Full of Anticipation - Dashed...

We woke this morning to yet another beautiful day and we were full of hope that the workmen would arrive.  Angela's workmen had arrived and Andreas's workmen had arrived and ours had said last week that it would be this week so...

...Nope!

John phoned, in fact he phoned twice and at the point where the guy started going on about trouble with his wife he lost the will to live.  Eventually we settled on them coming on Friday which is not entirely convenient and if they don't finish John has insisted that they come back on Saturday which is cutting it a bit fine for Laura's arrival later that day.  So we now have to keep our fingers crossed that the weather remains settled.

Knowing that we had the day to ourselves we embarked on our list of "Things to do before Laura arrives"...

Buoyed by the beautiful weather for the third day in a row we have declared Winter over, albeit a week early (the clocks change on Saturday so poor Laura gets an hour less!).  We decided to get the gazebo cover and curtains out of the shed and then we could zip the garden furniture inside for safety and to give us more room until the conservatory is finished.  The covers have been in my shed since we put them away last autumn and we were a bit wary as to whether the bag was housing a gecko or worse a mouse so we pulled the items out gingerly and encouraged Chivers to give them a good old sniff before we unravelled them.  We needn't have worried as there was nothing untoward inside and apart from the fact that I really should have washed them before they went away (and will do so this year) they were completely intact.  It's amazing how much heat the covers trap inside and we are concerned that we have now created a totally private and heated WC for the cats - if we have I will KILL them!!!

Without a cloud in the sky the temperature rose rapidly and at 9.30am it was over 24 degrees with fantastically low humidity.  I had to go and get changed into a sleeveless t-shirt for the first time this year!  Don't get me wrong the wind (where there is any) has a keen bite to it and in the shade it can still feel nippy but down the side of the house or out in the front garden it was beautiful - two loads of washing dried beautiful - which is brilliant but means that I have ironing now waiting for my attention which I will probably tackle tomorrow after Sheila and Marian have gone.

As you know we have the world's smallest 'bathroom' - and it cannot even be called a bathroom as there is only room for a shower and you could wash your hair,  wash your hands and spend a penny all at the same time it is so bijou!  This leaves little room for us to make anything very much of it but we are trying our best.  We had thought about putting up some border tiles to bring in a bit of colour but border tiles are incredibly difficult to find over here so in the interim I persuaded John to let me silicon some glass nuggets around the top of the tiles and I had purchased some glass mosaic pieces which I wanted to put on the mirror.  He agreed and gave me a hand today to do it and miraculously when I went in for a shower this afternoon they were still in situ - I like them and John says that if we get fed up with them then they will be reasonably easy to remove.

If there was one thing I really would change about our villa it would be to have a slightly bigger bathroom but we can't so as I said we just have to make the best of what we've got.

John then turned his attention to our tree stump - our rather phallic tree stump - which we have been trying to reduce in size for ages.  This tree (species unknown) has a strange fibrous bark and exudes a strong smelling and sticky sap which smells a bit like turps.  Two of the three trunks were removed some time ago for us by Sean leaving the one trunk and two stumps either side.  John has gradually shortened the trunk but it is tough-going as the fibre and sap means that even the chain saw struggles.  He eventually managed to cut it down even further but there is still a bit to go!  This looks a bit tidier and will provide a brilliant trip hazard should anyone ever fancy wandering around the garden in the dark.

We spent time tidying stuff away.  John has an impressive collection of bits and pieces of wood which 'may come in handy' or bits and pieces of wood which might make good kindling like pallets, not to mention the spare shutters and the remains of a cupboard that Mum and Dad used to own.  John had a eureka moment and decided to turn the base of a cupboard and one of the spare shutters into a rustic low level table to sit between the sunbeds.

We turned our attention to the 'roof terrace' and decided to put the artificial grass back down and put the sunbeds up there.  We were joined by Chivers who loves to come up onto the roof and for some reason chose to lie in the shade under the newly created table which John had made!  We had to gently persuade him to move and having got the green stuff down positioned the sunbeds so that they could take maximum advantage of the view over to the bay.  We are really hoping that next week the weather will be good enough that Laura can take herself up there and catch some rays.

Dad was calling in after his walk around the Baths of Aphrodite so I grabbed a quick shower before he arrived and we sat out in front garden taking in the sunshine - we subjected Dad to a grotty coffee as our drinking water still has an odd taste to it and although I have spoken to Marianna about this on a number of occasions nothing has improved.  We are going to have to try and get this sorted or resort to buying water (which we will whilst Laura is here - so don't worry your green tea will be safe).

We then had an unsuccessful trip to the DIY container for some more slabs - it was closed for some reason and an equally unsuccessful trip to Polis in search of replacement manhole covers (I still get a whiff of drains at times) as the size we want is no longer manufactured.  We consoled ourselves with a Keo at Stathmos - our first this year and we sat outside although it was a tad chilly!!