A Fabulous Festive Feast

We are nearing the end of the first week of December and as of yet we have had no need to light the wood-burner - looking back we did so on 5th December but last year it was infinitely colder and wetter than it is has been so far.

The gas fire has been a god-send even if its initial installation was a bit of a nightmare.  I am not going back into the whole story - it is recorded somewhere on the blog when we first came but for those not familiar we bought this gas fire before moving over and asked the shop to store it for us until we were ready for it which they did until they didn't want to and then Mum and Dad took it until we were ready.

We had to have a hole cut into the lounge wall to accommodate the fire and John had a surround cut and we brought with us the mantlepiece from the UK.  Then when we wanted it all connected the guy that sold it to us had stopped supplying gas fires (we later learned that he was selling Paragon fires over here when he should not have been),  He unwillingly came to Droushia to connect the fire and get it going and couldn't and after a long a trying day wrapped his hand in and declared he wanted nothing more to do with it so we were left with a fire that didn't work and a purpose made hole in the wall to accommodate said fire.

Eventually we got it sorted by a guy who was coming over to Cyprus to get married and who offered to help us out and who, unbelievably, was related to my God Mother's partner!!!! Find the post to read the full story - it is AMAZING!!  As we know there are only six degrees of separation and we are never more than three feet from a rat!!

We said goodbye to Lakis and Argy this weekend along with Dip and Karen who were all traveling back on the same flight to Luton. It is a strange time as we have no idea when they will return because there is both Covid and Brexit to make their return difficult or at least not as it has been previously.  We have heard from both couples to say they got home safely which is good news.

This weekend we had been invited to have than lunch with Sheila and Klaus who had pulled out all the stops to make this a festive occasion for John, me and Mum.  They are such lovely people who look ten years younger now that they have sold their house and moved into somewhere that they clearly love.  Klaus made a fabulous lunch for us and we hope to see them again on Christmas Eve when we hope to have an open house (Covid regulations permitting).  It is lovely for Mum to be able to spend Sunday with some people other than just John and I - it gives her a chance to talk to someone else and to sample someone else's cooking and I think Klaus's gammon went down a treat!

We had fresh hay tonight, John asked if there was any chance of the duvet but I said NO as I am still feeling very hot at night so I relented a tad and put a throw on the bed and we have the rugs on the floor so that the tiles are not so cold on our feet.  Our room is warm and cosy but we haven't needed any sort of supplemental heat in there yet.

We have had a move around of furniture in the lounge in readiness for Christmas, Mum and the wood burner.  We moved the two seater sofa out into the conservatory which was an exercise not without some effing and jeffing and swapped with the two tub chairs.  We thought that when we eat it would allow us to move the dining table sufficiently far away from the wood burner.  The cats gave the change their seal of approval - particularly Mr Boo who was well snuggled in one of the Santa blinkies that come out in the winter.