It's official - I am middle aged!!!

I saw this on tintyweb today - and sadly I have now had it confirmed that I am indeed, middle-aged!!!  Save for number 10 which I think we would if we could - we read the papers on-line every morning at about 6.30am (because we cannot sleep past 8.00am!!!) everything else gets a tick.

Actually this should come as no surprise because early next year I will be celebrating a rather large birthday - where the hell have those years gone???  Whilst inside my head I am still somewhere back in my late 20s a look in the mirror sadly confirms the passage of time having said that I am more than happy that I no longer am on the working treadmill even though our early retirement has meant living on quite a tight budget - it is just so nice not to have to answer to other people!!

So with that in mind we eased ourselves into today and decided that we would do the remainder of the waterproofing if the weather was good enough.  We had to wait until the overnight condensation had disappeared.

We thought that brunch would be a good idea which you would expect to consume mid-morning but as we are waking so blooming early our mid morning is around 9.00am!!!  We have planned to go food shopping tomorrow so not only am I middle aged I am also Old Mother Hubbard!!!  I did have some bacon and one little egg loafing about and the loaf we bought on Saturday which is odd to say the least, it tastes more like Brioche as it is sweet with a sort of liquorice flavour (fennel seed I am guessing) so the remainder is destined to make a bread and butter pudding for Sunday.

We removed all the furniture 'up top' from the tiles and stacked it on the roof and then cleaned the tiles and cut back some of the clock vine to make sure that we had a clear run with the waterproofing once the sun had dried everything up.  From this vantage point we could see activity at 3a - we had heard that this property was being rented out but had not seen anyone around - we could see a van like a transit and a couple of cars.  The van wasn't there very long and we saw a couple of English looking people in there but they left shortly afterwards - we shall see whether these are to be newbies on the block.

Yesterday I had very kindly been given some lemons by Klaus and Sheila - they were a little greener than the ones I normally use for making lemon pickle but I know that poor Bobby has been eking out his precious pot for the last few months - I am guessing that this batch is going to be rather more tangy than previously!!!  It is a bit of a messy process particularly if you take your eye off the ball and allow the mixture to boil over but this is the yield of one kilo of sugar mixed with one kilo of fruit.  Bobby just needs to let it mature for a few days.

There was the unmistakable smell of a fire in the air this afternoon and the unmistakable hum of the fire helicopters going backwards and forwards with buckets of water strung underneath them.  It was a bit difficult to work out the exact location but it was somewhere between Droushia and Akourdaleia and farmland I would think as there isn't any villages that way.  They worked for about an hour or so trying to get the fire under control.

The fire made for some strange colours in the sky where the sun was poking through a smoke laden cloud.  Hopefully everyone in the vicinity was safe and no wildlife was harmed and even more importantly that this was not some stupid person setting it to get rid of rubbish and then leaving it unattended.  Thankfully we have seen far fewer fires in the last couple of years either that or we no longer take much notice if there is one around.  Hopefully it is the former rather than the latter.

My final act for the day was to rustle up fridge surprise for our supper.  Actually to be fair I was using ingredients that I would have used to make our starters on Saturday if we had been hungry enough to manage one before our massive lamb shanks.  I had originally planned to have scallops but that was before I learned that Marky-Mark doesn't eat them!!!  So then I had to find an alternative and I knew we had some prawns loafing in the freezer that needed eating up.  I had found a recipe for a salad with prawns, chorizo, goats cheese and a blueberry dressing.  It sounds a bit of a bizarre combination but actually it works really well and we enjoyed it.