An Evening with our Neighbours

In our new normal we are having what for us is a busy week.  We are so grateful to be here up in the hills rather than down in the humidity of Paphos or worse, back in the UK, with its random rules and regulations which simply do not seem to make any sense whatsoever.  My sister, who sensibly cancelled her trip at the end of September falls into the new regulations for Solihull - she is not allowed to have members of her family into her home nor she enter theirs but she is allowed to travel and could arrange to meet up with them in a pub or restaurant.  What is the logic in that???  Here we are being treated like adults and given the freedom to choose how and where and with whom we mix and in certain circumstances need to use hand sanitizer and wear masks.  The amount of tests carried out on a daily basis is growing and there are normal a few new cases each day but the authorities seem to have a handle on how these have manifested themselves.  In our particular corner of the island life seems to have been affected somewhat less than elsewhere thankfully.

With some time on my hands this afternoon I got out my paints.  The theme for this week's Challenge is Autumn leaves/fruit/vegetables and I had thought about using a fig-leaf as a 'stamp' but in the end settled for a vine-leaf.  I slapped paint onto the leaf and pressed it down onto the paper and dabbed some of the areas which were lacking with a wet paint brush and was pretty pleased with the result.  I used a black gel pen to define the edges and add a stalk.

We had invited our neighbours Argy, Lakis and Kia around for a drink this evening as an early celebration for John's birthday as we are spending the day with Mum tomorrow then celebrating Marky- Mark's birthday on Thursday.  The Kyriakides regularly host us and we thought it might be a nice change of scenery for Kia.  As the evenings have been much cooler we weren't sure whether we would be sitting inside or out so made sure that the conservatory was clean and tidy in case we were to be in there.

As it happens they were more than happy to sit outside.  The area at the back of the kitchen is only suitable for four people so we were to be under the vine at the dining table and chairs.  The garden looked really lovely this evening with candles and solar lights and despite the long hot summer we do have some colour with the climbing plants putting on a show - even the Pandorea over the wooden archway has finally begun to burst into life with clusters of pale pink flowers with brighter pink veins.

We had a lovely few hours sitting under the vine - it was nice for us to be able to repay their kindness.  They are really great neighbours to have but we are always sad that, even after all this time, we are unable to converse better with Kia whose English is most definitely better than our Greek.  It was a fabulous evening with very little condensation and thankfully no biters.