Goodbye Fellow Droushiotes...

We were up mega early this morning so shot off down to Paps to pick up some last minute bits and pieces as we were having a get together with Di, Rob, Clare and Les this evening as Clare returns to Hong Kong shortly and Les may be going too although this is, as yet, undecided.  Our quick flit round Polis was successful - we even managed to get liver for the cats and then we stopped in the village on the way home to check the post as we are still awaiting several parcels which we believe are stuck with a million others in Germany.  We managed to walk up to the post box fairly unscathed which, when you think about how much rain we have had of late, was something of a miracle.  There was no post for us but post for Sheila and Klaus and Di and Rob which we picked up and delivered.

Before we set about getting the 'nibbles' ready for this evening we sat, with a coffee, in the relative warmth of the conservatory to take advantage of a brief bit of sunshine.  The cats are getting somewhat stir crazy being confined to barracks and that being the case, the rugs get it - Charlie was playing hunt the imaginary toy which involved burrowing underneath the big kilim under the coffee table.

The roses which Mum gave me are still going strong although the largest bloom has lost a couple of petals and we have a resident green spider in one of the others!!!  They obviously appreciate the cooler temperatures in the conservatory.  That being said John will have it cosy warm in there tonight as we plan to sit round the coffee table to play our version of the present game.

We got all the food prepped, some of it cooked in advance to be warmed up later and then made sure the house was looking inviting.

I love having the trimmings up but am beginning to get a bit twitchy about the dust which is everywhere so will set about giving the house a good 'bottoming' before I go to the UK.

The weather deteriorated - good job John was going to pick our guests up as they would have got rather wet walking and then hopefully if we give them enough to drink they wont notice any rain on the way home.

The last time the six of us were together for drinks and nibbles was in the summer when we ended up having an impromptu singing session up on the roof terrace into the wee small hours much to our neighbours' amusement - to improve any such repeat performance said neighbours (Lakis and Argy at 2B) gave us a fabulous bluetooth speaker for Christmas which we had hoped to test out today - the speaker might well be waterproof, we however are not, so the residents of 3B will never know how lucky they were to avoid our tuneless rendition of hits through the 80s.

With apologies for the quality of the pictures due to the fact that my phone doesn't do great low level lighting shots but thanks to Di for taking this one which proves that I was there!!!  We started the evening out in the conservatory which was, as anticipated, warm and cosy.  Had we just been having finger food we might have stayed there but Clare kindly brought a pie she had made with all the leftovers from their Christmas Day and that really needed a knife and fork so we moved to the dining table.

With the woodburner lit it can be quite a challenge eating at the dining table in the winter particularly if you are a woman of a certain age but we managed and Clare's pie was fabulous and all the other food seemed to go down well including John's freshly made banana bread which we had for afters.

We finished the evening back in the conservatory listening to the rain lashing down outside and playing our version of the Present Game.  Basically each couple had to provide two gifts of no more than 5 euros each which could be anything: nice or nasty and then we play a game with a die (singular of dice) and numbered pebbles.  We actually provided three gifts so that the person who ended up with the star pebble numbered 6 received an extra prize.

Hopefully good fun was had by all.  In the wee small hours there was a lull in the rain which enabled our guests to wander back home in the dry with hopefully no unplanned detours or mishaps.