15th June

I have to thank John for some of the photographs from today because I managed to mislay my phone this morning!!!!

It all started so well when we took a trip to the cemetery to check on the plants.  The tagetes in the white pot are still flowering but it is only a question of time before they succumb to the heat - then I think I will rescue them, cut them back and nurture them at home until they come again (which apparently they will).

We watered Dad and David's flowers and made sure all was neat and tidy.  For some reason the birds seem to favour Dad's memorial for a good poo!!  At least there is a hose we can use to give these little messages a swilling off - I don't know why his marble, in particular, seem to have this attraction.

It was to be a much hotter and more settled day today than yesterday.  Sod's law really as we had wanted eating out in the garden to be a tad warmer than it had been with the wind whipping through as Mum feels the cold in anything other than sub-tropical conditions.

We wanted to go up and check the post - we cannot now walk down through the village from Christos's as this is now being dug up but we can barely walk up from the cemetery as there is a dangerous pile of stone to navigate - not overly fair on the elderly of the village, many of whom will want to visit the cemetery regularly and will have to do a lengthy detour if they are not to take their lives into their hands.

We needed to go up and see Marianna in the Community Office to collect the application forms for the winter fuel allowance.  With everything that has been going on we are not holding our breath as to whether this will actually be paid but if we do not apply for it we sure as hell ain't gonna get it!!!

We picked up a form for us and a form for Di and Rob.  It seems a bit different to the one we filled in last year and the information we need to provide to back up our application is less - we think that this year we only have to prove that we have continued to be resident in the village whereas last year we had to prove our residency.

This was our job for the afternoon and I had contacted Stefani in the village to ask her if she would cast her eye over it when completed or help us with any bits we didn't understand.  Her English is excellent and I know she is always happy to help.  As it turned out we managed the majority of it with Google Translate and I had taken a photograph of the relevant pages last year so we managed to cobble together most of what was needed and even managed to get the paperwork we needed from the bank in Polis.

We were going to get a few bits of shopping in Paps today to see us through the week and I persuaded John to drive out to Argaka first because I wanted to see what the little butcher there had on offer - I had seen some good reports.  I also wanted to check out the newly refurbished Coast restaurant which is now a cafe and lounge bar which appears to have only opened in the last week so this is pretty brave of whoever is doing it and it looks like they spent quite a bit of money on the refurbishments.

It is all very nicely done - we only stopped for a coffee although there were some nice looking homemade cakes on display.  I had a latte but had to make an observation that serving it in a glass without a handle made it very difficult to consume whilst it was still hot and the woman agreed and said they had ordered something different which had not, as yet, arrived.  She also said she would be doing food soon.  It all looked very nice and I hope they do well.

I was eventually reunited with my phone - Mum must have thought I had disappeared off the face of the earth as I would have normally rung her a couple of times before I actually managed to do so.  She is still suffering from the bite she got at ours last week and hopefully will go to the doctors tomorrow to get it looked at.