Ginage...

So I shall start today with a photograph of a little pressie that my Mum bought me yesterday when we were out for lunch and which is for my upcoming birthday.  Savvas is very savvy (see what I am doing here???) in that he has special gins and gin gifts in full view when you are queuing for your carvery and I spotted a bottle of Whitley Neill Lemongrass and Ginger Gin which are two of my most favourite flavours for anything, food, drink, soap, you name it and I think I have come to the conclusion that my favourite mixer with almost any gin is Ginger Beer rather than Tonic and it has to be Old Jamaica Ginger Beer, nothing else will do, and the reason is that Old Jamaica has a real bite to it which seems to bring out the sharp flavour of gin.  All too often the fancy new mixers just seem to water down the flavour so that you are struggling to taste the gin.  Anyway THANKS MUM!!!!!!  This will be a damn fine birthday present and I shall now ask John if he fancies getting me a small olive tree to go in a pot in the garden to replace one of the ficus trees which I think has bitten the dust having been outside over the winter which proved too wet and cold for them.

I am coming to the end of my pomegranate picture.  It will be completed next week when I go back over some of the areas I did first and which have faded in the interim and then I want to do something with the background - John hates the yellow and every week asks me if I am going to change it!  I also need to do something with the area that the fruit and nuts are sitting on and then I will have the conundrum of finding my new subject so if anyone has any requests get them in now.

Anyway it was, as always, a lovely relaxing morning with Sheila followed by a nice lunch with Klaus.  Sheila is working on a very attractive picture of a lion with a cub - she has done some fabulous work over the years that I have been doing art at her dining table but I really think her forte is animals and African animals in particular - I am guessing her first hand experience with that wildlife stands her in good stead.  Anyway Sheila is excited because her daughter is coming over soon and it will be lovely to meet her as I have heard so much about her and even better Sheila plans to have the next Ladies Lunch at Finnikas when she is here.

John spent the morning doing his regular Monday morning tasks which always includes giving our pool a clean and checking on the condition of next door's and Lakis's.  Although February has been better than January so far we have some cold and miserable weather forecast for the next couple of days and we have had quite a lot of dust in the atmosphere which doesn't help the look and feel of the water.

We hope we have possibly found a solution to the cold 'downstairs' toilet.  I am not entirely sure why we call it the downstairs toilet because we live on one level and have two!!!  Anyway this is the one which is next to the kitchen.  It is always cold and sometimes super cold.  It used to be on an outside wall, well two actually until the pumphouse was built, and has a minuscule window which gets no sun whatsoever.  There is no electric supply to the toilet and none particularly nearby so we have been struggling to find a solution to the chill in that room.  If we are home alone we leave the door open to even out the temperature in the toilet but obviously cannot do that when we have guests.  We have found that if the lounge is super warm and then someone goes into the icebox toilet the puff of warm air settles on the cold walls and forms condensation which is depressing and even more depressing when you have decorated and this gets spoiled.

So above is something which I saw advertised on EBay - it is a 'bivvy' lamp/heater.  These are powered by candle and are designed so that the candles are secured inside so are safe and apparently if you burn four tealights inside it provides heat and light for people camping or outside.  If you think about it the Chinese successfully keep food warm with the help of a couple of tealights so this might well be a quirky and efficient way of warming a small space.

I decided I would have a go at making my own version because I thought the original looked just like the cutlery drainer that I use simply turned upside down and placed over candles!!!

So that is exactly what I did - I cleaned out the drainer and then found a suitable base - we had a terracotta pot which normally houses anti-mosquito spirals - the base of which exactly housed four tea lights and the upside drainer.

I lit it and placed it on the floor next to the loo and checked the temperature before shutting the door and waiting to see whether it made any perceptible difference.  I can confirm that it did - the temperature rose by at least 3 degrees (and I don't mean the singing group) which was noticeable.  Hopefully an increase like that would be enough to stop any condensation forming if the door is opened and the temperature in the lounge is high.

John was pretty impressed and we plan to make a couple more - the one EBay was 30 quid!!!  There are other purpose built 'bivvy' heaters on the internet but they are even more expensive!!!   John is already thinking about improvement to the prototype which includes a handle which is insulated!