Goodbye good friends

So this morning as we were driving down to Polis we noticed that the bit of main road which falls away at regular intervals and then is patched up has been patched up once again only this time it has been given a fair old layer of tarmac which hopefully will ensure it lasts a bit longer than the last time.  We were heading down to the coast early - we had a coffee date with Carole and Paul before they return home but first we had to go to Glykkis to get some DIY things in readiness for the autopsy on the woodburner later today.

We did the shopping we needed and were still a little early so drove down to La Plage and took a little stroll and sat down along the coastal path to survey the scene.  Latchi is beautiful but it would appear that between La Plage and where we were sitting there is an awful lot of activity going on which smacks of building works - I saw a notice somewhere that there was some prime land for sale right about here.  I hope things don't change too much but that is probably a forlorn hope - there seems to be so much more building going on at the moment.

We picked up Carole and Paul from the Souli Hotel and took them to the Art Cafe in Polis so they could sample some of Tina's sumptuous home baked cakes.  We are so pleased to have been able to introduce them to some of our most favourite places and hope, if they return next year, that we can show them even more.  We were thrilled that they had ventured out to Val's Place in Yialyia and had enjoyed it and the cakes at Tina's today were so fabulous they couldn't have failed to have been impressed!  We were so glad that we got the opportunity to catch up again this year it would have been even better if we could have spent even longer!

We walked back to where John had parked the car and in so doing passed some fabulous buildings which could so do with some TLC or even more to restore them to their former glory.  We had a quick visit to Paps so Carole could get some good old Cyprus potatoes to take home - makes a change from the dodgy T-shirts people often choose!  We returned our friends to the Souli and said our goodbyes - we just hope their trip back is uneventful as Carole hates flying.

We have taken the opportunity to start painting the back wall whilst the woodburner was moved away from the wall - John joked that the wall is now 'Battleship Grey' - as he says you can take the man out of the Navy but not vice versa!  He tried valiantly to get the stack pipe off of the stove but failed and his concern is that the whole stove may be unsalvageable and that would be just about our luck so we waited with bated breath for Stefanos from Bio-Energy to arrive.  John was a bit peed off that the big woodburning boys down in Paphos couldn't be bothered to return his phonecall so he opted for local which he generally prefers to do anyway - we hadn't used him originally because Stefanos wasn't in business then.

Stefanos is a great guy - he helped John to get the stack pipe separated from the stove and assured him that the stove was worth keeping and that other bits and pieces could be re-used and so hopefully the final price for getting our heating back isn't going to be as terrifying as we had thought in the first place.  We now need to wait for his email to arrive and to fix a date for the job to be completed.

Once Stefanos had been and evaluated the situation and gone we set about cleaning up every part of the stove and pipework that we were going to salvage - it is all about seven years old with seven years' worth of shit and soot so it was a dirty job and we looked like chimney sweeps by the time we had finished.

We were knackered and filthy and had been so busy that it was to be fridge surprise tonight if I could find enough to throw into the pan and we were both starving so after a quick shower I delved into the far reaches of the pantry to see what I could find.

My go-to ingredient at the moment is rice noodles (thank you Klaus) and John is a noodle convert - even if they are served cold!

Apparently according to John I surpassed myself tonight by conjuring up a sort of Thai Chicken Noodle spicy soup type thing which included chili, onion, peppers, peanuts and coriander.  It was absolutely delicious with a banging chili kick right at the end - enough to make your nose run!