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| Friday, July 20, 2023 I was woken at 6.30 am by a frantic phone call from Billy. "Bring a hacksaw! There's a cat trapped by its foot in my wrought iron gate." I dressed, collected my tools and rode to Billy's house in the coolish morning air. Well, less than 30°C. I donned my leather welding gauntlets because I don't trust feral cats and, sure enough, it hissed and tried to chew my finger off. I let it calm down and then sawed through the metal curlicue until I dare go no further. Then I gripped the end with a mole wrench and worked it back and forth until it snapped off. I held the ungrateful, snarling, biting beast while Billy unhooked its foot and it ran off to hide in a hole. |
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| OK, yes, I actually delayed the rescue by ten seconds to take two photos. How cruel of me. But the damn fur ball had been hanging there for hours and wasn't anywhere near dead so ten seconds wasn't going to matter! We drove to Haniá this morning to sort out phone contracts and do shopping. We bought stuff in "Jumbo" for our eldest son's family, who will be visiting us in two weeks. We drove to the "Apollon" car park, took the ticket and then Iliana went shopping while I walked to the Cosmote phone office to "negotiate" a new contract for our mobile phones. |
| It was Hobson's choice: we get 3 GB data extra per month and we pay 6 Euros extra. Take it or leave it. The woman was very helpful, polite and willing to speak English so I signed the new contracts, thanked her and left. I phoned Iliana and we met in a nearby coffee shop to have a lunchtime snack and drinks. |
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| After that we searched for the plumber's merchant to buy a couple of carbon granule water filters. We remembered vaguely where it was located and, when we found it, Iliana made a note on her smart phone map, which she emailed to me for posterity. It's in "Smirnis" street. |
| When we arrived home, we unpacked the car and I had less than an hour before we had to drive to a couple of friends house for a swim, drinks, nibbles and a chat. I didn't swim - my finger has a cut from this morning's hacksaw attack and I want it to heal. Also, the pool looked very wet and the sun was very hot. We chatted till 6 pm then made our excuses and left. On the way home, we stopped at a taverna, ordered a quarter litre of wine and a takeaway "kleftiko" (oven-baked lamb) for me. Iliana claimed not to be hungry. |
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| Iliana ate all the chips and some of the "fava" on the supplied garlic bread while I ate the rest. There was a soupçon of tomato, peppers, cucumber and cheese. No, not cucumber - the other green thing that looks like cucumber. Zucchini? Kolokithaki? Bah, my memory! The English word escapes me. |
| Saturday, July 22, 2023 So, Zucchini sounds Italian, Kolokithaki is Greek and the French word is courgette. We don't appear to have an English word for it. That's my excuse. Iliana didn't sleep well and slept in till 9.15 am. I beat her by fifteen minutes and slept quite well. Cliff just phoned to ask me to bring an empty egg box. He has some fresh eggs for us, bless him. At 11 am the temperature is 36°C and feels like 42 (allegedly). I have a slight headache and I think it might be related to the current high pressure of 1014.6 hPa. |
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| Sunday, July 24, 2023 We drove to Georgioupoli for breakfast at Stelios Bar. There was F1 racing on the TV. It might have been highlights; I wasn't paying attention. |
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| My mobike is looking a bit worse for wear but it puts this one to shame! After breakfast, we took a walk around the village because I wanted to buy bananas and Iliana was looking for pool toys for the grandchildren, who will be visiting soon. We found what we wanted and drove home. |
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| The temperature reach 41°C in the shade. This praying mantis was cooling itself on my mobike saddle. I rode to the Café and found quite a few friends there, so I joined them for a Fredo Cappuccino and nibbled a few chips, which they'd ordered but couldn't eat. Chips are very popular in Greece. I rarely eat them but these were sprinkled with sea salt and oregano, which made them delicious. |
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| Monday, July 24, 2023 I awoke to the screaming of cicadas at 7 am. It was already 30°C. The temperature didn't fall much overnight. Today it's forecast to be "36 feels like 41°C". Lovely. My old Mac PowerBook G4 was overheating so I've placed a USB-powered fan to blast it with air. |
| Iliana's "knit & natter" was cancelled because of the heat, so I commandeered the car and drove Billy to the Café in Litsarda so that he could buy a loaf from the bread van. While we were waiting for the van, we sat down and ordered drinks. Billy also needed a cucumber and, when I explained in Greek to Petroula, she kindly handed us four from her garden to share! A voice next to us said "hello" and I turned to discover two part-time neighbours from England. It's so long since I last saw them that I had to apologise because I couldn't remember their names. We chatted until the bread van arrived. Unfortunately, it didn't have the large loaves that Billy prefers so he handed over a fiver and Yiannis, the driver, promised to hang a bag of loaves on Billy's gate, tomorrow. I drove Billy and dropped him off at his gate. Back home, I spent an hour at the computer while Iliana did cross-stitch. Finally, we needed to move about, so we drove to Kavros and walked round the village on level ground, doing a little window shopping. |
