four (and another couple Clive and Ros) several years ago when we were all on the same Travel Collection trip to Borneo.  We kept in contact for a while and then out of the blue a month or so ago we received an email from Steve and Yvonne.  We asked their permission to put a photograph of them on the blog and checked with Bev and Pete - it is some years since we were on holiday but they really don't seem to have changed a bit - we had a fantastic time from the orang-utans to the river dolphins to the transsexual waitresses in the bar opposite the Hilton - yes Pete that really was a bloke!

With John feeling sorry for himself, and rightly so, and the weather not conducive to doing outside jobs we had to console ourselves with tea and cake (the wonderful chocolate brownie cakes that Mum brought us from the GB Euroland shop in Paphos).  Cakes with crinkly wrappers means toys, toys, toys to Chivers who must have the wrapper tied in a knot and then he runs off growling with his prize.  He isn't bothered about what was inside the wrapper and Minnie isn't bothered full stop!

We decided to sit down and watch a film together and then we had problems lighting the gas fire again.  It is so random because one minute it will light first time and then it refuses to light at all.  Eventually John took all the pebbles off and cleaned it - again - and after a few tries it lit so we settled down to Eat Pray Love with Julia Roberts (my choice) which we enjoyed.

This afternoon I did some more cooking.  This weather is real soup weather and today's batch was pretty technicolour!!!  We had carrot, ginger and coriander for lunch which was absolutely scrummy.  On the right is a spicy beetroot and orange which you serve hot as I cannot get my head round cold soup - it is just not right!  That's lunch sorted for tomorrow.

More cooking this evening as John and I are making meatballs in a tomato sauce that we are going to serve with orzo.  As I said before we are getting much better at working together without killing on another!  We are in scruffers as we had anticipated doing some DIY work today but it never materialised and we couldn't be bothered to change!

Off to sample the meatballs - let's hope they are good!