Sanders Blog

Sunday, 18th August, 2019

Another lovely day. Another lovely week to come. I’m going to start by cleaning the car. Every weekend for years in the North of England, I would drive down to the local carwash, read my paper in the queue and feel a little uncomfortable as a team of immigrants slaved over my car for 10 mins. They relieved me of about £10.00/€11.00 or so but I felt my working week justified the cost.

Even in retirement, I continued for many years but now I do my own. I love the exercise. I spend a couple of hours every couple of weeks and save at least £20.00/€22.00 per month.

Pauline is busily cooking ginger biscuits which she loves and then completing preparations for our coming trip abroad. The carparking at Gatwick is booked. The hotel is booked. Clothes are being ironed although I wouldn’t care if she ironed them or not. Shorts and tee-shirts looked better crumpled on me. Because Greece is on the outer edge of satellite reception for UK, I’ve decided to use a VPN.

This is a Virtual Private Network for the uninitiated which disguises where one is operating from. It has been a genuine source of irritation and puzzlement to me why it has not been possible to access most UK media whilst abroad. Fortunately, there has been a notable exception. BBC Radio is open but why can’t everything else be behind a paywall with login access?

I pay for my Times  newspaper and access it through a paywall. I pay my BBC Licence Fee. Why should I be denied access to it while abroad? I pay my Sky TV and BTSport fees. I can access them on my iPad around UK. Why not in Europe? They should be available to me. Now, they will be. It doesn’t cost much financially although I have been concerned about it slowing internet access down a bit. In European hotels, the internet access is getting quicker and more reliable all the time but I don’t want to compromise it if I can avoid it. Early trials don’t suggest my access is slowed down at all. All the hubs have shown up in Addlestone, Surrey so far. The cost is just £60.00/€65.70  per year.

Monday, 19th August, 2019

Up early for a drive to Surrey. We are visiting P&C and delivering a renovated laptop to a student without one. While there, my job was to set up P’s new iPad and clear her old one for a boy without. He hadn’t had in his hands for 2 mins before it was up and working and looking to install Netflix. Who the hell watches Netflix? I have the Parliament Channel on my iPad. Now, that’s more like it!

The drive to Surrey and back was delightful and uneventful. It took us about an hour each way. Even the M25 didn’t have its customary holds-up. I did my duty and delivered a working laptop, setup a new iPad and cleaned an old one for reuse all in a couple of hours. When we got back, I had a lengthy job of watering all the patio pots which are still delivering kilos of red & yellow cherry tomatoes. We eat tomato & basil salad virtually every day at the moment. One thing that is pleasing us is that our second fig tree – the Brown Turkey – is finally ripening and we have started to pick. They are delightful! 

Feels strange to have not been to the gym today. It is only the 3rd time in the past 6 weeks. I feel that I’ve let myself down somehow. Anyway, back to work tomorrow. Even so, we are coming up to travelling time. Greece very soon followed by short breaks in France and Yorkshire and then a month in Tenerife. That will destroy my gym routine so I’d better get used to it.

Tuesday, 20th August, 2019

A pleasant, warm day. We have been sorting out travelling arrangements for this week with suitcases out, clothes ironed and timings checked. Out in the garden, we continue to pick figs and tomatoes. We have done a final sowing of salad leaves and the lawns and hedges will be trimmed tomorrow. We have got back in to gym routine and feel much better for it.

I back everything up in triplicate. Belt & Braces has nothing on me. We have used Cloud Storage Backup for years with MS. OneDrive initially and until they limited ‘free’ storage to 5Gb. I then moved on to BT Cloud which came ‘free’ with my internet and gives me 1000 Gb.. It is invaluable because we can back up our PCs, our Laptops, our iPads and our smartphones all to one cloud area and each of us can access the other’s saved material. Today, we bought some additional USB sticks for to back up specific elements separately.

It is all so cheap these days. My first Desktop PC only provided 42MB hard drive although it was only text-based MS-DOS. However, it had to be partitioned at 32MB because that was the maximum a hard drive could cope with at the time. Of course this was about 1987-8 as my starter Amstrad PCW which had no hard drive at all was being replaced. I wrote my entire 50,000 word, Masters’ Dissertation with the Amstrad saving every precious page on floppy disks.

Today, I popped out to Argos and bought 112,000MB of storage for just £27.00/€30.00 and I can carry all of them around in my pocket. I can retrieve information from them almost instantly as opposed to the minutes/ 10s of minutes sometimes required to access fairly simple text-based files from the floppy disks we had for storage back then. Having said all that, I wouldn’t have missed being in at the start of this information revolution for anything. It was exciting, challenging and rewarding beyond belief. I count myself incredibly lucky to have been in at the start.

The next advance will be the redundancy of fixed-link broadband by 5G mobile signal. Until recently, I have been berating the telecoms companies for not delivering fibre to our doors. This would provide us with 200 – 300 mb/s download speeds. Now, it seems %G will provide us with 20,480 Mb/s. It is almost unbelievable and wonderful and …. I want it NOW!

Wednesday, 21st August, 2019

Lovely day of gardening in the morning and gym work in the afternoon. Sunny and warm – 22C/70F – and delightful in the garden, we’ve really enjoyed our time. Pauline has trimmed all the hedges and I’ve swept up after her. The climate is relaxing and pleasant without being taxing and over hot.

Ten years ago, we were spending our first summer of retirement at our house in Sifnos.

We were clearing the garden and painting the outside of the house. Particularly, this week, Pauline was repainting the intricate sliding iron gate at the opening of our drive.

It was incredibly time consuming to paint and the hot sun made the paint go thick, gloopy and impossible to apply after a few minutes outside. To add to her problems, Pauline suffered with the extreme heat of August. We forget how uncomfortable that could be in August. Certainly we found it harder to deal with as we grew older.

Thursday, 22nd August, 2019

I start the day by acknowledging my Mum’s Birthday. Born in 1923, she would be 96 today. She died 11 years ago. I find it hard to believe so much has happened for all of us since she died. I still have the unconscious impulse to phone her to tell her of something I’ve been doing but that impulse has faded and comes less often. I’ve posted two photographs 4 years apart when she was 21 and 25. The first was just as she was graduating in 1921 in London and the second was just as she started teaching at Burton upon Trent Girls High School in 1948. She and her friend and fellow teacher, Margaret were sharing a flat together above Goodall’s Garage in Repton. Joey Crowther, also in the photo was a Biology teacher at the Boys’ Grammar School and was still there 20 years later as I was preparing to leave.

I must admit, I do find my memories of Mum fade rather with time although specific interactions still bite into my thoughts. It is just the same with my general memory. This morning, the GCSE results come out in UK. We were always in Greece on this day and would phone school to find out the important statistics. What it also meant, however, was that we would soon be packing up the car and preparing to leave the island for the long drive home.

We found ourselves talking about this at 6.00 am today as Radio 4 announced exam results day. We started driving across Europe 20 years ago. In the early and younger days, we would try to do the journey with just 2 stops. From the island to Piraeus and then drive across the top of the Peloponnese to Patras where we would have a night at the Patras Palace. One night in a cabin followed on the Patras – Ancona ferry. Then we drove hell for leather round the Italia Lakes and through Switzerland, just stopping in a motorway service station around Aire de Keskastel for a few hours sleep. Next morning, on to Zeebrugge and P&O overnight back to Hull.

To achieve our timetable, we had to leave Sifnos on the Monday so we got back to Yorkshire on the Friday. This gave us time to do the washing, supermarket shopping and look out our suits and briefcases ready for Monday start. It took us a week to acclimatise to the temperature and the time zone. So much of this, which I had forgotten, came back from the trigger of the exam announcement.

Friday, 23rd August, 2019

Out early today. First, we took our rubbish to the local tip because we won’t be here to put it out for collection on Monday. Next, we drove to Rustington so that Pauline could visit the Beauty Parlour to have a ‘Facial’. I had the joy of an hour in the Waitrose coffeeshop. While I was there, I tried to use my earbuds to listen to the Sky Politics programme, All Out politics. It was only then, for the first time, that I found my new iPad Pro didn’t have a standard earbud connection jack socket. I’ve had it over a month and not realised. With less than 24 hrs until we go abroad, I had to scramble to get a USB-C adaptor for it.  After Argos relieved me of £9.00/€10.00, I was on my way.

Final trip to the Health Club which was fairly busy today. We worked hard and then came home to griddle Filet Steak in the garden to be served with 3 different salads – tomato, cauliflower & broccoli and green leaf. Unfortunately, I watched the cricket in the kitchen as we cooked and ate. No good for the digestion.

Saturday, 24th August, 2019

Last week of August 2019 coming up. We are going to Gatwick and to Athens. I was expecting to watch England destroy Australia in the Test match but now I’m going to mow the lawns and clean the car. I’m not really sure why I’m doing the latter because it will be left in the Long Stay carpark but at least it will look its best.

As someone who never remembers where he’s parked his car in Tesco’s, the huge expanse of Gatwick Long Stay is a nightmare. It was just the same on Superfast Ferries. Fortunately, I was accompanied by the perfect answer – Pauline. Before we leave the car, she writes in her notebook the Zone number and Section letter so we know exactly where to get off the shuttle bus. I know it sounds obvious although I always think I’ll remember but never do.

We used to sit and laugh when, using Pauline’s attention to detail, we got down to the 4th or 5th car deck to sit in our car prior to disembarkation (on the left near the bulkhead) and then watched families searching for their car. Often they would leave in desperation and then reappear two or three times, looking more and more anxious and still carrying bags, children, car keys, etc..

Having taken the car out of our garage this afternoon, I opened the bonnet to check the oil and realised this was the first  time I had ever opened the bonnet in the 2.5 months since we bought it. The engine is pristine but I couldn’t find the dipstick.

Sunday, 11th August, 2019

I’ve been awake since 5.00 am. The bedroom window was open on a close night and I was woken by the cooing of wood pigeons in the scots pines across the field and then by the screeching of marauding and ever present herring gulls above the house. Lovely morning and quite warm over night at 19C/66F. We went out for a walk around the local area this morning. We were doing it for a reason. On the grassed area of our development which was built on the site of an old Nursery, an old apple tree was spilling its fruit on the floor as a result of the winds. We filled a bag with a few kilos in readiness for making apple & beetroot chutney.