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| We stopped at a café, ordered two cups of tea, a cake for Iliana and a scoop of ice cream for me. Iliana took a photo of her finger before tackling the cake. Kavros is near the sea and there was a not-so-hot sea breeze where we sat in the shade. |
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| Back home, Iliana made a chicken salad for evening dinner, making use of a cucumber from Petroula. This is the "after" picture. |
| Tuesday, July 25, 2023 I loaded up the mobike and headed for Kalyves. I dropped off the borrowed cabin bag on the veranda of the friends who had lent it to us (they were out) and then I continued to researcher Bill's house, where I delivered a loaf of sourdough bread from my German neighbours. We chatted for half an hour and then I rode to the doctor's surgery, where I obtained three prescriptions for Hydroxychloroquine and an order/prescription for a blood test to check my B12 and D levels. I queued at the nearby microbiology centre, where I chatted with locals until it was my turn to have blood drawn. I paid 30 Euros. (The B12 test is covered by standard health insurance but the D3 isn't.) They will email me the results when ready. I bought sausages from the butcher and bananas from the grocer/supermarket. I texted Iliana and she told me to buy "Whiskas" cat biscuits. A bought a small quantity of cherries because Iliana loves them and the season is almost over. I rode to Vamos and bought traditional sheep's milk yoghurt, which I'd forgotten to buy at the supermarket, and then rode home to drop everything off. I took the date stamp machine from the 'fridge and rode to our local supermarket, where I date-stamped and organised today's delivery of mail. I took two letters that were addressed to our nearest neighbour. I rode back to Vamos because I'd forgotten to collect my HCQ from the pharmacy. That cost 1.80 Euros. I showed the pharmacist the empty box that had contained eye ointment and, without my saying a word, she told me that it was currently unobtainable. Darn; my eyes are itching. |
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| I headed home but stopped at the café in Litsarda for a Fredo Cappuccino as I hadn't had a drink since I left Bill's house and the weather was scorching. |
| Back home, I gave the letters to Iliana and she took them to the neighbour at 3 pm where she goes most days for a chat. I sat at the computer in our air conditioned office to do some research and my alarm went off at 3.50 pm for my weekly Skype meeting with my UK engineer friends. At 5 pm we closed the Skype call and Iliana was cooking breaded chicken to go with a salad. After dinner, I returned to the computer. __ Wednesday, July 26, 2023 Iliana took a neighbour shopping to Sklavenitis supermarket near Haniá. I emptied the cupboard under the sink and replaced the carbon filter for the drinking water tap. |
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| The outside temperature in the shade peaked at almost 42°C at 12.24 pm as Iliana arrived home with shopping. |
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At 5 pm she prepared chicken salad and discovered that the electric salt shaker didn't work. I inspected it and saw that one battery contact spring had corroded and was no longer connected. I took it into the workshop, located a new spring in my spares box and soldered it in place, having first cleaned up the corroded rivet. I applied silicone grease to all of the contacts and then replaced the battery cells. Mended! |
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| At 7 pm, I went outside to check the fig tree. It was like walking into an oven! Definitely the hottest day on Crete this year. |
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| The figs are still small and hard but they usually ripen by early August. |
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| Thursday, July 27, 2023 My belt snapped so I rode to Georgioupoli to buy a new leather belt and left the old one for repair. Back home, Iliana was about to leave so I joined her to drive to a friend's house where we'd been invited to pick plumb tomatoes. |
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| We headed to Almyrida for breakfast. |
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| I ordered the usual English breakfast but Iliana ordered a cheese, ham and tomato baguette. |
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| She borrowed my camera to photograph the tourists on sailboards. It was very windy so only the most skilled were on the sea. |
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| On the way home we were stuck behind a slow rock lorry until Iliana was able to overtake it safely. |
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| When we reached our village we were confronted by a large hole, which council workers had dug. Our neighbour pointed out that the water pressure was zero so I rode to the supermarket to buy her a six-pack of water bottles and a bottle of chlorine for me. I climbed the steps to our roof and poured two capfuls of chlorine bleach into the 1000 litre reserve tank. It's enough to kill most microbes but not enough to taste or to affect us. |
| I rode down to Ombrosgialos Bay to see what was happening there. The taverna had closed some years ago but there's now café with a covered seating area. 
