Wet Weather

The weather today was nothing short of atrocious.  Rain and Thunderstorms all day.  We started by shooting down to Polis so I could get my blood test results and hopefully talk to Dr Manolis about them.  I got the results, actually I had already read them online, but it must have been a day when every Cypriot old man in the area had decided to go out to the Doctor and so it was a right old rugby scrum in reception.  I am guessing they were in having their 'flu jabs or something but they all wanted a quick word with the Doctor before or after so I decided to leave it.  I could see, as expected that my cholesterol was not great but the full blood test results were pretty good.

We returned home where I decided to keep myself warm and occupied by getting the food ready for this evening when Sonia was coming for supper.  She is not vegetarian but prefers to eat less meat and as a result it pushes me to find more interesting recipes which are meat-free.  

John called Savvas the electrician to come and change the timer switch on the immersion heater as the one we had seemed to have gone tits-up after the storm.  The rain was so awful that John rang again in the afternoon to tell Savvas to leave it until the weather picked up - poor man had actually come to us but the weather was so bad he had to sit in his van at the end of the path waiting for the rain to abate.  We now have a new super-dooper switch with red lights not blue.

We did not get round to packing away the furniture in Wendy and Bill corner before the rain.  We are going to regret that as everything is absolutely soaking and will take forever to dry out.  Everywhere is such a mess I need to get out and tidy up but there are conflicting weather reports so we aren't entirely sure when we are next going to get a dry day.  Possibly not until the weekend.  Savvas was saying that this weather is absolutely unheard of here in his lifetime.  It felt like February today - February is normally the most miserable month weatherwise.  We have dusted off the space heaters and will put them out in the lounge/dining area for tonight as we don't want Sonia to be cold.

Late afternoon/early evening we had a break in the rain - it was a brief respite only but we shot down to the Doctors to see if he was free.  I took the view that because the weather was so awful today people would be tucked up indoors.  I was right, at 5.30pm there was no-one in the waiting room and I walked straight in.  As I thought my general blood test was fine - in fact Dr Manolis said that my results were better than his.  My cholesterol needs dealing with so I am on statins.  I did have statins years ago after Dad had his heart attacks but I was never entirely happy with how they made me feel or the science behind them.  I stopped taking them but am happy to try again.  I trundled off to the pharmacy to get my three prescription items which cost me a massive €3.84 in total.

Poor Sonia had to battle the elements to walk from her house to ours.  John had offered to go down with his big golf brolly and escort her - she declined coming to us but was more than happy to accept on the return journey.  We had a lovely evening.  I really enjoy her company and I have to say that our vegetarian supper was a resounding success.  I made (in no particular order) spicy garlic prawn tacos with salad and avocado dip, lemon marinated halloumi in a lentil and beetroot salad, roasted baby peppers stuffed with the local hot cheese dip, fresh black eyed beans in pesto,  home-made muhamarra dip (roasted red pepper and walnut) with mini pittas and finally some gigantes beans with coriander. 

Sadly I didn't get round to taking a photograph of our delicious spread.