Tuesday 4th February

After a few nice days when I got up this morning it was to a good old fashioned pea-souper and you couldn't see your hand in front of your face.  It took some time for the sun to burn it off but eventually it did by which time our four furbabies were snuggled up on the bed.  Minnie Mou looking more than a little disgruntled at having to share what she considers to be her space.  February is turning out to be somewhat changeable but it was always traditionally so - perhaps we can get all the bad weather out of the way this month and then it will settle unlike last year when we got a bit of rain nearly every month.

We had to pop down to Polis as John got the call that his passport was awaiting collection.  I wonder if the Passport Office in the UK realise that the passports are not delivered to your home address as they tell you it will be but that DHL make you collect it - that isn't a big deal but I bet somewhere along the line the Passport Office is paying for a service it doesn't get.  Anyway beforehand we tried to pay our water bill but Marianna was not in her office and made the messy old trip into the village for post and dropped off what we had picked up for Rob and Di who were doing the same thing so we saved them the messy bit.  John got his passport and then we went to go into the Hellenic Bank to resurrect a 'dormant' account only to find that John had picked up his old passport and not mine so this was a waste of time and I am so glad it was his mistake and not mine otherwise I would never have heard the last of it.

On our return I set about doing some cooking - when I was in the UK I had a really lovely soup at The Green Room as part of my Sunday Lunch.  I am not normally a lover of Cauliflower - when it is cooking it has a smell reminiscent of school dinners and old people's homes but they had served a cauliflower and cheese soup which was lovely so I tried my hand at a cauliflower, pear and blue cheese soup but used smoked cheese as we had some needing eating up and not blue as we neither of us are fans.  To be honest this is just the sort of food we need to have in at the moment because it is lovely and warming when it is cold and miserable.  John enjoyed it and the smoked cheese gave it a distinct flavour - and had I had some bacon I would have made some crispy bacon 'croutons' to finish it off.

If nothing else then doing cooking keeps you warm so we had taken out what we thought were some chicken breasts from the freezer and they turned out to be skinned and boned thighs so decided to make them into a curry which we could leave in the slow cooker during the day and have when we were ready.  When I topped up my stock of curry mixes from Curry Frenzy I had chosen some different ones so this time I had opted for the Smoky Dupiaza which I could tell from the moment I started cooking was on the spicy side, in fact the spices got into my eyes and they wouldn't stop watering. I am hoping it isn't too hot as it isn't that long since the most I could manage was a good old Chicken Koorma!

When we went down to Polis we saw Stephen (Haughan - the author) sitting outside Andri and Loukas's kiosk at the bottom of the hill - he was deep in writing mode as he is now on his 6th Peshwari Nans book and is also writing some children's books about the knitted nans.  I am not sure how much longer he intends to stay on the island but before he goes I want to paint something for him to put in his mancave The Ink Spot back in England - I rather like the picture above and think I might try and recreate it for him on a small canvas.