This is a composite panorama, patched manually so I apologise for the colour changes. The sea was a beautiful turquoise colour and al least a dozen people were swimming there. |
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| I parked my mobike and went into the café to order a bottle of water and a chocolate ice cream on a stick. I sat and enjoyed the view. |
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| The people at the table behind me left but there was still lots of happy chattering from the rest. It was hot but bearable in the shade. |
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| Back home I made myself a glass of cold cocoa. In this heat we are drinking continually. |
| While I was washing the dishes, the "eye" snapped off the bottle brush, so I took it into the workshop and drilled a new hole near the end of the handle. This allows me to thread a piece of wire through to hang it on a hook on the wall. 
Friday, July 28, 2023 I came downstairs to find that Iliana had opened to office door to the veranda "to cool the office". That would have worked if the sun hadn't been streaming in through the doorway and if the prevailing breeze hadn't been from the south. I pointed out that she was actually making the office hotter and she stormed upstairs in a temper. Oops. Women in general don't appear to respond well to logic. At 10.15 am she came down and drove off to see Maria in Rethymno. |
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| I fried sausages and eggs, which I ate for breakfast with beans and broccoli. I walked to the supermarket to buy bananas and then stopped at the village café for a cold drink before walking home. |
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| I had noticed that the Alsatian dog had disappeared from the sheep farmer's house near the supermarket. I think I found it in his field.* I rode to Café O Petros in Litsarda and chatted to the locals over a coffee. * Iliana assures me that it's a goatskin. |
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| Iliana had also whinged about the fact that I'd eaten a pear from the bag that she bought. So I headed for the grocery supermarket in Kalyves to buy replacements. I stopped at the garage in Vamos to buy petrol for my tank and the black plastic container that I always carry. I keep a few litres at home so that I don't get caught with an empty tank. |
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| On the way to Kalyves, I noticed that the furniture warehouse has been extended upwards. I parked my mobike next to the supermarket, bought fruit, put it into the cool-bag in my helmet box and then crossed the road to get cash from the ATM. When I returned, there was traffic chaos. A coach was trying to navigate chaos corner and, as usual, cars were parked on both sides. The coach driver was sounding his horn and a police car behind him turned his siren on. |
| The cars wiggled like squares in a Chinese puzzle and eventually the traffic was able to move. Technically, my mobike probably shouldn't have been parked there but there are no lines, no signs and, if it hadn't been there, a car probably would have been. In any case, my mobike wasn't causing an obstruction but the pickup truck in front of it was! (I should have taken a photo but didn't think of it at the time.) Back home, I washed the dishes and then chopped up some broccoli and a banana. I blanched the broccoli and placed it on a plate in the freezer. I also placed the banana slices on a plate in the freezer. When they were frozen, I put the pieces into bags and replaced them in the freezer. For dinner, I ate broccoli and left over chicken and then washed the dishes again. Iliana returned home just before 6 pm and disappeared upstairs. __ Saturday, July 29, 2023 Iliana awoke in a better mood and took an early morning walk. When she returned, I put the whites in the washing machine and, half an hour later, I hung them out to dry. It shouldn't take long. At 10.30 am the temperature indoors is 28°C with just fans spinning. No aircon yet. At noon I rode to Litsarda and bought ginger marmalade from the English supermarket. Then I walked to the café and chatted with a young Dutch couple who are living in the village. The girl is called "Hedwig". Her husband has an unpronounceable name. When I left the café, I rode to Billy's house to return his pliers, which I'd picked up by mistake after the cat rescue. Billy was sitting indoors, wearing only shorts and next to the biggest fan you've ever seen. He's fine but suffering from the heat. He told me that he'd gone out in the car to do some shopping earlier in the morning. |
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| The stray cat, which has been coming to us for food for years, has gone deaf. Also, she seems to have laboured breathing so I think that her heart is failing or she has a tumour. Our neighbour thinks that the cat could be 14 or 15 years old. She's also restless and lies first under my desk, then under Iliana's desk, then on the kitchen floor and then repeats before finally heading for the door. |
| At the moment she seems to be comfortable but if she shows signs of pain or distress, I'll take her to a vet. |
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| We had chicken salad (again) for dinner. |
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| My lovely DOQAUS headphones are disintegrating! As with most things made from plastic, something on the island (microbes?) ruins the material after a year or so. I can't blame this on sunlight. I've ordered a replacement. They are comfortable, audio quality is excellent (not that I'm any judge) and rechargeable battery life is good. I might be able to patch up the old ones with replacement foam pads. |
