John is poorly...

John has woken with a sore throat - not any old sore throat but a man-sized one.  Normally I would just coo a bit a sympathy and shove him some lozenges BUT with the current situation anything which falls within the list of possible Covid-19 symptoms needs to be investigated.  So tomorrow if it is still hanging about he is off to the Doctors.  I think a lot of the problem is the very hot, dry nights we are having which means that he sleeps with his mouth open - at least I am hoping that is what it might be.

We have another insanely hot day in front of us and we have decided that we are doing nothing save that I will pop down to see Clare and Les as it is Clare's birthday and they are out of their self-isolation having arrived from Hong Kong.  We had thought that Clare and Les were now going to be living in Droushia permanently but Clare is returning to work in Hong Kong.  With the current situation over there rather her than me!

It is a bit difficult getting to their house at the moment because it is caught up in the second phase of the cobbling.  Everything is dug up so it is uneven and a bit hazardous so it was a miracle that the shipment of their furniture was able to be delivered.  The trouble with the road project in the village is that they start a bit before they have finished a previous bit so there is chaos everywhere.

Anyway I have to thank Clare for the lovely wind chime she brought me back which has pride of place in the Do-Jo and which has sweet little fishes as decoration which go with the wooden plaque I had made earlier.

If things go to plan Clare will be leaving next week and Les staying on his own.  We shall see them again on Friday for Di's posh birthday meal in Finnikas Polis - providing the man-throat has diminished.

We wanted to go to the cemetery today to check on Dad's flowers and as it felt a little cooler we decided to walk as we have not had any exercise for quite some time.  We took the circuitous route up towards the Mukhtari building which took us past Soteris's house (Mukhtar's son that did our Photovoltaic Panels) where I had some real Agapanthus envy because he has an avenue leading up to his front door with heads the size of melons.  Mine has flowered once and resolutely refused to flower again even though I have moved it.

Our walk ultimately took us into the centre of the village where we came across Bambos watering his newly furbished eating area.  His taverna O Stathmos used to have a rustic eating area to the side of the bar but for some reason, which we have yet to fathom, this was taken away from him so now he retains the bar and opposite under what was a vine he has made an outside eating area which is actually very pleasant.  He also now has the coffee shop next door and is running them separately.  He sat with us for a while chatting about the progress (or lack of it) with the road, the effects of Corona Virus and how his two 'little' boys are now grown up, one going to university to be a doctor!!  We remember them being toddlers when we first came.

We checked the post and John was very excited to see that our ultra long network cable has arrived which will enable him to get a TV rigged up outside in the DoJo so that we can watch in the cool - providing we can keep the nosee'ems at bay.

We carried on down to the cemetery where it was super hot.  We had two little lads making their way in front of us - Cypriot they were about 8-ish I would guess so we wondered what they might have been up to but need not have worried as they confidently made their way between the graves to go and pay respects to Andreas - a young lad who passed away several years ago as a result of an unfortunate accident whilst driving his grandfather's tractor.

We did our normal round of watering, Dad's, David's and Elena's and the grave at the end of Dad's row which has two troughs of plants which always look to be in need of a drink.

All was fine and in spite of the prolonged extremely hot spell and no Klaus to keep an eye on them the pinks in Dad's trough are thriving.

As we left the cemetery we realised that 'cooler' was in fact relative as we were both absolutely dripping and by the time we had walked home were in a right old sweaty heap.  Thank God for the pool and Nicky says thank God for the pool as we had invited her over earlier for a cool down as she is finding across the road to be extremely hot as all their windows face south.

We had to smile on our return because the Witch and the Weazel, who have arrived from the UK (unbelievably as non-residents from the UK are not supposed to) and show no intention of self-solating (although they will have signed a solemn declaration to do so in order to get their flight pass) were conspicuous by their absence and that was because they had got a digger to come and decimate the green area which they have a complete bee in their bonnets about.  This has involved knocking down and removing the stone wall which John had built along the edge to make it look better.  We were greeted with a dusty brown barren mess which presumably they think looks better but which we hope will become the new play area for the Syrian kids around the corner and we do hope that the thundering great digger thrashing about in close proximity to their property has not exacerbated the bloody great crack they have on their back wall which looks to be quite serious - not helped by their pool man leaving the water flowing there for several days on end before John brought it to his attention - he wishes he hadn't bothered now.

We got the TV rigged up outside and settled down to an evening outside watching a bit of footie and a bit of trash TV.  We managed to keep the biters at bay although we had a constant wining drone around our ears.  The cats thought it was great fun being with us and at various points during the evening we had one or other of them keeping us company.