While we were there, we noticed the abundance of juicy, ripe blackberries. We went back with Tupperware containers and picked for 30 mins or so which resulted in about 2kg of beautiful fruit and terribly scratched and sore limbs. Pauline is such a wizard in the kitchen that this fruit was turned into jars of jam in no time at all and ready to put on our yoghurt for sweet.

After we had pulled all the thorns from our arms and our legs, bathed our wounds and washed away the blackberry stains from our hands, we set off for the Health Club. I was shattered before I started having survived on about 5 hrs sleep and then had an active morning but it has to be done. At least I got home to watch Man. Utd. thrash Chelsea 4-0 in the first game of the new season.

Monday, 12th August, 2019

A little damp today. Still pretty warm and we have had thunder circling the area. Of course, it’s my job to get soaked (possibly get struck by lightning) and put the bins out. With great courage, I pulled through. Then, it was time to go out and source beetroot, red onions and red wine vinegar to combine with the windfall apples we collected the other day and from which Pauline will craft a delicious chutney.

We could have got the constituents from the local, PYO farm but, in the proportions we required, Asda was more economical. Although we’ve done a full, gym workout this afternoon, Pauline will be storing a good few jars of chutney before the end of the day.

We’ve been enjoying our own, garden produce for a while now. Figs and lots to come, green peppers griddled with swordfish steaks, homegrown tomato & basil salad, lettuce and rocket salad – all but the fish produced by us. A bit romantic, I know, but to eat tomatoes & basil both of which were growing in the garden 5 mins before is a lovely experience.

Tuesday, 13th August, 2019

Up at 6.00 am and out by 7.30 am this morning because we both had Dentist & Hygienist appointments. We had alternate half hour sessions with each one starting at 8.00 am.. Of course, at our age, our teeth don’t change a lot and, once again, we have no follow-up work to do. Our contract entitles us to 2 visits to the Dentist and 2 to the Hygienist per year for a price of £100.00/€108.00 per year.

My dentist is a young, intelligent Brazilian man and I thought I would be able to teach him a new word today that I had discovered recently. I had accidentally come across the term Lusophone. It means Portuguese language speaker. It derives from the Romans name for Portugal which was Lusitania and the Roman word for voice which is phone. He thought about that for a while and then said, Ah yes, we pronounce it Looso-pho-nia and we call the Portuguese Losers.

We drove on to Rustington for some stuff from the chemist and bought a couple of Kilos of cherries to snack on and 3 kilos of Victoria plums for Pauline to turn into jam. Last year we picked our own but we haven’t got time this year. We also went in to The Works and bought a copy of the Highway Code. We have meant to for a time because we are both moving rapidly towards 70 and though we ought to refresh our memories and check changes to the law. We may be slow, elderly people but we intend to keep driving for many years to come.

In Surrey, we were always being nearly run over by cyclists on the pavement. The Council allowed/encouraged it. The Highway Code still says emphatically and unequivocally that it is not allowed to ride cycles on the pavement. Down her in Surrey, one is more in danger from being knocked over by aggressive drivers of motability scooters. The Highway Code states clearly that drivers of motability scooters must give precedence to pedestrians on the pavement. I can see that I will be keeping this book with me at all times.

Ten years ago today – 13th August, 2009 – I recorded in my Blog the following:

Ten years ago we asked our bank for a £50,000.00 ‘Bridging Loan’ to buy a field on an island in Greece. We were incredibly lucky to ask a bank manager who not only harboured the same ambition as us – to build a house in Greece – but one who knew our island and where the field was. She helped us have the confidence to go ahead with our project and commit some £200,000.00 that we didn’t have. We quickly paid back the bridging loan and now own the house outright. We retired this summer and, fortuitously, so did she. Sue Riding was lovely to us as Manager of our Nat. West branch. Soon after helping us, she visited our island. She then moved on to work for Coutts Bank. Today I wrote to her with pictures of the house and wishing her happy retirement.

Amazing to think it is 20 years ago since we started this process by instigating a bridging loan but how fortunate the whole process turned out for us!

Wednesday, 14th August, 2019

Strange to see a damp, dark day but that’s what we’ve got today. Pauline was engaged in her final preserves of the year – Victoria Plum Jam. We have both loved Victoria Plums for years but usually the time when they are available has coincided with us being abroad. Last year we picked our own from the orchards round the corner from our house. This year we’ve just bought them from the glut hitting the shops.

I was free to explore our travel plans for next year. We are going to take the ferry from Portsmouth (just 30 miles from here) to Bilbao or Santander and then drive across Spain to Murcia region. I was looking at the drive when we get off the ferry in Spain and where likely stops would be. Nowadays, I try to limit our driving time to about 4hrs per day if I can and that would take us to the city of Zaragoza. Here, I must digress.

There is something about the word Zaragoza that reaches back across the years for me. It is blended in my mind with Zagreb and Zarathustra and linked to a purchase my brother, Bob, made in the 1960s. When I was about 14, Bob went to a jumble sale and bought an old radiogram. The woven speaker cover was fraying and holed but the radio worked and the sound was fine. We used to listen to Dick Barton Special Agent in the darkness of our bedroom and be sorely afraid.

We also used to listen to Pick of the Pops and started to get in touch with popular culture which our family life starved us of. But there was one element that silently imprinted itself on my imagination and that was the cities listed as stations on the dial. They sounded distant, exciting and unreachable. They challenged the sense of myself constrained by the shackles of a small, East Midlands village

For some reason, the cities of Zaragoza and Zagreb spoke to me particularly. I certainly hadn’t a clue where they were and, now I think about it, not much impetus to find out. They existed as distant, future but exciting escapes from my provincial prison. Quite by accident, these chiming words from my past led me to pick up the philosophical work of Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra which turned out to be seminal for my development. In it, Nietzsche states that “God is dead” and that Christianity is decadent and leads mankind into a slave morality concerned with the next life rather than this. My reading of Karl Marx was leading me down a similar path if I really needed leading.

To think that I may visit Zaragoza next year seems to complete a circle of development that will urge me on to visit Zagreb. I realise now that it is in Croatia which is somewhere we have been intending to visit for some time. Having sailed up and down the Croatian coast so many times for years en route to Greece, it would be good to visit and spend some time there.

Thursday, 15th August, 2019

I apologise in advance for the nonsensical religiosity of this entry but today is a big one in Greece. It is colloquially known as the Summer Easter. In the rapidly declining Roman Catholic world, it is known as the Assumption of Mary. In Greece, it is known as the Dormition of Virgin Mary. I always thought of it as Choc.Ice Day.

Our house on Sifnos was built just above Agia Marina and high above us on the mountain was the monastery of Agios Symeon. On this day every year pilgrims – which means huge numbers of islanders and tourists – would drive/walk past our house and on up to the monastery for the Festival celebrations. I always wanted Pauline to stand at our gate with bottles of water and a tray of Choc Ices to capitalise on this deluded nonsense. We could have made a fortune.

The map of Sifnos still features on our hall wall and it holds great affection for us. However, doesn’t this tradition of small world introspection, of old world ritual and tradition illustrate the yawning gap between us and that goldfish bowl world we left behind. It hurts me to say and even think it but, even when we were there, we would hold our breath and allow these things to pass us by rather than getting involved and criticising as I would in UK. The Tsipras government has made a concerted effort to loosen the Greek institutions’ attachment to the Orthodox submission – sorry, religion – but there is a long way to go.

Friday, 16th August, 2019

Warm but overcast day. We were out by 9.00 am driving down to the fisherman’s hut on the Marina.

We wanted a joint of sword fish. It produces 8 big slices for about £40.00. It was waiting for us when we arrived.  Wonderful quality for a reasonable price.

We did our daily trip to the Health Club for a couple of hours work and then came home for a lovely meal of roast cod loin with salad. Unfortunately, the Test Match was stopped for rain and the rain soon appeared over Sussex shortly after 4.00 pm.. It’s Friday so the workers will already be celebrating.

Saturday, 17th August, 2019

Busy day although we didn’t get up until nearly 7.00 am.. My job this morning was picking tomatoes from our patio plants, harvesting Tarragon, Thyme and Sage and then washing, stripping, chopping and freezing them for the winter use. Ought to be good fun but immensely back breaking and fiddly. The plants will produce one more cutting before the Winter. While I was doing that, Pauline was upstairs in the ironing-room getting clothes ready for our upcoming trip. I finished the morning by vacuuming the house.

Of to the Health Club for what turned out to be a really enjoyable session and then home for roast salmon and salad and the test match followed by Man. City v Spurs which ended in a 2-2 draw because of the video referee spotting a handball. Excellent.

Sunday, 4th August, 2019

Warm and humid morning – 20C/68F by 7.30 am. Unlike the North, we are going through a very dry spell and I water all the plants early, irrigate the figs and then set the sprinkler system for the lawn. The morning disappears quickly particularly because I’m reading the paper, writing on Twitter and watching the cricket simultaneously.

On this day 10 years ago, I recorded in my Blog:

Got up early to water the fruit trees. Last year we had one lemon from two trees. This year we have four. We have one orange tree and one tangerine but they are not fruiting yet. On the next level up the field we have about a dozen olive trees and on the level above that we have six peach trees, four apricots and three pears. On the level above that we have another dozen olive trees.

Well, even if the climate keeps warming – and I’m willing it on – I don’t think I’ll be growing lemons in Sussex in my life time.

Rather than sit around watching the cricket, I am going to the gym so that I can move while watching it. It seems to make sense to sweat and pant and still enjoy the game.

Monday, 5th August, 2019

Interesting day which started of damp but warm and became intensely sunny and … warm. We only reached 23C/74F but it felt delightful.

I’ve been reviewing my Blog records from 10 years ago which is quite enjoyable and interesting to me because I have no memory. It was in August a decade ago that we discovered these fruit appearing on trees in our Greek garden.

We probably should have known them but we were blissfully ignorant of what a Quince looked like. We knew the word but little else. Anyway, we picked them and combined the fruit with a tonne of sugar and produced a product which was really just coloured sugar with not much hint of quince. Good fun to try anyway.

Went to the Health club although we were both reluctant today. Both came back having enjoyed it and feeling so much better. I, personally, feel so much more confident in myself after surviving a 90 mins workout routine.