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| Sunday, July 30, 2023 Iliana set off to walk in the direction of Georgioupoli. After half an hour I followed in the car, dropped of rubbish in the first empty communal bin that I found and then collected Iliana, who had had enough of walking in the bright sunshine. Georgioupoli Square |
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| As we waited for breakfast to be cooked in Stelios Café Bar, Stelios' mother arrived from church and handed us her traditional bag of "Kólliva". www.aglaiakremezi.com/kollyva-
the-age-old-greek-memorial-sweet www.thehungrybites.com/GR/wp-
content/uploads/2021/08/kollyba-
sintagi-apo-Krhth-683x1024.jpg |
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| After breakfast, we crossed the square to the butcher's shop to buy liver but there was none on display, so we headed for the car and drove home. |
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| For dinner I had yoghurt and banana followed by leftover chicken and broccoli. I took a walk up to the Plateia Café for a coffee. A group of noisy English people were consuming beer. A couple I recognised; I think that the rest were visitors. |
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| On the way home I noticed a child's buggy that had been placed by the communal bins for recycling. It looked sturdy and everything functioned, including the brake. I wheeled it home and showed it to Iliana. "Is it kite marked?" she asked me. "How can I tell?" "It's dangerous. Throw it away!" So I scrubbed it with detergent, hosed it down with copious amounts of water and then left it in the sun to dry. The sun will set in an hour so I'll move it into the yard to catch the morning sun tomorrow. I can't see anything wrong with it. I think that someone will be glad of it. Do you know how much these things cost? |
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| Monday, July 31, 2023 The buggy had dried overnight so I folded it and put it in the tool shed. We drove to the peninsula for our chiropodist appointment. There, as we waited in the garden, Iliana noticed a well-disguised grasshopper. |
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| After the appointment we did some shopping at Lidl. As the checkout lady scanned my chicken "gyros" (kebab meat) the packet burst open and pieces of chicken flew everywhere. She ran everything through the till and asked me to fetch another packet while she cleared up the mess. |
| On the way home, we followed a Tesla car on the National Road. I was driving so I couldn't safely photograph it but it looked like every other Tesla. Back home, we unpacked the shopping; Iliana had a quick shower and then left for her "knit & natter" meeting, already half an hour late. I rode to Georgioupoli to get cash from the ATM and buy liver and beef burgers from the butcher. I'd hoped to collect my repaired belt, too, but the shop was closed. When Iliana returned, she put a Lidl "lasagne" (= junk food) in the oven, for herself, while I cooked a beef burger stuffed with chopped peppers and feta cheese. |
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| We bought this "karpouzi" in Lidl supermarket. It's a very large (and heavy) type of water melon. Inside is pink. |
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| Tuesday, August 1, 2023 I awoke around 6 am, did my back exercises, dressed and stumbled downstairs. Iliana had already done her morning walk. I set off on mine. |
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| The houses that have been standing abandoned for at least fourteen years are now being completed. The law says that new houses must be insulated (ours wasn't/isn't) so these are being clad with blue polystyrene sheets. |
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| A closer look at the windows. Honestly, I don't understand how they do this. It looks as if the insulation is glued with brown spray foam. I believe that they will fix plastic net over it and then rendering on top. |
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| Here you can see black fabric hanging down. |
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| Back home, Iliana read off a list of jobs that she had to do. So, while she did the cleaning, I donned rubber gloves and then chopped and cooked the liver, which I bought yesterday. Afterwards, I cleaned and disinfected everything and threw away the rubber gloves. |
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| At 10 am We drove to Georgioupoli for a short break and had cold drinks at "Titos" kafeneio overlooking the square. |
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| I admired the electrical wiring of the ceiling fan. While we were there, Shkelqim the painter phoned to say that he could come at noon. So we returned to meet him. We discussed house painting and decided on the most expensive option for the north-facing wall, which grows tits every winter: big bags of water behind the paint. |
| From 4 till 5 pm I had my weekly Skype conversation. Then Iliana & I drove to the rental villa where our son's family will be staying for the next fortnight. We dropped off provisions including power socket adapters, drinking water, pool toys for the kids and other stuff. |
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| Back home, I went into the garden to check the figs. They are still rock solid. I noticed two dead cicadas on the leaves. They were not only dead but completely empty shells. Is this a part of the life cycle or the work of a predator? At 7.30 pm we set off for the airport. The flight has been delayed by an hour so we'll be driving back in the dark. That would be OK except that our son will be driving an unfamiliar hire car on the "wrong" side of the road! |
