A Day of Two Halves...

We had a bright and sunny start to the day and no cooking for me because John and I were meeting Mum down at the newly relocated Tavernaki for Sunday lunch.  We were to have met up with Costas and Jackie but unfortunately Jackie was a bit under the weather so we have postponed that get together for a few weeks.  The bright day and a morning to ourselves and our new garden furniture filled John and I with some enthusiasm to take a good look at the garden and jobs which we want to get done.

When we moved over we brought with us a beautiful wooden door which had been made from reclaimed wood from a quay-side and for a couple of years it was our front gate before we replaced it with an aluminium one.  We were loathe to get rid of it and it has been propped against a wall in the interim but we plan to shorten it and then use it to hide the glory hole.  It is a fantastic piece of furniture and we hope to get it to live on for a little while longer.  It needs to be treated as it is a bit shabby at the bottom but John reckons this will be cut off as we want to lower the height so it is in line with the aluminium fencing.

Whilst John was away I painted the drawer knobs on the furniture in the spare bedroom and John thought I had done a good job so we have now purchased new knobs for the wardrobe and painted them and we agreed on chalk painting the tops of the pine furniture which we brought over with us to lighten them up.  We never normally agree so this was amazing!!!  I want to lighten up that room as it tends to be a bit dark but the pressure is on because Jane and John and coming to stay next week so it needs to be done and dry and usable.  I started with the small chest of drawers to see how it looked and thought it was ok so cracked on with the rest.

We set off down to Paphos for lunch with Mum.  As I said Tavernaki has relocated up the road to the old Acropolis building, this is considerably bigger and has much better parking but apart from that there have been very few changes so still the same cheap and cheerful menu.  The original building will remain and become a takeaway.  We had a nice lunch - it was warm in there and there was a nice atmosphere - it didn't feel like we were lost in a massive building and people kept on arriving to eat.  We shall certainly go there again - in fact we plan to meet up with Simon, Melanie and the children with Mum in a couple of weeks' time.



We drove home leaving fine, dry and sunny weather and headed towards black skies, thunder, lightning, hail and snow - so much so that Kathikas was white over - fortunately Droushia was not so bad but it was only 7 degrees - 7 bloody degrees - that is cold!!!

As I said Droushia was not so bad and we actually had some late afternoon sunshine but you could see that there was a storm approaching by the colour and shape of the cloud that was in the distance - Lysos was getting it big style and apparently this storm took most of the island by surprise even though it had been forecast.

We had arranged to catch up with Di and Rob at the Hotel this evening.  It is a Bank Holiday weekend here on the Island so the Hotel was heaving but we managed to secure the sofas near the fire even though some of the residents kept looking longingly at the space until Rob and Di arrived.  It is good to see it busy but actually we like it when it is empty!!!  It was nice to catch up - silly season is about to start with visitors so it makes it more difficult and Di and Rob will be nipping back to the UK at some point to visit family and friends - they normally go around this time.  We are so lucky to have them in the village - cant believe it has been nearly five years (or it will be later on this year).  We didn't make it an early night - Di and Rob's plans this afternoon had been interrupted by a power outage although I am not surprised when you see the weather we had experienced, I think John said they wanted to get back and finish eating their tea!!!

We managed to negotiate our way home in the dark - it was blooming cold!!!!