Fascinating to read the facts on the ground from The Skiathan who talks about arrivals being 17% down on last year. Not surprised because of the Brexit-effect on the exchange rate and reluctance of Brits to travel abroad this year in case they are unable to return home afterwards. More surprised to read of the weather conditions – Strong winds (normal for August) followed by strong rains absolutely atypical for this month. What is going on?

Tuesday, 6th August, 2019

Very pleasant day hovering around 22C/70F throughout the daylight hours. We went out to Rustington early because Pauline was having her hair cut. I had an appointment with Waitrose coffee shop for an hour. We were supposed to be going on to the Health Club but changed our minds at the last minute and drove out to Climping Beach for a walk. It was absolutely deserted even in the middle of School holidays.

We drove on to Middleton and then Elmer by Sea before driving home via Middleton Farm Shop who were selling their farm grown cherries as well as Corn on the Cob which we bought 6 of for our lunches.

Nine years ago, we were in Greece and coming towards the end of a period of building work, Particularly, we were having our patio walled and tiled. We had been in to Athens to order the materials from Leroy Merlin on Piraeus Street and then booked a team of workers to do the job. For a week or so, we were almost trapped in our home while the patio was out of bounds. When it was finished, we began to wonder why we hadn’t done it earlier. I think the materials and labour cost us about £7,000.00/€7,600.00 all complete but was well worth it.

Wednesday, 7th August, 2019

Found this photo when I was tidying up an old laptop to give to a girl we met the other day who couldn’t afford one for her A Level work in school. It is an excellent Toshiba laptop with a 17″ screen which Pauline has replaced with a new one so it is surplus to requirements and should be put to use. The girl is actually doing a web design course using Macromedia Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Flash which I have on this laptop as well as MS Office Pro. Everything she could possibly want but can’t afford. The one thing it didn’t have was an up to date operating system. I decided to upgrade it from Windows 7 to Windows 10 but hit a snag half way through and have spent the rest of the day trying to rectify it.

If anyone out there knows how to do it, please let me know. (jrsanders@btinternet.com) It’s in a good cause and it’s driving me mad. The software downloaded and installed perfectly smoothly. It boots up to login and takes the password but then goes straight to the screen above. There is no way round it. I’ve tried bypassing it by tapping f8 (and f5, f2, f12) but to no avail.

Thursday, 8th August, 2019

Warm but unremarkable weather today. We have been very active. Up at 6.30 am. After breakfast, we went out to the local Post Office, Asda, Sainsburys & Tesco. Home for coffee and then lawn mowing and hedge trimming. Coffee and then out to the Health Club. Driving home by 3.30 pm and … rest.

Five years ago today, we were back in Surrey and preparing to market our duplex apartment. All of our working lives we had pushed ourselves to the limit to purchase properties that would help us in the next stages of our lives. There are times when, in retrospect, I admit that we should have sold and moved on but I was too happy to do it.

When we marketed our 5 bedroom house in Yorkshire, it took a full year until we saw a buyer. When we bought our 2 bedroom duplex apartment in Surrey (off-plan), we stayed in it for 4 years and then sold it in weeks for double its purchase price. It allowed us to buy and fully furnish our 4 bedroom house in Sussex without a problem. It was so helpful.

Friday, 9th August, 2019

A lovely, sunny and warm – 24C/75F – day. I spent the morning working on the laptop I wrote about a couple of days ago. I was preparing one of our spare laptops for a girl we met who couldn’t afford one. She is embarking on her 6th form career doing IT development designing websites but had to rely on occasional time with her sister’s laptop to do her work. We couldn’t stand by and let that happen. As I updated the laptop – a 17″ screen Toshiba – by upgrading Windows 7 with Windows 10, it threw up a problem that made it ‘hang’ on a plain, white screen with a bit of DoS text. Having logged in, it defaulted to this screen:

After hours of trial and error plus trawling through ‘Help’ sites, I found that a key combination of RESTART+SHIFT leads one to a 3-choice menu which allowed me to clean Windows 10 off and reinstall it. If I wasn’t such a ‘stable genius’ à la Trump, I would have given up. As it is, I persevered and, 2 or 3 hours later, had a fully working laptop looking like this:

I even managed to ‘blag’ my way through a ‘free’ installation of MS Office Pro 2016, a Macromedia suite of Dreamweaver, Fireworks & Flash and a copy of Adobe Acrobat writer. She should be really able to get her work done now with an excellent laptop and over £1000.00/€1080.00 worth of software installed.

Saturday, 10th August, 2019

This house has been far out at sea all night,   
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,   
Winds stampeding the fields under the window   
Floundering black astride and blinding wet  

From Wind by Ted Hughes

It has been a very blustery night. It is one of the downsides to living on the coast. However, much of the country has experienced it to a greater or lesser extent. Actually, the temperature did not fall below 16C/61F over night but there were severe power outages in many parts which has led to the joke that, to prevent Brexit, Britain was being switched off and back on again to reboot it.

We went down to the beach before 9.00 am for a breath of fresh air and to see the effect of the wind on the sea. It was weirdly warm but breezy.

We walked on the beach and watched wind surfers dicing with huge waves as the water crashed on the shore.

The fish shop was closed so we presumed that the trawlers had not docked this morning. We were hoping to buy/order a swordfish joint. We will have to return on Monday.

Sunday, 28th July, 2019

A pleasantly warm Sunday morning – 23C/74F. The workers are mowing their lawns. Actually, I cut ours again this morning. Pauline trimmed the hedges and I cleaned the front door. A neighbour walking past was amused at what they saw as our role-reversal. If only they knew. Pauline is so much more practical than I am.

On the front drive, we had a three pieces of cordless equipment. The lawnmower, hedge trimmer and strimmer.

As we both worked away, Pauline dashed indoors to get something, shouting over her shoulder as she went,

Keep your eye on the equipment, John.

I thought about that in some amazement. The idea of someone coming along and pinching it would never even occur to me. Hardly anyone passes by. When a house in our road was recently put up for sale, the Estate Agent described it as in what is locally known as Millionaire’s Road. Although that is a bit of an exaggeration, it does feel extremely quiet, comfortable and safe. Maybe I am just very naïve and Pauline is much more worldly wise. You can take the girl out of Oldham but you can’t take Oldham out of the girl.

My wife is an old-fashioned girl. Today she told me that we had to buy a waterproofing spray to put on our garden furniture covers to increase their protection during the winter. When I questioned her, she said they had always had to do it to tents when she was a child. I have a feeling that synthetic material protection has moved on quite a lot in the past 60 years. I think you’ll find boys don’t rub Dubbin into their football/rugby boots any more like I did excitably in 1965 with my first ‘professional’ pair.

At the end of a beautiful  and really enjoyable day, we walked in the cooler back garden which faces south and where the greying night sky is pierced by the dramatic light of Jupiter. I only know that because my wife was able to tell me. It is all out of my sphere of knowledge.

Monday, 29th July, 2019

Lovely day of sunshine and warm temperatures which reached 24C/75F – a comfortable and relaxing feeling. We did some shopping and a full workout at the gym before eating a meal of griddled swordfish steaks with homegrown salad in the garden.

Our tomatoes are ripening quickly now and the figs are swelling and ripening at an alarming pace. They are the size of small pears. We picked these on the fruit bowl this morning. They are all from one, two year old tree.

Tuesday, 30th July, 2019

Quite a pleasant start to the day – warm (19C/66F), bright but a bit breezy. I went out to the garden centre to buy a sprinkler for the lawns ironically on a day when Southern Water hinted that a hosepipe might be on the way.

As we drove home, it started to rain. The gusts of wind had got stronger as well. Opening the conservatory doors onto the back garden, we found that the fence separating our garden from the neighbours at the side had blown over and hung at a slant. The plant support wires were holding it up but barely. The electrical cables lighting the garden were stretched taut to snapping tension. Our neighbours are away.

To top the day off, as we put the car away in the garage, a wasp decided to fly down the neckline of Pauline’s dress and stung her. She was calm and had the presence of mind to reach in and pick out the wasp along with the sting. She immediately applied vinegar and then sting relief cream. It worked and the sting did not swell up but was restricted to a burning, red rash. It always seems to happen to Pauline. It’s going to be my turn soon!

INR testing & reporting day today. I’ve been doing it since the end of January 2009. For much of that time, I’ve had to test and report at least every 4-6 weeks. In the past 3 years or so, I have been able to keep my INR under much greater equilibrium. For the past couple of years, the testing and reporting intervals have stretched. I tested and reported today with an almost perfect result and was given my new reporting date well forward to the end of September. Must be doing something right.

Wednesday, 31st July, 2019

We went out early to Worthing town centre on a warm but cloudy morning. Wednesday in Worthing is market day and stalls line the streets selling fruit & Vegetables, Artisan Bread, Game & Poultry, Pies & Pasties, Clothes and Shoes plus all sorts of knick-knacks. Our access to the town centre is via Sea Road and the promenade. The recent breeze has produced a choppy sea which explains the seagulls massing and marauding in land.

As we drove past the pier, our eyes were drawn to the newly erected Worthing Eye. It went up for a while last year but was taken down in the Autumn. We are not sure if it is permanent this time or not.

Another hard session at the Health Club but at the end of this month, my phone tells me I have walked 2100 miles in the past 12 months. No wonder I’m tired.

Thursday, 1st August, 2019

Happy new August. New months are times to be optimistic, to look forward to future Augusts to come even if the 2019 version will only last 31 days. Actually, I am quite contrary. I recall that 30 years ago this month, a colleague from School threw himself under a train because he just couldn’t cope with the reality of his life any more. He was only 48. Last year, one of Pauline’s former Assistants died of a heart attack at the age of just 61. Pauline’s cousin died this month two years ago after struggling against cancer. It is hard to see the fairness and optimism in these events. 

I think of all the experiences that we have enjoyed since they left the world and of the heartache their leaving has engendered. I know this doesn’t sound optimistic but it does serve to engender a need in me to make the most of the life I have while I have it. It may be mundane but it is real and it is alive.

Warm – 24C/75F – and reasonably bright but not wholly sunny day. We did our weekly shop at Tesco and a full exercise routine at the Health Club. I was reading my Blog from 6 years ago. We had been working in our Greek garden where, amongst other things, we had been growing tomatoes. Like many other islanders that year, we had been hit with bottom rot on our fruit.

