Christmas is coming apparently!

Not wishing to bore people but this is just to prove that we are still using the pool - albeit briefly but we are - I am convinced that John has removed the mercury from the thermometer and replaced it with some permanent red felt tip as it has remained at 56 degrees now for days - it is laughing at us!!!

With visitors here (not staying with us) the days don't 'feel' like they normally do - all week it has felt like a weekend and now that it is Friday it doesn't feel like a Friday save for the fact that we had pickleball this afternoon and it was great that Kyle joined us this Friday.  He was a Thursday player until work messed his schedule around so now he is our 'go-to' Friday player when we are short.  This is good news as Liselotte is away quite a bit now.  Kyle may only be a newbie in terms of pickleball but he has clearly played racquet sports, particularly table tennis and he puts a mean spin on the balls.

John's cousin Karen and her partner Dip are nearing the end of their 'holiday' - not so much of a holiday as they have been sorting out their newly acquired holiday apartment in Universal.  They want us to keep hold of a key for them in case of emergencies - key cutting here can often be an exercise in trial and error and patience!  We now have a key for them and we have solved the mystery of the key they received to the 'storage cupboard' which is located in another block and seems to be used by the maintenance man and everyone else who has a key.  They aren't too bothered as they have nothing to store in it anyway.

En route to theirs we decided to find, and check out, Marios' new restaurant venture now that he has moved on from The Extreme View.  The Aroma Bar and Grill is located just up the road from where Karen and Dip have their apartment, in fact Marios reckons he lives near them.  This new bar is very different from Extreme View, modern, light and stylish - John thought it was too posh for the menu!!!!

I had a phone call this afternoon from Fedex - I love Fedex - the staff are so lovely and friendly.  The only company I use that ships via Fedex is CarpetVista and this was to be the final rug for the conservatory.  The man explained that unfortunately he had to close at 3.30 so we had to shoot across from Mum's in order to get the rug.  The man was very apologetic but he was from Limassol and only covering for the regular chap and had to shut up early in order to get home on time.

Charlie isn't sure about the new rug and continues to sit on one of the old cheap Jumbo's rugs that we use to stand on when we get out of the pool - that isn't a bad thing and so far Minnie has avoided the new rugs when she decides to sharpen her claws - opting for the one I got for a tenner which John doesn't like anyway.

The evenings are cool up here and without any heating in the conservatory the tiles are just too cold on your feet even though I prefer it when we don't have any rugs and it is easier to keep clean that way.  On that subject the brush part on my lovely hoover broke today - I can still use the hoover but without the brush function which is a pain.

On our way home tonight we decided to treat ourselves to a take-away from Paps bakery at the traffic lights.  We opted for some potatoes and a whole chicken which cost us about 7 euros and will feed us at least twice!!!

Amazingly the island is getting ready for Christmas and it is not yet December - Paps has a Christmas decorated olive tree outside the front door - such a change from when Mum and Dad first moved over when Christmas didn't feature as a celebration - it was all about Easter and they struggled to find anything festive in time to send it back over for us so they used to resort to shipping us a crate of clementines which sometimes arrived on time and sometimes didn't but we used to store them in our old workshop building in Glenthorne Avenue and they used to fill the room with a fabulous scent.  We struggled to eat them all before they started to go off so would send visitors home with a bag of fabulous fruit - great memories!

I have set aside a Christmas shopping day even though we have very little to get this year as it will only be Mum, Dad, John and I this year - we had Jane and John with us last year but they will be back again in the Spring.