No Power...

As Dad would say "Everything in our Favour is Against Us".  

I had invited Marian round today for coffee at 11.00am so that we could have a catch up before I went down to Paphos to play pickleball.  Although it was dry it was cold and windy so John had rung the builders to check whether or not they were going to pitch up as we needed to get organised.  They have decided to leave the work until next week when hopefully we will get two or three dry days in a row - we can but hope!  This left John free this afternoon to run round Paphos getting bits and pieces in readiness for next week.  It meant that there would only be four of us playing pickleball but that's ok.

Anyway the best laid plans went out of the window when we had an unscheduled powercut shortly after I had put on the immersion heater so that I could avoid looking like Wurzel Gummidge over coffee.  Marian was in similar turmoil with washing part way through a cycle and no shower either - the thing is that with a pumped water system even if we have hot water in the tank we cannot get it pumped down to the shower.

Fortunately the powercut was fairly brief (by Cyprus standards) only an hour and so I managed to get a shower and Marion managed to get a shower and get her washing done before she came round albeit a little later than planned!  My specially baked chewy sesame seed bars were steadfastly spot welded to the tin foil I had put them on and I was busy trying to encourage them to leave it when Marian pitched up.  I so wanted to provide something that wouldn't aggravate her suspected gluten intolerance.  She very politely worked her way through a slab and is probably still picking the tinfoil out of her teeth as we speak.

Marian brought me round a book to read which she hoped would appeal to my sense of humour - she may not have known me very long but she has me weighed up to a 'T'.  

This is an amusing read and where it refers to Greece or Greek read 'Cyprus' or 'Cypriot' - here's an example:  "Motorists in Greece are to this day trying to prove to the world their superiority over the Roman Charioteers in speed and dominance on the highways." as Dad says "every gap is theirs" and he ain't wrong!!  Unfortunately I had to cut our coffee and chin wag short but we have arranged to meet up on Tuesday afternoon here to do some card making and I have asked Sheila to come and join us.

Pickleball was interesting as it was rather windy and when you are playing with an airball it means that shots can go fairly wayward.  The die-hard holidaymakers were out there sunbathing wrapped in towels - is it worth it I ask myself - why don't they just put on a jumper?  At the moment they are more likely to catch frostbite than catch the sun.  The hotel must be doing something right because the Happy Cocktail Hour in the Pig and Whistle (not really) Terrace Bar had them packed in like sardines, although sardines is generous as they are more like whales!  You only need to come to a cheap booze offer or all-you-can-eat buffet to see that concerns about obesity in the UK are well-founded!

It was our week for the quiz at Sid's and we were a full complement of the stalwart six having ensured that Dad was layered to the max so that he didn't get cold like the last time.  The taverna was packed with quizzers which is good to see as local charities will benefit.  John and I have been doing our homework by watching quiz shows and testing ourselves so we wish that Alan would bloody well hurry up and ask 'Who wrote Warhorse?'.  We didn't win the quiz this week but we won a round (after a tie-break) so received a nice bottle of white drain cleaner and we got 20 out of 20 for the picture round and 20 out of 20 for the dingbats for which we received two bottles of 'bubbly'.

The journey home was uneventful and although we didn't get home until gone 11.00pm we decided to stay up for a little while to keep the cats company as they had been home alone for several hours.  It was chilly so we decided that we would stay up long enough to make it worthwhile lighting the fire.  John loves his fire it brings out the pyromaniac in him!  

Within a very short period of time he had it bouncing which is appreciated by us all - but by Minnie Mou in particular who lies just short of being scorched at every opportunity - stretching and squirming to ensure every inch of her little body gets warm.    Chivers on the other hand is still very much in love with his self heating blanket so can generally be found in the basket - I don't think they sleep together very much any more which is a shame as they looked so sweet snuggled up.

On the subject of the cats I have decided that I may need to rename them Dyson and Hoover as they have just done a good job cleaning up the kitchen floor after I managed to uptip a box of cat biscuits - they are a couple of little piggies and Minser is getting chubby plus she does suffer with wind much to our embarrassment when she 'let one slip' during coffee with Marian - little bugger.