No such problem in 2019 Sussex. Our cherry tomatoes are fruiting heavily and ripening nicely. We haven’t picked any yet but it won’t be long. We have yellow and red varieties

I’m only growing them for a bit of fun and a sense of achievement but looking after them is keeping me exercised.

Friday, 2nd August, 2019

A busy and tiring day. It’s amazing how social interaction can be so demanding if one’s normal day doesn’t include much of it. We were up early on a day which was warm and largely sunny ultimately reached a humid 24C/75F. I cleaned the car while Pauline steam cleaned the floors.

By 11.30 am, we were on the road to Surrey. It is the most enjoyable and beautiful route. Outside commuter times, the A24/London Road is delightful, tree-lined and quiet. It is a route which mixes 50mph/70mph sections but there is one drawback. We have a 6 mile stretch of the M25 to negotiate and it is so unpredictable. Today, after a dream drive, the M25 was stationary. We thought there must have been an accident but it turned out to be ‘volume of traffic’. It didn’t hold us up too much and all was clear as we drove home around 7.30 pm.

As we entered West Byfleet, we decided to call in at our ‘old’ property known as The Pinnacles. I say old but it is less than 8 years old. We had a duplex apartment for 4 years and, when we sold it, almost doubling our money. Recently, we have noticed that re-sale properties are struggling to find buyers and ‘asking prices’ are being cut. Today, we felt it hadn’t the clean, crisp management look that we had seen when we moved in.

We went on to a ‘family’ BBQ with 3 lads who we have known since they were tiny and are now almost human. They have girlfriends so they must be almost normal. I enjoyed chasing them round the garden and almost catching them. We ate lovely food cooked on the BBQ – salmon, king prawns, chicken, steak and sausages all accompanied by salad. It was delightful.

However, by the time we got home, we were both shattered. Must be our ages!

Saturday, 3rd August, 2019

A warm morning of hazy sunshine. We were so tired this morning that we didn’t get up until 7.00 am. Freshly squeezed,  Valencian orange juice followed by Yorkshire tea and then a large cup of freshly ground, Arabica coffee with the summer warmth wafting through the open doors on to the garden is hard to beat particularly. This is particularly so when I’m looking at things I would never have considered growing outside in Yorkshire.

We’ve been eating figs for a couple of weeks and there are lots to come. The Brown Turkey Fig tree is just coming to ripeness. We have started to pick the red and yellow cherry tomatoes and the Basil plants have been remarkable this year. Soon we will be picking the peppers which are, helpfully, growing in stacked lines. For some reason the gree ones are well ahead of the red and the yellow. Typical because I prefer the latter colours.

Sunday, 21st July, 2019

Lovely morning. We woke at 6.00 am to sun streaming in through the blinds. I was immediately lively and persuaded Pauline to get up straight away. By 6.30 am, we were on our way down to the sea and, a few minutes later, we were walking on the pebble beach with the gulls, dogs and their walkers plus a couple of intrepid swimmers.

We don’t do this sort of thing anywhere near enough. We forget it is on our doorstep most of the time. We resolve to come down here more often.

Back home for ‘Breakfast’ – actually Pauline has porridge while I have orange juice & tea. Then, on to jobs. Pauline was making the 3rd harvest of basil and  another, large batch of Pesto. My job was to research the replacement for our current dual-fuel energy contract which runs out at the end of next month. After about an hour’s work, I decided to renew with our current supplier at a rate which is marginally below our current cost but with a fixed price until December 2021. And so life continues….

My next job is to reinvest a savings account that is maturing soon. This is never easy. There is so little room for manoeuvre and so little difference in the headline gain. Easy on-line deposit and access is essential but earnings do come in to the calculation. I will have to take my time. Meanwhile, our figs continue to bear fruit with sweetness and flavour.

Monday, 22nd July, 2019

The day started off warm (20C/68F) but grey and finished sunny and hot (26C/79F). No time to sit around. Pauline is trimming the hedges while I am raking the lawns. I love my electric lawn rake. If you’ve ever tried raking it manually, you would love it too. A 400 sq.m. lawn can be raked in 10 mins with all the rakings carried away and in the bin. It would have taken me 3-4 hrs by hand and probably killed me.

Two hours later, we are both tired and ready for coffee and Politics Live on BBC. Then, it’s off to the gym for a couple of hours and back to griddle wonderful swordfish steaks in the garden to be eaten with salad leaves and tomato salad. Glorious!

In my spare time, I’m nervously opening a new, on-line savings account and preparing to transfer over a huge amount of money from the old to the new. It is always a fraught action. Fortunately now, the movement is fast and we no longer have to wait 3 days for it to appear in the target account. Fortunately, it was successful. The interest rate is not great but is one of the best on-line accounts at the moment so I won’t be worrying too much.

Tuesday, 23rd July, 2019

All the news today is about the weather. We didn’t fall below 20C over night and reached 34C/93F at peak today. We are forecast to see 36C/97F on Thursday. I have spent the morning watering the plants and the lawns. Our house is designed to conserve energy and is incredibly well insulated. We have had every window and door open today and it was still insufferably hot. It was a delight to go to the air-conditioned gym this afternoon. However, we need to put something in place to keep us cool here at home.

We were going to install ceiling fans but think the ceilings are too low to do that safely. We don’t really want to start knocking walls around so the only alternative would be a free-standing air-conditioning unit. I’ve been looking at those today. You can pay somewhere between £350.00 – £750.00 for a good unit which will  really cool our bedroom and lounge down so that is probably the way we will go.

Wednesday, 24th July, 2019

A hot and humid night. We had all the windows open on both sides of the house upstairs. The blinds flapped annoyingly noisily and the temperature in the bedroom didn’t drop below 26C/79F and, exactly as the BBC forecast, a sustained bout of thunder & lightning hit our area. We had a few minutes of strong rain but not so much. The humidity is with us still this morning on a hot and sunny morning that opened on 26C/79F by 9.00 am. Tomorrow is said to be the hot day with temperatures peaking around 36C/97F.

I have suffered with gum disease – what used to be called Gingevitus – since I was a teenager, a condition that was exacerbated by my decision as a newly liberated teenager to never visit a dentist again. This decision on escaping my Mother’s authority lasted 10 years until I came under the purview of my wife’s authority at the age of 28. Even so, 40 years on, my gums were still bleeding when I brushed my teeth and those gums tending towards being red and soft. All that changed just over a year ago – Better late than never. – when my dentist suggested I buy a water pick / waterpower flosser.

I bought the one on the left of the illustration above. It cost me around £70.00/€79.00. Its effect was amazing. I still brushed my teeth twice a day but the water flosser showed how poorly that performed. I hope you are not reading this over Breakfast but the water flosser showed me that, despite brushing my teeth, I was going to bed with a considerable amount of food deposited between them. (Sorry!)  After a month of consistent use, my gums stopped bleeding for the first time since I was 18. They didn’t bleed when I brushed and didn’t stain my pillow at night. I admit to being amazed.

Unfortunately, this morning, my water flosser died completely. I’d had it 13 months. I went back to read reviews of other’s ownership of the machine and everyone had suffered just the same fate earlier or later. I’ve ordered a new, different make for less than half the price. It is on the right of the illustration.  I can’t continue without one now. 

Thursday, 25th July, 2019

Today is all about shopping and weather. Actually, the heat is not so impressive or debilitating as the media would have us believe. I relish it. As we drove out to do shopping the temperature read 26C/79F and peaked at 37C/99F this afternoon. I rather enjoyed it.

Funnily enough, I also enjoyed a break from our recent program of fish and white meat. Today, after a hot and rather tiring session at the Health Club, we came home and cooked a mixed griddle out in the garden. This included onions, slices of Oyster Mushroom and a tomato salad but centred on RED MEAT. We griddled Fillet Steak, Welsh Lamb Cutlets and Cumberland Sausages, It was absolutely delightful and I really enjoyed it even though I will not be repeaing this for quite a while.

This evening, we have sat out in the garden and enjoyed a beautiful evening which is still 27C/81F but feels quite delightful with a slight sea breeze cooling the night air. Sometimes, it just feels good to be alive!

Friday, 26th July, 2019

Well, it’s been an interesting and enjoyable week. In spite of the heat, we have done a full session every day at the gym. In fact, the air conditioning there has been delightful. The back of our house is south facing which means it is very hot in the main part of the day but the front, where our Lounge is, feels hot and stuffy in the evening. We sat outside at the back for some time yesterday evening and then opened all windows – front and back – to create a through draft as we went into the Lounge.

This is a lovely place to live particularly in this sort of weather. We even benefit from sea breezes and beautiful views. The coast is delightful especially early in the morning and later in the evening when the crowds of holidaymakers are not there.

I don’t know if it is this particular season or the microclimate of our garden generally but the fig trees are growing and fruiting strongly. In Greece, we wouldn’t have expected to pick figs from our garden until mid to later August. In Sussex, we’ve been picking and eating fruit for two weeks already and there is plenty more to come. I have Brown Turkey and Rouge de Bordeaux. It is this latter which is ripening so much earlier with much bigger fruit and lots of them. The only downside is that they will need some frost protection in the winter so a fleece blanket will be required.

Saturday, 27th July, 2019

Today it is warm but wet. Real growing weather. We went out to collect some parcels and buy the most wonderful smoked fish which happens to be sold by ….. Aldi. Old people were surrounding the newspaper stand. It looked like this:

I don’t know why they put the papers on the floor. Most of the buyers couldn’t get down there. I haven’t bought a physical newspaper for so long.

Funnily enough, I wrote in my Blog on this day exactly 10 years ago these words:

Monday is my favourite day of the week in Greece. I get the Sunday papers. Mind you, they are not cheap. ‘The Sunday Times’ & ‘The Telegraph’ cost £9.10/€10.15 but they are well worth it.

A copy of The Times today would cost you £1.50/€1.70 although I think the Sunday would cost £2.50/€2.80. On my digital account, I pay £26.00/€29.00 per month for unlimited downloads.

