11th May, 2014
Doesn’t time fly when one’s enjoying oneself? I may be finding garden clearing hardwork but it is certainly doing me good and making me feel better – when I stop. My only problem is that I have a constantly recurring propensity to black out briefly when I am working hard. Everything goes black in my sight and gongy in my ears. I feel like I am going to pass out and fall over. Pauline panics, understandably. It happens so often now that I’ve learned to cope with it.
At least I am showing positive results in my weight loss challenge. Since I started sixteen months ago, I have lost 9 stones or 57 kilos. This is rather more than my wife weighs in her entirety. No wonder I’m passing out!
Liverpool couldn’t do it, could they? Even my friend, Giannis, who is an ardent Liverpool fan, doesn’t believe it any more but no one I know wants City to do it. We’ll see this afternoon.
12th May, 2014
Lots of garden clearing today. We are very tired and aching after it. Received a phone call from London from our underfloor heating company, Warmup. They want to know if we would like to upgrade our installation in Greece.
13th May, 2014
I’m sorry the Blog is even more boring than usual. We have hardly left our grounds for days. We are still working on clearing weeds and will be for quite some days yet. At least this year our lemon trees have fruited well. We are picking them as and when we need them. Unlike apples and pears, they seem to hold perfectly on the trees for a long time.
I will try to do something more interesting than photograph lemons in the next few days so as not to bore my readers any more!
14th May, 2014
I was wrong about boring. Our house was inundated with visitors in the afternoon. I will tell you more if and when I can. It was tiring and stressful. For four weeks we live a quiet life and then the world turns up. I don’t know about you but I find that tiring and stressful.
We decided to go out to eat and went to Absinthe Restaurant.
It majors on Greek Smyrneian cuisine and makes a welcome change from traditional island fare.
Today, we still felt full from eating too much. We worked in the garden and then started sorting things out inside the house. It’s nice to get rid of some old stuff at times. It’s also nice to reminisce through papers of the past.
15th May,2014
A chilly start to the morning on a calm and, eventually, reasonably warm (23C) day. We haven’t been out. Garden clearing was the morning’s focus. There is something reassuring about the small world relationships of a tiny, Greek island. We were clearing down near our boundary wall along the roadside. While we were working, Moshka’s husband, Apostolis, came down from the farm on his motorbike and stopped to say ‘Yassas’ and ask if we were ‘Kala?. His son, Nikos, came by on his bike and gave a cheery wave. Papa Boulis brought his brother down in the Hotel van, driving the flock of sheep before them. They stopped to admire our land clearance and to ask how we were. The farmer who we call ‘Smiler’ for obvious reasons, tooted and waved and our friend, the taxi driver, tooted twice as he went up and again as he went down the hill. These are superficial but life-informing contacts.
I tested my INR this morning and recorded a near perfect 2.6. It really is great to be in charge of my own destiny by testing and self-prescribing and it’s all free on the wonderful NHS!
16th May,2014
How can we have got past the half way mark in may already? Feeling the strain of daily garden activity. My arms and fingers ache, my legs are cramping. I’m finding it hard to hold the mattock straight today. Press on!
Only managed a couple of hours work today although the weather was ideal – a cool 23C/71F. Resorted to reading the newspaper and snoozing. It’s one of those things you can do when you’re retired. Lovely story in The Times of a sign outside a Health Club:
Fat and Ugly? Join our Gym and just be ugly.
This was counteracted by the shocking but predictable report of:
Research which heaped doubt on the rate of global warming was deliberately suppressed by scientists because it was “less than helpful” to their cause..
It’s standard stuff from the Climate Religion these days.
17th May,2014
It is a delightful, warm (23C) summer’s day. Out of the sun and, when the breeze is there, there can be a slightly chilly cutting edge. We ache from days of garden clearing and have decided to rest. We did our shopping in Apolonia and came home for coffee and the papers.
We have been so busy in the five weeks since we got here that we haven’t seen much of the island at all. We drove down to Platys Gialos. It was very enjoyable. The resort has been much smartened up since we were last there. Took these photographs en route:
We came back and prepared meal of cold, smoked fish and salad – delicious and very healthy. The only downside today is that Greek TV has not bought the FA Cup Final from ITV/BT Sport. Pity!