Wednesday

So this is Chivers and Boris this morning settled down before I had a chance to make the bed and Boris mirroring Chivers - this is quite and unusual state of affairs because Chivers finds Boris rather irritating most of the time but they must have both had a hard night on the tiles and needed the rest.

Basket weaving week two and this morning we arrived to find Maroulla from the village sitting in our room - I teased her in my pigeon Greek that she was to be our new teacher and she thought that was hilarious.  Kelly thinks that she may be a little lonely as she walks all the way up from her house to the hotel and comes and sees what the basket makers and the weavers are upto - joining us for a coffee and a chat and tells us where we are going wrong!  In fact she remained with us most of the morning.

It was so warm that we took our work outside for a couple of hours until the heat and the flies got too much for us.  Marianna from the community office joined us for coffee and to take some photographs of us for the communityFacebook page.

It was so warm in the sun that a couple of us got unexpectedly suntanned sitting in the garden.  It wasn't too easy to work there either as the floor is uneven and we were all squashed next to one another - you are in danger of poking someone's eye out with the reeds if you are not careful. 

We are all now nearing completion of the base of the basket and our homework was to take the sides up by about three rotations in readiness for finishing off.  This is not as easy as it looks and takes forever - no wonder these baskets cost so much - the raw materials themselves are a good €30 before the time and effort that goes into them.

I have eventually managed to take up the jimjams Mum bought as she was able to let me have some better cotton - I say better but this would break three or four times each run so she is lucky that I persevered - not the best sewing job I have ever done but it is done nonetheless.

John has been working very hard getting jobs ticked off his to-do list and this afternoon when I got back we sat up on the roof terrace for a well earned drink before the sun went down.  We were joined by Chivers for a short while and then when it got just a little too chilly we retired to the conservatory where it was a lot warmer!

I took the opportunity to get a photograph of the pool as it currently looks before work starts next week - fingers crossed that the weather will remain good otherwise it is going to be a right old mess.  All that old paving is coming up and being replaced before the inside of the pool is replaced with this new Aqua Carpet stuff - and it will no longer be blue - my choice - I hope it is the right one!

We were sat in the conservatory last night when I thought I could hear a faint tapping in the distance.  I wasn't sure (a) because we do have a door bell although it often refuses to work or worse continues to work long after someone has poked it and (b) we rarely if ever get someone calling by anyway!

As it happens it was Savvas the tyreman's wife Elena and her little girl clutching a bag of what we think could be guinea fowl eggs.  When John went to get tyres last week he thought he had had a conversation about eggs with Savvas - he wasn't sure except that during the exchange Savvas drew what appeared to be an egg.  We are amazed because we had no idea that Elena knew where we lived and even more amazed that we heard her gentle tapping at the door.

The eggs will be put to very good use over the weekend - how kind.  The whole episode of egg-gate did however have an unfortunate consequence in that I woke in the night screaming with a nightmare.  This does happen periodically and although I think I am screaming John says it comes out as just muffled murmurs except last night it was the full ish.  In my dream John had opened the door to let the cats in and there was just a sinister someone stood staring into the house who wouldn't go away.  What with that and my carpel tunnel I didn't get much sleep before my early start for school.