I cannot imagine going back to the grubby, ink-stained hands after reading paper newspapers. Remember how they stained arms of sofas and chairs? The digital platform is the only way. Imagine being so old that you cannot adjust. Imagine going back 10 years and having to pay a fortune to queue up for day old newspapers. Life is so much better now, isn’t it?

Sunday, 14th July, 2019

Can you believe that I’ve been writing this drivel for 551 weeks? More than 10½ years which I could never have imagined when I started. The world was a very different place in December 2008. I seriously can’t believe in the rise of the Right Wing Populism that abounds at the moment. In 2008, all those Brextremists were derided in popular culture as ‘swivel-eyed loons’. Now the fringe is becoming main stream and almost accepted as normal. This is something we need to fight against constantly until they are driven back to the fringes.

Sundays are usually quiet days of Politics & Papers but, today in addition to our usual Health Club workout, there is the Men’s Wimbledon Final (for Pauline), the British Grand Prix (for me) and the Cricket World Cup (for both of us). Of course, we could lounge in the Lounge and just watch everything but it feels so much better to watch while we are exercising. Our Jogging Machines each have their own TVs with all the Sky Sports channels available and so do the exercise bikes. I was able to watch the cricket while Pauline watched the tennis as we worked out. There are even Screens on in the Changing Rooms. The only place where I couldn’t follow the match was in the Spa – Steam Room, Sauna & Jacuzzis/Water Massage.

We are in our 4th year of membership of the David Lloyd Health Club down here. Currently, we have a joint membership which cost £152.00/€170.00 per month/£1824.00/€2034.00 per year. It increases a bit at the start of every new financial year. Suddenly, this week we received a letter demanding …. £250.00/€280.00 per year less for our annual contract. We have noticed that they have been desperately advertising for new members with 3-month contracts (Try before you commit.) but hadn’t realised that they were haemorrhaging membership to upstart, cheaper rivals around the area. Competition is a wonderful thing.

Monday, 15th July, 2019

A pleasant day that felt quite hot and humid although only reached 23C/74F in reality. Pauline’s new iPad Air was delivered this morning and I spent most of the time installing it by copying across the (3 years) old one and then decommissioning it by returning it to factory-default conditions. It is easy to forget how to achieve all these processes because one only does it every few years. Fortunately, I went through it on my own new iPad Pro only days ago so this was fairly straight forward.

My iPad Pro has face recognition as an entry method that supersedes password entry. Even with my face, it works really well. Pauline’s iPad Air has fingerprint recognition which I was rather sceptical about but she has taken to it immediately so we are both happy. We have both chosen 64Gb editions because we save everything to the Cloud and don’t need huge amounts of data on our instruments. Even so, 64Gb is massive in itself compared with earlier

About 3 weeks ago, I posted on my Blog about the tree I had taken a pod of seeds from in Tenerife last November. I had sowed them after soaking in boiling water for 24hrs. They sprouted remarkably quickly and this is the photograph I posted:

Just 3 weeks later, I have 5 trees growing quite quickly. I put 3 outside and kept a couple indoors. These two are taller but less sturdy having struggled towards the light.

Lovely session at the Health Club today. We’ve signed up for the next 12 months so must stay alive to make full use – and for the sake of the trees.

Tuesday, 16th July, 2019

Gorgeous day with lovely sunshine all day. We have sop much to do today that we decided NOT to go to the Health Club. This was a decision we almost immediately changed but not to exercise. Yesterday we met a friend at the club who said she had been offered even better terms than us to persuade us to stay. We are on a ‘restricted hours’ contract as she was. The club had offered her unrestricted hours and still cut her fees. We went in and collared the Manager this morning and managed to secure the same deal. This will help us to avoid the busiest periods particularly at the weekends and we still save on our fees. They have secured our membership for another year. Don’t tell them but we weren’t going to leave anyway.

We have friends from Dorset visiting tomorrow. Jill taught in our school and left in 1982 (37 years ago!!!) We went to her wedding and reception at Hollingworth Lake in Oldham. Ironically, that is where my sister, Lizzie Dripping, went to live for a while. Jill and her accountant husband, Geoff, went to live and work in Blandford Forum near Poole in Dorset 37 years ago. We have seen her twice since we moved down here.

Tomorrow, we will meet again and we are looking forward to it. Pauline has spent the day cooking. We will eat a cold meal of salad leaves from our garden to accompany cold roast salmon with pesto crust, crab meat on radicchio leaves, slices of chicken breast wrapped in Pancetta, rolled and stuffed with garlic butter and Emmental cheese. Our sweet will be Syllabub & Lemon Drizzle cake. While Pauline was cooking, I was cleaning the car and mowing the lawns.

Interestingly, although I haven’t heard from my letters to the MD & CEO of Hoover-Candy, I did receive a phone call from the CEO’s Office from Dixons Carphone. I am getting somewhere. I may not need to use the Retail Ombudsman but I will if necessary.

Wednesday, 17th July, 2019

Friends from 38 years ago called round to see us. They had driven from Blandford Forum in Dorset to have lunch with us. Jill was a PE teacher in our school in 1981 and left shortly afterwards. Her husband, Geoff was an accountant with a large, City Accountancy firm until a few months ago. They have been together since Primary School so know each other well.

We took them for a drive around our area and a walk on our coastline. Then it was back home for a lovely lunch and long chat. Seems genuinely strange to be with someone from our dim and distant past. Makes one feel old.

Thursday, 18th July, 2019

We woke up to light rain. It looked and felt wonderful – warm and refreshing. Everything in the garden will be pleased with this reviver. The lawns are looking splendid, rich and lush. I have spent a lot of time and money on feeds and watered regularly. Ironically, this morning a fencing man came to dig a hole in it to replace a broken fence post. I fixed him with a teacher’s eye and warned him of dire consequences if he ruined my beautiful sward. He took the hint and did a beautifully neat job.

We went to the gym happily. We did our full workout and felt a sense of satisfaction as we drove home. We have almost completed our first 1000 miles in our new car and, although we have acclimatised to most things, we still have to think very carefully before starting off and parking. There is no gear stick or handbrake. Using buttons/switches is still not second nature.

There are also 3 driving settings – EV Electric Vehicle, Econ the most economical combination and Sport which provides more combative acceleration. I still haven’t used the Sport setting yet and, yesterday, I parked the car and left the engine on for an hour because it is so quiet I hadn’t realised it was still on. All of that said, we are really enjoying it and fight for who is to drive. It is particularly pleasurable to fill the tank with petrol. The previous model would hold about 350 miles worth at best. This model holds 650 miles worth which is a real shock and means visiting the petrol station about once a month.

Friday, 19th July, 2019

Today is the end of the School Academic Year and, for many years, we would have left at lunchtime, driven home and then quickly on to St George’s Dock, Hull for a Hull – Zeebrugge overnight trip and then a drive on to Ancona, Piraeus and to Sifnos. It is easy to forget the feeling of those days. Just as one loses the Friday night feeling so the first day of a 6 week holiday rather melts into the mists of time. A young man who worked for me as an IT Assistant back in the early 2000s and who I helped train on the job to become an IT teacher, posted on Facebook this morning:

This was the view that confronted us on this day 10 years ago.

Hull in general and the docks in particular are horribly gloomy but their promise of an exciting journey to come invested it with magical properties. As we sat in the queue with our car laden up to the gunnels and waiting interminably to drive on, we dreamed of cabin, a Buffet meal and a fitful sleep in bunk beds before driving off around 8.30 am on Saturday morning and setting out on the road for the next 14/15 hrs driving.

Saturday, 20th July, 2019

Heavy rain overnight and some thunder & lightning. Athens went much further and had a major earthquake (5.1 Richter) yesterday. Hope the aftershocks are over by the time we fly in. This morning, the sun is out and I am peering through the mists of time. I see Sunday, July 20th, 1969 quite clearly. At 7.00 am, I set off to walk up the village to get a lift to Burton on Trent. There were no buses on a Sunday. I was going to work at the Pirelli factory.

Exactly 50 years ago today, I had left Grammar School and was waiting for my A Level results which were about a month away. I had a holiday job 5 miles away in Burton at the Pirelli Tyre & Slipper factory. Who knew that Pirelli made slippers? Women packed the slippers into boxes which then weighed around 35kgs. Men’s jobs were to hump these heavy boxes around on to hand trucks in sets of 3 which made them so high we couldn’t see where we were pushing them and on to the storage stacks where we had to stack them 4 high. Even for a fit rugby player like me, it was exhausting but it paid and that was why I was there.

For 2 months, I worked 7 days a week for around 10 hrs per day. That summer, I earned £450.00 which may seem a trifling sum of around £1.20 per hour but, to me, it was massive and, in many respects, it was. My first College grant a few months later was only £470.00. The average, weekly wage for an adult worker was around £30.00 for a 40 hr week. Pirelli were offering me unsocial hours on unsocial days and paying extra. I was tired most of the time and I can still smell the factory, a smell of vulcanized rubber and engine oil but I was rich!

As these memories come flooding back, I’m told that it was on this day 50 years ago that man first landed on the moon. I remember very little about that.

Sunday, 7th July, 2019

Today marks 5 years since we sold our Greek property. Hard to believe but the time and the experiences have flown past. It is almost 20 years since the inception of our Greek building project. Today, the Greeks go to the polls and will turn back to New Democracy.

I woke this morning as I do every morning and have done over the past 50 years to BBC Radio4. While I was working and before the iPad was invented, I would get up on a Sunday morning even earlier than I would on a workday. By 6.30 am, I would be out walking or driving to the Newsagent to buy The Sunday Times and The Observer. The entire morning – sometimes the entire day – would be given over to reading them from front to back. Sunday really was a day of physical rest and a retreat into the world of politics if that is not an oxymoron.

These two newspapers give a degree of balance to reporting and following public life but, in recent years, I have added my parents’ choice of newspaper, The Telegraph, to my reading – not because my politics has changed but I have matured enough to accept that it is important to know one’s enemy.

It is fascinating and often mind boggling to read the right wing beliefs, aspirations and subsequent policies. It is a metric against which to measure my own. I also have to admit that The Sunday Telegraph is good for financial investment information and advice although the internet is rather obviating that these days.

