Good Friday

It is Good Friday here on the Island.  Everything will be closed tomorrow and Sunday and some of the restrictions are being relaxed then because here Easter is the most important of the religious celebrations so we are guessing Covid-19 must be Greek Orthodox!!!  We shall keep ourselves to ourselves but take advantage of the extra text and mixing of households on Sunday when Mum will come up with Lilian for lunch.

The weather forecast is for it to be super hot over the weekend so with the whole day in front of us (save for a bit of shopping for essentials) we decided to tackle the last bit of the potting bench and I was deemed capable enough (under strict supervision) to help with the grouting.

I know I have said it before but the tiles we got from Bassam were perfect and I love them so I was more than happy to roll my sleeves up and help get this project put to bed.  We have decided, because we have enough tiles left over, to bring the tiling across the front of the back door but to do this John needed more adhesive so when we had finished the grouting we decided we would just pop to Prodromi, nip into Glykkis DIY  and then get the few essentials from Kaite's Supermarket and we would reward ourselves with an ice-cream if the ice-cream-ishery was open (which it was!!!).

So we had had our one allowed outing, got everything we needed for the weekend by way of food so returned home enjoying a mega scrumptious Da Vinci ice-cream cone.

It turned into a day for getting piddly jobs done which is actually pretty rewarding as these tend to sit around for a while and get overlooked.  Anyway the other week there was a plant holder with plants advertised in Lidl which I liked the look of and which John said he would make for me.

He completed it today - it is the wooden 'bench' which holds two little plants which are slow growing cactuses from our garden.  I am not sure we saved any money making our own but it gave us something to do and something to argue about!!!  Anyway it is in the conservatory now and looks lovely!

John decided to try and finish refurbishing the estate sign which Tassos knocked over and decimated.  The cats came to join us and for some reason best known only to himself Boris decided to sit right in the middle of my bed of Nigella (Love-in-the-Mist).  He completely flattened the centre - John seems to think that he was trying to hide from a small bird which seems to be nesting in a nearby bush.  Fortunately he didn't catch anything whilst we were there keeping an eye on proceedings.

I got the job of painting in the letters on the sign which I didn't mind - I quite enjoy this sort of thing but as it was hot the enamel paint was getting thicker and thicker.  I was only going to do the top line but I was on a roll and I didn't think it was a job I would want to do tomorrow when it is tipped to be even hotter.

We had quite a lot of discussion about what was going on the sign.  The old one said Lordos 1, Drouseia Villas but we had done that one using stencils and a felt tip the paint was too thick for me to maneouvre around lettering smaller than what we had used on the top line and there wasn't enough room to get Drouseia Villas on the bottom line in the same size.

There ensued a full and frank discussion about what should go and where and then we agreed to drop the Villas bit.  

This was quite a long and messy job but I was determined to finish it and then when it is a bit cooler John can go and dig the holes required for us to put it back up.  Below is the finished article - I tried to paint the olive decoration in free hand but by then the paint was just too gloopy so I resorted to a good old felt tip which after another very full and very frank discussion John conceded was the best way forward.  Actually at a distance it all looks fine and is another job which can be ticked off our lockdown list.

It was a very warm and balmy night which marked the end of 10 years for us on the island - tomorrow we embark on our 11th as we arrived here on May 1st 2011.  We sat out in the Do-Jo enjoying the calm save for the periodic bangs coming from the village which were from the homemade fire crackers they insist on throwing around over the Easter Period.  We cannot decide whether to put the TV back out in the Do-Jo - we quite like the fact that when we can have visitors again we can sit 4 people in there comfortably.