Our Weekend...

Everso slightly peed off that the weather today was what we were hoping for yesterday so we could complete our trip to see the flamingos.  We have rearranged but the weather forecast for February is very unsettled so we will just have to keep our fingers crossed.  This picture is of the Mesoghi Avenue as we traveled down on Friday to complete the cleaning job we had started at Mum and Dad's - they were off to the hospital and hopefully Dad would get someone to look at the sun damage he has on his head.

When we arrived at Mum and Dad's you could see, from their front garden just how bad the weather had been yesterday and overnight - they have a lake - in fact it was big enough for them to have had a flock of flamingos all to themselves.  Mum and Dad were home and Dad is having a minor op on 12th February to sort out his pate!

We completed our cleaning job - very successfully thanks to the advice of the guy from the electrical shop in Polis.  We now have Mum and Dad monitoring and managing the heat, humidity and ventilation in the bungalow so hopefully they will no longer have an issue with damp except where it might occur from an external source.

We had good games at pickleball.  There were only four of us so we rang the changes and played some of the games with the aqua green balls which we inherited from Wendy and Bill and which play completely differently from the lime green ones we normally use.

We were home in daylight which was a bonus - normally by the time John finishes badminton and we have had a cuppa with Mum and Dad it is dark on our return and as soon as we cross the threshold the cats want feeding and then we are in and battening down the hatches.

I don't want to tempt fate or speak too loudly but there is a long green growth to my bird of paradise plant which I am hoping after all these years might just be my very first flower bud.  It is probably just a leaf but this looks so different to anything I have seen growing from it before.

Saturday was supposed to be our first Village Clean of 2018.  We were to have been a select group, in fact it was likely to have been only John, Klaus and I but early in the morning it was hoofing it down and we really didn't fancy picking up soggy rubbish.  I canceled early and then thought I would have egg on my face as it brightened up and then just as we would have been out it chucked it down again.  It is disappointing that more people dont get involved, it is a walk in the fresh air if nothing else!

So with time on my hands I set about taking up the curtains in the conservatory which I had taken down to ensure they were long enough but they were too long and they looked scruffy - with the floor not level I had to pin them up, iron them and stitch them in situ.  This wasn't easy and even having washed them and ironed them they still show lines where they were taken up previously but we need so many long lined curtains for the windows in there that we have made do with what we could get hold of second hand otherwise they would have cost us a fortune.

It took a while but I eventually got them taken up satisfactorily and so now I need to turn my attention to the voiles behind as they have seen better days.

The six curtains cost me 30 euros originally, in fact there was another couple of shorter pairs with them one of which Mum has hanging in her spare bedroom so whilst they may not be everyone's choice and I had to fiddle around to get them to fit they do a brilliant job keeping the conservatory that little bit warmer in the winter.  I am eternally grateful for Mum's Singer sewing machine and my years of home economics which gave me some rudimentary sewing skills which enable me to tackle jobs like these at home.

When we went out shopping we went in search of the resort/development where we have booked a town house for John's Mum, Stan and Jacky when they come and visit later in the year.  It is in Polis and we were amazed that even in January after all the awful weather we have experienced recently that it still looked neat, tidy and clean.

The building numbers were a tad confusing but we found the town house which we believe to be the correct one and, as there were people staying in it, we weren't too nosy.  It is in a nice quiet development with beautiful rural views to the back of it and a short walk from Polis town centre and shops and bars that John's mum is familiar with.  We are sure that it will be more than suitable for them. We said we wouldn't have been disappointed if we had pitched up on holiday and ended up in a place like that in fact just the opposite.

I spent the remainder of Saturday cooking, getting ready for Mum and Dad and our Sunday lunch together tomorrow and for our tea that evening.  We had decided to have a cottage pie for Sunday lunch and I took some of the mince and made a sort of spaghetti bolognese except that on close inspection we didn't have any spaghetti pasta - it was linguine and I didn't follow a standard bolognese recipe!  Pudding was a sort of pear crumble - I had a bit of difficulty with the topping but forgot that I really needed to use proper butter and not the spread that we use.