At least, these days, I don’t have to go out early as I did often in Yorkshire through thick fog or heavy snow to buy my papers. The cost of The Sunday Times is £2.90/€3.25 and The Observer is £3.20/€3.60 in hard copy. I download mine onto my iPad and Pauline’s, onto my smartphone and Pauline’s and we both access it on our laptops and desktop computers. It means we can access it wherever we are in the world at any time. The Times is behind a paywall access to which cost me just £26.00/€29.01 per month. Just one hard copy of the main two Sundays for a month would be more expensive. The global availability of digital services is the biggest achievement over time.

Monday, 8th July, 2019

Lovely, warm and sunny day. We both just pottered this morning and felt very lazy in doing it. We have done a full work-out this afternoon which restores a bit of self respect but achievement has been low today.

As predicted, Greece’s conservative New Democracy party won Sunday’s snap national election, defeating the ruling Syriza party of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.  The official results gave

The chart above illustrates the seat distribution with and without the 50 bonus seats allocated to the winners. This will stop next time. What will be interesting is how the Centre Right Nea Demokratea can deal with the Greek economy any differently to the Leftist Syriza. It doesn’t seem very likely.

Tuesday, 9th July, 2019

Out early on a warm morning – 22C/70F – to our local PYO farm where we picked 5 Kgs/ 11Lbs of wonderful raspberries in an 30 mins..

We will eat a few with yoghurt and the rest will be turned into jam. Picking them was a delightful activity in itself. The exercise was rewarding and the fruit will be enjoyable.

I live with my iPad Pro in my hands for about 12 hrs per day. My current one is over 3 years old. It is starting to show its age and I need to upgrade it. Apple will offer me £250.00/€280.00 trade in price on a old iPad Pro and the new one costs £969.00/€1080.00. I ordered one from Apple today and it will arrive before 12.00 noon tomorrow. I think we will have to upgrade Pauline’s as well.

Wednesday, 10th July, 2019

I ordered my new iPad at mid day yesterday and it was delivered by 11.00 am this morning. Fantastic service. The cost was £976.00/€1086.00 but Apple have offered me a trade in price of £205.00/€228.00 which I will avail myself of as soon as I’ve cleaned it up. One of the problems, nowadays, is that these instruments are intimately insinuated with connections to sensitive accounts – Bank Accounts, Investment Accounts, Private correspondence files, Email Accounts, Social Media Accounts, etc.. Pauline and I share so many of these accounts that are essential to our daily activities. Currently, we access them across 3 x iPad, 2 x Smartphone, 2 x Laptop + a Desktop computer.

Even our on-line calendars run across all platforms and we cannot live our lives without them now. Pulling all these services across from one iPad to another is not without stress and glitches even though I maintain a book of identities and accompanying passwords.

It took me the whole of the day to get this sorted out and I even cancelled a trip to the gym to provide enough time. At one point, we had a huge panic when Pauline’s iPad which is on my account appeared to be wiped clean. Fortunately, a few tweaks and everything was back to full order. At another point, my new iPad froze because of a change of password and I couldn’t find how to reset it because the buttons had changed. I had to spend time on the internet researching it before I could free-up the new machine. By about 9.30 pm, everything was sweetness & light but I was too tired to complete my Blog which is why I am doing this on Thursday morning. At least I could sleep peacefully.

Thursday, 11th July, 2019

A warm and muggy night ended as a rather humid morning opens. Up early, we were out on a large round of shopping by 8.30 am. First to Tesco for our main shop. Fresh Salmon fillets were available at half price. We bought 3 fillets plus 4, large Tuna steaks and a couple of Cod Loins (No swordfish available.). Home to unpack and then out again to Sainsburys, for Tomatoes, Samphire, and Chicken, (No swordfish available but lots of Salmon Fillets on display.).  Next door for OW/20 Engine Oil for our new car from Halfords. On to Aldi for Smoked Mackerel Fillets and bottles of Greek Olive Oil. On to Morrisons for Swordfish (No swordfish available but lots of Salmon Fillets on display. there must be a glut of Salmon on the market.). On to Currys to pick up the paperwork for our latest purchase of a new Condenser Dryer. Finally, on to the Fisherman’s Hut on the beach. No swordfish available but they can order a joint for us for Saturday.

By the time we got home, it was 11.30 am. Just time for a cup of coffee and watering the potted plants outside in the sunshine before the Politics Live programme started at 11.45 am. Off to the Gym at 1.00 pm and then home by 4.00 pm. We had hardly sat down since getting up at 6.15 this morning. I was shattered. Goodness knows how Pauline managed to cook our meal. This evening, I have to start totally decommissioning my old iPad so it can be despatched for the trade-in price of £205.00. At the same time, I needed to source and buy a keyboard-case for my new iPad to protect it and turn it into a light laptop. I chose a Logitech case for £120.00/€134.00. It makes such a difference when I’m travelling by air. It fits in my leather shoulder bag and is remarkably light. The keyboard is backlit for poor light use and the whole thing provides a strongly supportive casing.

Friday, 12th July, 2019

A hot and muggy night has given way to a hot and humid day. We reached 27C/81F  by 3.00 pm. Everything is growing well. Even in our ‘pot’ garden, we are generating enough salad leaves and rocket to provide salad every day. We are on our 3rd harvest of herbs for the freezer and tomatoes are appearing all the time although not fully ripe yet. The Bell Peppers are flowering and fruiting at last so we live in hope of a good harvest. Two years ago, I received to fig sticks by post.

This afternoon and two years on, we picked and ate our first and most enormous ripe fig I have ever seen. It was delivered by the French fig tree which is now over 6ft tall and laden in fruit. The Brown Turkey is also covered in fruit but is more straggly.

Saturday, 13th July, 2019

This week marks 5 years since we left Sifnos. it is fitting that we picked our first, fresh fig from the tree this week since we left Sifnos. Pauline loved being by the sea and an island suited her just right. Unfortunately, small island politics were not suitable at all and she is happy not to have to deal with the goldfish in their bowl led by the Poison Dwarf. Fortunately, she chose just the place to relocate to. Sussex on Sea is perfect for us.

On Wednesday, I received my new Apple iPad Pro 12.9″. This morning, I received my new, Bluetooth Keyboard Case and the delivery driver sincerely apologised for being 15 mins early. Today, we decided Pauline could not be left out and ordered her an new, Apple iPad Air.

Pauline doesn’t want a keyboard but she does want to use hers for mounting portrait and landscape so she can read books/newspapers plus recipes while she’s cooking. We’ve found an excellent, leather, rotating cover for £16.99/€18.96 which will be exactly right. So, the total outlay will be £495.99/€554.00.

Cheap at half the price. I’ve traded my old iPad in for £200.00 while Pauline is passing hers on to her elderly sister.

Sunday, 30th June, 2019

A warm morning. It is exactly 12 months since we were spending a month in the Dordogne and it didn’t rain in Sussex at all and our luscious lawn died completely. We took the drastic step of completely reseeding it in late September and, 8 months later it is back and even better than before. With an extended period of dry, warm weather on the forecast, I am taking the precaution of watering and feeding it regularly. It is certainly rewarding me for my diligence.

We have now done two harvests of our herbs – Basil (already converted into Pesto portions), Oregano, Thyme, Sage, Tarragon and the cut-&-come-again Lettuce Leaves and Rocket are harvested most days. Cherry tomatoes have set and are fruiting well; bell peppers are flowering and will, hopefully, fruit very soon.

In the front garden, the hydrangeas are beginning to come into bloom. We grew these in Yorkshire but the Sussex climate is something different all together. So many shrubs that just survived in Yorkshire absolutely thrive in Sussex. However, having spent a large part of our married life taking gardening very seriously with quite large gardens, it is nice now to just keep our environment neat and attractive without spending huge sums of money and doing major landscaping.

Monday, 1st July, 2019

Happy July 2019. Enjoy it because you will never see it again. It has started off warm and sunny. Breakfast with the patio doors open and the aroma of fresh grass and tomato pollen wafting in to the kitchen.

It is 3 months now since we used the central heating at all other than the hot water tank being heated for an hour in the morning and again in the evening. I’ve lived in shorts and tee-shirt for the past 3 months although not the same ones, I hasten to add. I haven’t slept under the sheets for the past fortnight and we do almost all our cooking outside at the moment.

The thing about British weather is that it rarely gets excessively hot and, down here, it rarely gets excessively cold. It is the stereotypical Temperate Climate. This time last year, we were living in a Gite (without air conditioning) in the Dordogne. It was warm – hot even. If it had been this year, we would have been melting in 40C+ temperature. I think we are getting a bit old for that.

We ‘managed’ a considerable number of heatwaves in Greece including one, notable occasion in Piraeus when we went shopping for building materials in 44C/111F as we searched the store yards of Leroy Merlin. I was also very overweight and thought I was going to die. Kathimerini is reporting 

a heat wave with temperatures reaching up to 41C/106F is forecast to strike Greece in the upcoming weak. Temperatures will rise as of Monday, July 1st, and remain high until at least Friday, July 5th 2019. 

Rather them than us.

Tuesday, 2nd July, 2019

Today is a wonderful day. Blue skies, strong sun and a convoy of BT Openreach vans outside our house.

BT Openreach??? My first panicky thought was, “Am I going to lose my connection today?” I marched out to confront them. “Good morning, Sir, we are here to deliver fibre connection direct to your doors.”

We had received no warning of this although I did start to make a fuss about our download speed last year. I pay for superfast fibre to the cabinet which is said to deliver 42 mbps download speed. Of course, as our development brought extra demands for connections, the contention rate went up and the download speed went down. This morning, I am receiving 31 mbps download and 11mbps upload. When the fibre connection direct to my door is fed through, I could be receiving 1000 mbps download feeds – more than 30x faster than now. It is almost too fast to imagine!

Wednesday, 3rd July, 2019

When you’re retired, every day is a free day. Today is bright, clear blue sky and sun reaching 25C/77F. Quite delightful without being painful. We were up at 6.30 am and out at 8.30 am to our local (3 mins drive) PYO farm.

In 60 mins, we picked 5kgs of black currants and 5 kgs of strawberries. Pauline will make jam later today.

…. and here it is. Strawberry on the left and Blackcurrant on the right. Raspberry will come later in the week.

