Bye Bye old Blinkie

Regular readers will know that we have knitted blankets for our beds ('blinkies') which were made by my sister from a soft wool and which the cats absolutely love.  They love them so much that they have kneaded them to pieces - I have tried to repair them unsuccessfully so I have unravelled them, which in itself was a labour of love, and created a new blanket.  This was a challenge to my poor crocheting skills but thank goodness for YouTube!!!  This specimen looks so much nicer than what was there previously but the cats have, every single one of them, resolutely ignored my efforts!!!  They prefer to squeeze into the gap which has no new blinkie!



We were up early this morning because the blind man was coming - this was the man from Euroblinds who was due at 8.30am and we needed to make sure that the room was ready for him so that he could reach the windows with ease.  We were somewhat cynical about him being here that early in the morning, this is Cyprus after all, but bugger me he arrived dead on 8.30am, fitted the blinds with absolutely minimal mess and was on his merry way just after 9.00am.  What did make us smile was that when he arrived he came into the conservatory and dutifully wiped his feet on the rag rugs that are there for that purpose and said "Jumbo!"  so we thought he recognised where I had bought them from but actually he was referring to Charlie who had come out to growl at him and see him off the premises!!  Clearly the blind man thought Charlie was a fat-lad, Charlie was singularly unimpressed - growled at the blind man and then mooched off in the direction of his van - probably to leave muddy footprints all over the windscreen!!

We are delighted with the blinds - it is hard to take a photograph so that you can see exactly the pattern but they have a light grey background and then a creamy/white pattern which is a bit like elderberries or something similar.  We have had the two windows in the lounge area done, the two small windows either side of the chimney stack and the kitchen window and for this we must thank John's Mum because her recent gift made it all possible as it actually galvanised us into action - we had been thinking about it for a while but had 'made do' with the blinds already there and when we took them down we could see how grubby and poor they looked.

Once we got the house back to normal we went down to Paphos for what turned out to be a less than successful trip!  Firstly it had been bright but chilly when we left Droushia but down on the coast it was a superb 21 degrees and I was in a thick dress, thick tights and chunky shoes!!!  Then, after making a brief stop at Paphos Computers to try and get the bits John needs to complete the wiring job which the electrician is now not going to finish, we had to negotiate our way across town to the Tax Office which is a feat in itself and we couldn't be sure what time it closed so thought we were goign to arrive too late.  As it happens it seems it closes at 2.30pm or 3.00pm - the signs are confusing but either way even though we were on time the lady I needed to speak to about Mum's tax is on holiday.

We then went down to SuperHome Centre to speak to them about the Dulux Weathershield paint we bought from there last year and which John had used to paint the house and which, in places, has failed miserably.  The first problem we encountered was when we noticed that the paint in some places was affected by bird poo.  Now as an external paint you would be forgiven for thinking that it could withstand bird poo.  John cleaned it off and rubbed it down and repainted it and it was fine.  Then we noticed a couple of weeks ago that the paint on one external wall out of the half dozen external walls John had painted was flaking off in huge patches.  John seems to think that this particular wall was painted with a new tin of paint and thinks that the mix in this tin was different to the rest and maybe the stabiliser was missing.  Anyway needless to say there was no-one at SuperHome Centre today who was able to help us which means a return trip.  If there is a problem with this tin of paint John doesn't want to use it on the wall because we are only going to get the same mess again.

It is quite a rare thing for me to get John to come down to Paphos and for us to fail miserably with the two main tasks didn't go down well!!!  We did manage to get a bit of shopping done but had allocated time for a good old mooch in Lidl but save for seeing Klaus and Sheila in there could find nothing else!

We were quite glad to get home and look at our lovely blinds!