Hey Gringos - don't stay out too late...

I had today earmarked for shopping, cooking, art and entertaining and managed all four!  Today is a bank holiday on the island but as it is not a religious one then some of the shops remain open including Paps thank goodness.  It is Ochi/Oxi/Ohi Day which commemorates the rejection by Greek Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas of the ultimatum made by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini on this day in 1940.

Anyway as a result our trip to Paps was super quiet and uneventful and we fair skipped round like giddy kippers doing the shopping.  Even better Paps had a load of real ale on offer and, as we had Di and Rob coming for supper this evening, John stocked up so he could share over the Mexican meal I had planned for tonight.

Not so good was the fact that the woodyard was closed as John is after a few more pieces of wood to complete building a new door for the gas store - still as we weren't going to have time tackle it today it wasn't the end of the world.

In Prodromi there is a massive Oak Tree and as John was stopping off at Kaite's opposite I decided to go and have a quick look as I have never been close up.  It is magnificent. It is an Aleppo Oak and is protected as are all naturally occurring Aleppo Oaks on the island.  It is now over 170 years old, more than 26 meters high and with a girth of around 5 meters (a bit like me after eating too much!!).  It stands in the grounds of the Magic Oak cafe/bar.

As I said earlier we were having Di and Rob over for a meal and I was doing Fajitas with all the trimmings.  These needed to be tasty but not blow your head off hot so I had opted for the mild fajita mix.  Sadly my avocados hadn't ripened sufficiently so no amount of persuasion would enable me to make guacamole as planned.  John wasn't bothered as he doesn't like it and we had three other dips to have so it wasn't like anyone would go hungry.

For pud (I don't do puds and Di is brilliant at them) I was doing some char-grilled and spiced pineapple which we were serving with some good old vanilla ice-cream which I thought would be light and tasty at the end of what can be quite a filling meal.

I got everything ready and John sorted out laying the table and I still had time to do a bit of art for this week's challenge which is "Something Fishy".  If it weren't for the fact that the submissions should be created or completed during the week I could have put in my lovely picture of the Lobster, Crab and Oyster which I did for my friend Sally Allan last year (Sally Allan of Sally's Fish Camp fame).

I didn't have a huge amount of time to think about what I was going to do and as I always say my entries are really only to swell the numbers but I have some fish shaped paperclip things so I decided to use one as a stamp - fortunately the theme this week seems to have inspired people so there should be a good number of entries by the end of Sunday.

We had a lovely evening with Di and Rob except that Di managed to turn her ankle again so is ruled out of playing pickleball tomorrow - she clearly has a weakness there which is going to take time to heal - at least longer than she has given it so far.  We almost forgot the curfew as we were chatting so much but they did manage to get home (in one piece) before lights out!