Thursday, 4th July, 2019

Gorgeously sunny day that reached 26C/79F. Thursday is shopping day and we visited Tesco, Sainsbury, Aldi and Morrison between 9.00 am – 11.00 am. By the time we got home, a number of our plants in pots outside were wilting in the heat. A good drink revived them and then it was off to the Health Club.

This year, our Health Club subscription costs £1824.00/€2033.00 for the year. In the past 3 months I have missed just 8 days. Attending 76 times each costing us £6.00 /€6.70 for the two of us. To be fair to our club, they are prepared to plough that money back in to development.

We have recently had a major renovation of the showers and changing facilities. The gym is constantly being refreshed with new apparatus and the restaurant is a thriving facility which is progressive and innovative. All of this is just as well considering how much time we spend there. Even so, many others see the facilities akin to a social meeting place whereas Pauline and I use it merely as somewhere to exercise and do not linger outside that.

Friday, 5th July, 2019

A warm morning – 19C/66F by 8.30 am – which has started sunny but quickly clouded over. The forecast is for the clouds to sweep away by 10.00 am and the temperature to reach 26C/79F at peak. The orders of the morning for me are cleaning the car and mowing and watering the lawns. Pauline is making the next batch of jam. Looks like we will be picking raspberries next week now and jamming subsequently.

On this day last year, we were in Limeuil which is situated at the confluence of the rivers Dordogne and Vézère in the middle of a month away in a gite near Bergerac and on this day two years ago, we were in a Hotel in Lyon as we drove through France to Italy. In recent years our cars windscreens were decorated with (annual – £30.00/€33.50 Swiss vignettes (road tax) and in the past 2 years our windscreen has featured the French Crit’Air which certifies the ‘green’ credentials of our car. We have changed model of car and have had to buy a new Crit’Air. It only costs £3.78/€4.21 including postage from France but it avoids a £61.00/€68.00 fine one can receive if caught without it.

As we were leaving Greece in 2014, it was becoming obvious that the looming crisis was ushering in major, political change. Alexis Tsipras and his left wing coalition party – Syriza – were eventually elected and have successfully managed to keep Greece in the EU against the odds but something the huge majority of Greeks wanted. However, the General Election will be held on Sunday and a scion of the Greek, political aristocracy, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, leader of Nea Demokratia – a centre right party – will ride the time-for-a-change wave and be elected to take on the country’s next stage of recovery. Mitsotakis has pedigree – his father, Konstantinos, was PM in the early 1990s and his sister, Dora Bakoyannis, was Foreign minister in the 2000s. For a country which abolished its monarchy, it is more dominated by familial political classes than UK.

Saturday, 6th July, 2019

Bed at midnight last night. Awake at 6.00 am this morning and up at 6.30 am. By 8.00 am, I was cleaning the car while Pauline was cleaning the house. By 9.30 am, we were on the road to Surrey. We were going to visit P&C at M&K’s house. The temperature was warm and sunny culminating in 26C/79F. We stayed from 11.oo am – 2.30 pm and then drove home. The journey each way was a delight. The traffic was always going in the opposite direction. Towards the coast in the morning as we were driving away and away from the coast in the afternoon as we were driving home.

According to recent research reported in Greek newspapers today, tourism to Greece is showing a marked downturn this year. Reduced air arrival data, an average decline in hotel occupancy of 24% year-on-year with lower occupancy rates and reduced prices coupled with 31% of owners expecting a 20% drop throughout the year. These figures will put the new Prime Minister under pressure. The main reasons for this pressure on Greek tourism are to be found in the economic slowdown seen in many countries from which Greece has traditionally drawn visitors, as well as the special case of Britain with a possible Brexit.

Sunday, 23rd June, 2019

A humid day that is reading 25C/77F at 1.00 pm. Cleaned the car of dead flies from our trip to France. The ‘new car’ finish rejected all water and left globules of water running over the surface.

We have a 10-year paintwork warranty and a full pack of wax/shampoo/tyre-dresser/leather treatment comes with it. We have a customer-care kit with two bottles of each treatment. Although I suspect this doesn’t happen any more, in the early days and I mean in the 1980s we were actually reproached by the Honda Dealership for delivering a dirty car for service. They implied that we were letting the exclusivity of the marque down. Consequently, we always valet our car before we take it into the Dealership.

 Of course, we have so much more time now to look after the car. One of the interesting things we noticed in the first week is the tank capacity. Although it is a hybrid, it is mainly run on Unleaded petrol. In previous, models, a full tank would report maximum 320 miles available. As soon as we filled this one, it reported 650 miles available in the tank. Quite mind blowing after 20 years of really poor consumption figures..

Back to the Health Club today. Amazing how hard it is to get back into it after a week away. Still, we did it and felt better for pushing ourselves in spite of the hurt. Incredibly humid evening – still 26C/79F at 7.30 pm. We’ve been talking about having a bedroom fan installed since we moved in but we suspect the ceiling is too low to fit it safely. This suggests we are going to have to look at air-conditioning instead. We will see how this week pans out with high temperatures forecast for a number of nights.

Monday, 24th June, 2019

Strange day of grey humidity and warmth. We reached 25C/77F and had isolated huge spots of rain which didn’t develop. It is, however, perfect growing weather. The potted peppers and tomatoes are all flowering and I am confident of their fertilisation in this weather. The figs are really ‘figging’ and we really look forward to a good crop this year.

We did our Health Club exercise routine and then settled down to start our new project of transferring camcorder tapes into digital format so that I can have a winter project of editing them in a memory bank which can we stored in the cloud. I was going to do this myself and, about 10 years ago, I bought a tape to CD machine to have a retirement project. It has remained in a box in the loft for all this time as I’ve got on with my life. Now, I’ve decided to ask a professional firm to do this for me. I’ve found a company based near Ripon in North Yorkshire who only charge £10.99 per tape. Mind you, I have got quite a lot of tapes but it is much cheaper than I expected.

Tuesday, 25th June, 2019

A very humid day which topped 26C/79F but felt much warmer. We spent the morning involved in revolutionary activity – we were tidying the garage – before deciding it was far too hot for the gym and settling back to enjoy the afternoon outside in the garden. Delighted to find the potted cherry tomatoes already setting fruit. Looking forward to eating them. Pauline will make a second batch of Pesto for the freezer tomorrow as the Basil grows enormously.

We seem to have 20 video camera tapes with the earliest of 1990. Many are records of our time in Sifnos but we were shocked to find that, 27 years ago, we went to Cyprus for Easter fortnight, Andros for Whit Week and Sifnos in the Summer. Anyway, it will cost us £10.99/€1.30 per tape to digitise and £8.00/€9.00 per stick to store. The total will be about £400.00/€450.00. When everything is stored in digital form, I can spend the darker winter months editing them to make useable records of our younger days and storing them in the cloud.

Wednesday, 26th June, 2019

A hot and humid day only reaching 26C/79F but feeling much warmer. We did some work on our shrubbery beds for an hour or so and Pauline made ginger biscuits. All happily domestic stuff. We did our Health Club routine although the gym was hot and sweaty in spite of being air-conditioned.

I was surprised to find that I was featured in the report of the Northern newspaper – The York Press – which was featuring a University of York & St. John’s Honarary Degree ceremony for hundreds of teachers who qualified pre-1980 at Ripon Training College & St John’s York Training College. For months, alumni of those colleges have been getting excited about the event and preparing to meet up again. I have not.

I have no memory of this at all. I love watching cricket but have no talent at playing it. Actually, having worked so hard for my degrees, I am ambivalent about honorary ones being sprayed around but, I suppose, it is the way things are going. It has obviously made these old people happy and who would deny them that? I’ve subsequently been informed that this photograph is framed and on the wall in the foyer of York University. As I told my fellow students, if I’d known, I’d have Photoshopped my hair into less of a wigwam.

Thursday, 27th June, 2019

It was 35 years ago that we bought our first, brand new Honda car. It was an Accord. We were so delighted with the brand that we have stayed with it through some 20+ new cars including a large number of Preludes and CRVs. The current model is our 13th CRV. It was purchased in West Sussex but, for most of our time, we were served by one Dealership in West Yorkshire and one salesman, Chris Woods, who became a personal friend.

From the beginning, every Honda car we bought was metallic silver. We insisted on it. When we bought our first, CRV in August, 1997, we went mad and chose metallic ORANGE. We thought our first Sports Utility Vehicle suited a ‘whacky’ colour and orange seemed appropriate. It was the first vehicle in which we had satellite navigation and the first in which we had charging points which would allow the ‘fridge’ and ‘shower’ to be plugged in. The fridge was really an electric cool-box and the shower was a tank of water with a shower head attached  and powered by an electrical pump. It was intended for those who were beach lovers and wanted to shower clean before driving home.

Two months ago in West Yorkshire, our salesman friend, Chris, finally retired from Honda. A month later, we took delivery of our latest, metallic silver CRV from a West Sussex dealership. Today, we took our 22-year old ‘fridge’ cool-box to the waste disposal tip because we have replaced it with a real Fridge with twice the capacity and temperature capability and a contemporary manufacturer. I contacted Chris with this photograph and news, telling him that the cool-box he sold us in 1997 had finally expired.

I am so hopelessly sentimental that I find myself quite moved by the loss of those times with their associated objects and friendships. Although my current life is wonderful, there is something melancholic about the loss of the time that can never be recovered. Although it is not in the same league, it is almost akin to that desperate desire to meet again a lost love, a deep and significant relationship. And all sparked by the death of a 22 year old ‘fridge’.

Friday, 28th June, 2019

Once again, we haven’t got that Friday feeling. We have been free all day to follow our fancies. We went out fairly early to go to a shop about 5 mins drive away down Sea Road. Pauline was collecting delivery of a new pair of trainers at a ‘Drop-off’ shop. Sea Road leads to …. the sea. We drove on and walked on the edge of the beach for a few minutes. At 9.30 in the morning even on a hot and sunny one as this, the beach was fairly quiet. It was 25C/77F at 9.30 am but we peaked at 29C/84F by late afternoon.

On the way back, we stopped off at Currys-PCWorld to look at new Condenser Tumble Dryers. If you are a Blog follower, you will have read about our dispute with Hoover-Candy over their illegal warranty conditions. We have beaten them down until the point where, although not admitting liability in terms, they are admitting liability in actions by offering us a complete refund for our 10-month-old machine. We looked at alternatives on-line and went to look at it in the metal.