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| I dropped Iliana off at the "Arrivals" door and then drove out of the airport to park in a lay-by. While I was there, I plugged in my OBD2 tester to determine why the engine warning light was on. It displayed the fault code for a faulty #1 oxygen sensor. I cleared the fault code and the warning light went out. |
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| I awaited Iliana's phone call as the sun disappeared and the moon rose. It's white in this photo but it looked orange to me. Eventually, Iliana sent me a message to say that they'd got the hire car and were coming to meet me. She and our son's wife got into our car to go and collect pizza while I got into the hire car to direct our son to the villa that he'd rented in our village. |
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| Wednesday, August 2, 2023 We received a message that our son's family planned to spend the morning in the pool, so we drove across the village to join them. When I parked the car, Iliana noticed that a back tyre was deflated so one of us knelt in the blazing sun to remove the wheel, while Iliana went in to have a swim. I located a bent nail (left), which hadn't penetrated the tyre and a screw (right), which had. |
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| I pulled out my puncture repair kit and plugged the hole before refitting the wheel, pumping up the tyre and lowering the jack. |
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| Although I needed a shower, I was too exhausted to swim so I sat and watched. A stray cat also watched with envy as it hadn't brought its swimming costume. |
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I used my smart phone to take this panorama shot but it got it slightly wrong as the pool is completely straight, not curved! After the swim, we drove both cars to Café O Petros where we ordered a selection of dishes for lunch. It totalled 26 Euros for six of us. After paying, we walked to the nearby English supermarket for provisions. The girls stroked a 2 month old kitten that had just been to the vet to have toes amputated because it had been in an accident that crushed one foot. It also had a faulty diaphragm so it wasn't breathing normally, but that couldn't be fixed. Hopefully, it will survive. We put the child booster seats into our car and took the girls home to give our son "L" and his wife "K" an hour's respite. Iliana set about preparing a chicken dinner and plum crumble while I allowed the girls to pester me and play with my 'toys', which included an old iPod Classic and a very expensive camera, which is slightly faulty since I dropped it. I rode to the supermarket on my mobike and when I returned I noticed that oil was dripping from the new engine. I couldn't determine the source of the leak so I phoned the mechanic, who told me to bring it after 10 am tomorrow. "L" and "K" arrived for dinner. I'm not going to give real names because they are very distinctive and the girls were adopted and must not be identified. __ Thursday, August 3, 2023 I rode my mobike to the mechanics' workshop so that he can fix the oil leak. As I dismounted, I felt a sharp pain in my right buttock! It felt like a wasp sting. I limped up the driveway to the car, which Iliana had driven to collect me. I dropped my shorts and she applied an ammonia stick to the red dot on my rump. We drove to the rental villa around 10 am so that L & K & the girls could follow us in their hire car to the "Jumbo" store near Haniá. When Iliana got out of the car, she noticed that the tyre was flat again. So L & I spent five minutes in the blazing sun to change the wheel. We drove to Kalyves and stopped, briefly, to leave the wheel at the tyre depot. Then we drove to "Jumbo" to buy toys for the girls. After an hour of touring "Jumbo", accompanied by screams of "Mummy, I want one of these!", we filled the hire car with loot and crossed the road for lunch at "Moderno" Café. During lockdown, it had sacked all of the waiters, so it's now self-service. That makes it slower, less convenient and the choice of food is reduced. It also means that you sit at a table with your takeaway meals and drinks, with plastic cutlery and no plates. After that less-than-delightful meal, we decided to drive directly home instead of going to the town centre. We stopped in Kalyves to collect my wheel with new tyre. This time it cost a swinging eighty Euros! I'm sure that a tyre cost sixty not long ago. Back home, we unpacked our own shopping and then Iliana returned to the villa to join the others in the pool. I'm not keen on water - especially chlorinated water - so I remained in my cool, air conditioned office, to type this. It occurs to me that the microbiology centre in Kalyves promised to email me my blood test results last Thursday and they never arrived. So I must pay a visit there, soon. They probably miscopied my email address. __ Friday, August 4, 2023 The mechanics still have my mobike. I don't know what's happening but I'm not going to pester them. We are waiting for our son to send a text message to say that they are ready. The girls are sleeping ELEVEN hours each night at present, so it's taking extra time to get ready each morning. This means that we go out with them at the hottest time of day. However, it does mean that I have a few hours each morning to work by myself. I need to check the car tyres before we go out! |
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