Christmas comes early for John...

 I had the first decent night's sleep in ages - it could have been the nightcap ouzos that helped but as Wayne had to be up and off early I was grateful.  I know that John had really enjoyed spending time with one of his salty sea-dog mateys.  No-one understand a sailor like another sailor and they had lots of things to reminisce over - what started out as being a bit of a nothing birthday turned out pretty well in the end.  Wayne plans to return at some point with his wife Lisa and it will be really good to seem them both.

We had planned to do some shopping in readiness for John's Mum's arrival and decided to go down to Paphos to get all the toiletries, ciders and mixers from Ikoagora because it is considerably cheaper than Paps.  John could not believe his eyes when he found that after months and months of nothingness they had real ales back on the shelf and a good range and at a very cheap price!!!  Even better they had some of the banana beer that I really like and at a euro cheaper than I had paid previously!!!  Needless to say we stocked up - you never know when these things will disappear off the shelves again.  Ikoagora must have had a shipment in recently because they also had boxes of Felix cat food pouches which are currently Charlie's favourite and which have been as rare as hens' teeth.  This little trip was the precursor to what turned out to be a really good date night!!!!

We returned home and unpacked our goodies and then sat out in the garden to just do some quality control tasting on a couple of beers before I cooked our date night meal which was to be some of Shuks local fillet steak.

The days getting shorter and the evenings up here cooler and damper but the weather forecast shows that there is to be a late heatwave next week, I just hope it isn't too hot for our visitors.

We will now have a busy three weeks and I know that John is really looking forward to seeing his mum - as am I and to spend time with Jackie and Stan plus we have to factor in my Mum so we invited Lakis and Argy to come round this evening after their meal to have a drink and a catch up.  We realised that we have only been out with them twice since they arrived and on one of those occasions we had an emergency call from Clare about Les.  Lakis and Argy are uncertain about when they will return to the UK.  There have been a number of factors which might influence their decision so we want to try and see them a few more times yet.  It is much easier for them to come round to us now that they do not have Kia living with them although we were always happy to accommodate her as well.

Our fillet steaks did not disappoint.  John says it is mostly in the cooking but actually if a piece of meat is tough to start off with it never gets any better.  I had some of my steak sauce left from last week and I did salad, onion rings and paprika chips and my lovely piece of fillet cost the princely sum of 5 euros - when you think how much you pay in a restaurant this is unbelievable value.