Thursday - wall building

So we were reading the papers in bed this morning and John asked what the plan was for the day and I said "nothing much but it would be good to get rid of some of that stone that is lying around on the front path" and John said "so you want me to build a wall then?" and I said "yes" so we bounced out of bed early-doors and got cracking!!!

We have an amount of stone left over from when John 'clad' areas around the outside of the house previously.  All the other houses on the estate has some natural stone embellishment but ours did not.

The stone that was left over wasn't really enough to do too much with but when the skim fell off the wall which approaches our front gate and it all began to look a bit scruffy John decided that he was going to do something with the stone to make it look a bit nicer.  It is an incredibly laborious job finding the right piece of stone and building a 'wall' which looks natural and which is stable and wont fall down and hit someone.

I was chief lackey today - in fact I was the only lackey and I managed to retain a reasonable attention level so John didn't have to shout at me - I was in charge of fetching, carrying and cleaning up.

After four hours of very hard work John managed to complete the first part of the project and it looks brilliant - clever bunny.

The plan is that with what remains there will be another bit to hide where the high bit of wall is very badly attached to a lower bit of wall and then the wall in-between will be smoothed off and I will paint it so it looks nice and fresh.

I know that this is on the approach to our front gate but we own the pathway and so I want it to look nice for people as they approach our home.

Anyway as I said this took a good four hours of hard work and once we had finished and everything was cleaned up we took a well earned shower.

We were scheduled to meet Claire and Mina for a late lunch with Di and Rob today - we were supposed to have gone a couple of weeks ago but Claire and Mina had to cancel because they had visitors.  Claire had text this morning to confirm it was still on which was great.

John had a bit of a shock whilst clearing up - he took the top off of the water meter and came face to face with a live scorpion which we encouraged into his swimming pool skimming net and then moved elsewhere.  I posted the pictures up onto a Cyprus Biodiversity site and they were then taken from there and appeared on an online newspaper!  You will need Google translate to understand the text but basically it says...

...Poisonous scorpion was found in a village in the province of Paphos.

Photos of a scorpion, located in the village of Drousia in the province of Pafos, posted a citizen to a group in social media.

This is the Cypriot scorpion with the scientific name Mesobuthus Cyprius, belonging to the family of Buthidae.

This scorpion is found in many areas in Cyprus, but mainly in areas of Paphos province.

At the same time it can be located near beaches, forests, caves and mountains.

The Cypriot scorpion (kaniniaouros in the Cypriot dialect) can reach up to 19 cm in size.

His tail is poisonous, his sting is quite painful.

It is worth mentioning that no deaths have been recorded in Cyprus by stinging the scorpion, but direct visit to the doctor is imperative.


We drove through the village and checked the post before picking up Rob and Di.

Still searching for a new subject for my art on Monday I took a photograph of the outside of the building which is our postal agency - I do think this might be quite a nice thing to do and then I could give it to Marina and Phillipos as a gift.

Di and Rob were ready and waiting for us.  The weather has gone back to being very changeable so we were hopeful that by the time we got down to the coast it would be better.  At times it has looked like rain and it is nearing the end of June - what is all that about?

So I will fill you in on the remainder of today's events in tomorrow's post.