By the time we arrived in the ‘superstore’, it was about 10.00 am. It was totally devoid of customers although about 5 or 6 sales staff stood around and looked at us hopefully as we walked through the door. We had their undivided attention and, within 5 minutes had agreed for them to deliver and install a new machine and remove and dispose of the old machine in a few days time – all at no cost. Now I will pursue the manufacturers over their illegal policy. I will not be doing this for ourselves but for those who come after us.

Hoover-Candy have clearly designed and built a machine that has a serious design flaw. They offer a 10-year parts warranty but excludes an integral part of a condenser dryer – the container for the water that is condensed. It fits in the door and gets – surprise, surprise – very hot. So far, so predictable. However, it’s made of plastic which cracks under heat. Bit of a problem you might think. We have gone through two in 10 months. The company say it is not covered by their 10-year parts warranty because customers have to empty it themselves. They have arbitrarily designated it a ‘consumable’ part and, therefore, not guaranteed it even though the customer is not told of this when they buy. This clearly breaks consumer law under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and I will be pursuing that with the company’s management.

Saturday, 29th June, 2019

A hot and humid day that reached 29C/85F and stayed there for a large part of the day. There was a time when we would have sat under the sun for an extended period developing the body beautiful. It is too late for that now. Actually, we worked outside for most of the morning – I cut, fed and watered the lawns. I also enjoyed using my new, cordless strimmer to do all the edges. Pauline cut back the Basil plants and made two, more packs of Pesto. She was using Purple Basil and sweet, green Genovese Basil. They are both certainly enjoying our back garden. This is the second harvest and we expect two or three more cuttings.

It has been quite unpleasantly warm in our gym recently in spite of the air-conditioning. At the end of our exercise routine, I have lost so much water that I’ve been feeling a bit fragile over the past couple of sessions. It is so warm today that we decided to give it a miss and go for a walk around our development instead this evening. It just confirms what a lovely place we’ve come to live in.

Sunday, 16th June, 2019

There are times that one must be grateful for one’s own life. I constantly reflect on how lucky I am. Pauline says, Not Lucky. We worked hard for this. I suppose she’s right but events constantly underline my view. I was reminded of this by three occurrences this morning: a posting on Facebook, an article in the Sunday Observer and a reminder from my on-line calendar.

A girl who we taught some 30 years ago posted on Facebook this morning that she was feeling depressed. She lives, of all places, in Derby and worked for Rolls-Royce. She has a good job and enjoys it. She has a happy marriage and a young child. Ostensibly, she has little to be depressed about and yet we know that her early life and experiences created in her a residual depression that can never be fully expunged. What a dreadful legacy for a vivacious and energetic young woman!

I was reading an article about the projections for the newish, automatic enrolment pensions which the government forced on employers. They run the risk of retiring on a pension of far less than £15,000.00/€16,800.00 per year, the equivalent of the current national living wage. That’s bad enough but, what struck me even more forcefully was the quoted average national wage before tax is £27,500 and I realised how fortunate we are. Our pension income, after tax, is much greater than double the average national wage before tax. Yes, we did work hard for it but many people out there work just as hard without the same rewards.

Of course, life is not made happy by money. It helps and lack of it can be very depressing. My on-line calendar reminded me that tomorrow will mark the 39th anniversary of an horrific car accident that almost took our lives away. The things we’ve done in the last 39 years  …. more of that tomorrow. (Sorry!) …. Today, we made our first pesto of the season. Even in this relatively cool and damp June, our basil plants are thriving. Glossy, green and juicy leaves when combined with good olive oil, ground cashew nuts, garlic, and lemon juice produce the most wonderfully sweet-tasting, verdant pesto. If you’ve only ever eaten commercially produced pesto, you’ve never known the real thing. They are poles apart.

Monday, 17th June, 2019

A surprisingly lovely day reaching 22C/70F with lots of sunshine. We drove to Rustington at 9.00 am for Pauline’s hairdressers’ appointment and my date with Waitrose Coffee Shop.  

We returned to sit in the garden sunshine with our coffee and decided we had too many jobs to fit in so cancelled our trip to the health Club. Even so, I easily completed my 10,000 paces by mowing the lawns, watering all the plants and hoovering the house.

Today is the day, 39 years on from our car accident. I spent a fortnight in hospital with brain bruising and the best part of 12 months convalescing. So many exciting things have happened to us since that time and we will never forget our good luck. Every succeeding day is a joy not least more than 10 years of ‘playing out’ in retirement.  And tomorrow – France with all the fun that will entail.

Tuesday, 18th June, 2019

Up early on a lovely, warm morning, drink, pack the car, set the automatic lights and off to the Channel Tunnel. Travellers have to be checked in at least 45 mins before driving on to the train so has to be factored in to the trip time. I know that Brexit Security checks have also caused some longer delays so our mindset is already prepared for that too. Fortunately, we have no real deadline today. Check-in at our hotel in Coquelles is not until 2.00 pm so things are relaxed. We have our newspapers downloaded and every thing prepared for a wait. Let’s go!

….. No delays at the Tunnel but plenty of slowing roadworks en route. We were even offered an earlier train but declined. The drive was our first, lengthy drive and it really was a sharp learning curve. Driving with ACC and ILA switched on was akin to a sitting in a driverless car. Adaptive Cruise Control allows one to set a cruising speed but leave the car to adjust that speed according to traffic in front. This feature speeds up and slows down the car according to circumstances. Intelligent Lane Assist and Blind Spot Warning combine to keep the car within the white lines and warn of anything over or undertaking. This actually guides the steering wheel, unless the driver overrides it, and keeps it within the lines which is a slightly unnerving experience at 70 mph on the motorway.

As we drove in to the hotel grounds and carpark, we were greeted by a ‘flock’ (??) Of newborn (hatched) chicks that ran towards Pauline – obviously recognising her maternal qualities. We had specified which suite we wanted and were duly shown up to it. The evening was interesting as we watched the bonkers Tory Party hustings which was followed, quite appropriately, by a massive thunder storm with flashes of lightning, crashes of booming thunder and a roar of torrential rain. Shakespeare would certainly have approved. He may, even now, have staged it.

Wednesday, 19th June, 2019

We thought France, mid-June, new car, no set times or dates, just freedom. We’ll drive down the coast with the sunroof open and the sun beating down on our heads, highlighting and warming the beaches ….. We’ve woken to more thunder and rain from dark skies. We’ve eaten a little breakfast and are now settling down with coffee and newspapers, Radio4 Today followed by Sky’s All Out Politics before we set out into the world. It might have stopped raining by then.

…….. it has and the sun is out, shining from blue skies. the temperature has reached 24C/75F. We drove down the coast to Wissant and walked in the warm sunshine. Quite delightful!

We’ve been here many times before but hadn’t learnt of the Wissant School of Painters featured on the cliff.

It has been a lovely, gentle day of sunshine, walking and I’ve learned something new about the car. For years, as we’ve driven into Europe, Radio 4 reception has faded. We’ve switched to the decreasingly usable Long Wave until Switzerland or Southern France has blanked us out completely. Now, Smartphone connectivity has allowed us to access radio over internet and put it straight through our car radio. It has changed life completely.

Thursday, 20th June, 2019

The morning started grey but, like yesterday, quickly turned warm and sunny with delightful blue sky and bright light. We had a leisurely start to the day. Radio 4 Today from my iPad at ECT 7.00 am (GMT 6.00 am) with a cup of Yorkshire tea. Down for Breakfast before 8.00 am and back for coffee and Sky’s All Out Politics for an hour until 10.00 am. Out into the delightfully warm sunshine.

We took the A16 down the coast through Sangatte, Wimereux, Boulogne, Neufchatel, Le Touquet and then inland to Montreuil-sur-Mer. It is both much the same as so many small, French towns and yet delightful in its provincial charm. We drove down lots of narrow, cobbled streets banked on either side by tall, 3-4 storey 18th/19th century buildings. This is the origin of Les Misérables and it shows. We parked up on the cobbled, market square at the town centre.

My usual way of getting to know a new place is to sit and eat and drink while watching the world go by. I’m afraid that approach has long gone which is a pity because these French, provincial towns are just full of eating and drinking places advertising everything I’m not allowed to have. So it was that we set out on foot to walk around and look and smell but not touch.

One can immediately understand the ‘metalled’ footwear of the past because walking for long on cobbled streets becomes excruciating. If you wanted a symbol of European sentiment and unity, this last scene pictured below, shouted it out to Brits feeling sensitive about their host’s view of them.

We drove back to the hotel in the afternoon to find out about the Tory, It’s a Knockout competition and then went out shopping in Cité Europe. The sunshine had lasted and improved throughout the day and into the evening. Our meal was smoked salmon salad instead of all those calorific offerings shrieking out at us in the town centre. End of a lovely day.

Friday, 21st June, 2019

Beautiful morning to open the Summer Solstice. We are actually making the longest day even longer by leaving France at 1.00 pm and arriving in UK at 12.35 pm.

We left our hotel at 9.30 am and drove down to Carrefour Hypermarket where we plundered the fresh fruit & vegetables mountain. Such wonderful choice and quality at this time of the year.

The fishmonger had a huge 3 kilo chunk of swordfish (Trois kilos d’espadon) costing €40.00/£36.00 which will do for a couple of weeks and is so difficult to source in UK at the moment.

We drove back to the Tunnel Sous La Manche and checked in for a train one hour earlier than intended. Leaving at 12.15 pm, we arrived in Folkestone at 11.50 am thus making the Longest Day even longer than usual.

Saturday, 22nd June, 2019

Lovely, warm and sunny day. We decided to do some supermarket shopping followed by garden jobs. I mowed the lawns and we re-potted the Bell Peppers into bigger pots with a wigwam support of canes. We cut back the sage and Oregano plants for use in the kitchen. Pauline washed, spun and chopped them for the freezer. The cherry tomatoes are in full flower so they were fed and watered. The Rocket was ready for cutting again and we had that for our meal.

A couple of weeks ago, I featured a tree that we found in Tenerife. I brought some seeds back and sowed them recently. Well, today they are starting to show their true natures with secondary leaves opening like their parent tree. Soon, I will have to pot them up and take them outside to see if they can survive a Sussex Winter.