What a busy day today as we prepared for the arrival of the lorry from Nomad with our furniture inside. I started the day off by filling the kettle with Raki and boiling it up to make tea. Alerted by the peculiar smell coming from my tea cup and observing that the milk was curdling as I watched, I realised that the water bottle which I thought was full of water …… you guessed it! The mark II version of Tetley’s best, tasted and smelled much better and we set to work on all the household chores. First, we had to clear out the shed which was completely blocked by a huge wooden chest that Kimon had been restoring and stripping of paint on previous trips. Once the thing was out of the shed I could see how enormous it was and wondered what we would do with it once it was restored as it came up to my chest and took up about half of the front garden. Once the shed was clear, we realised that we had much more wood and kindling hidden in there than we knew about and I set about stacking and sorting it. I gave myself a resounding bang on the head by the corner of a shelf in there and was swearing horribly about sharp corners and other miscellaneous hazards.
After all the marble floors were swept mopped, the telephone rang and we learned that the lorry had arrived and was parked in the village square. We went to meet Mark and Tracey who had come to deliver our furniture. When Mark said that his wife Tracey was with him, initially, my heart sank a bit because I thought that we would need some big strong lads to carry the furniture along the lane or up the stairs. Tracey destroyed all my misconceptions by carting furniture up the road single-handed and carrying full chests of drawers, arm chairs and so on wherever in the house they had to go. She and Mark did an incredible job and we settled all the furniture in the house and stored all the boxes in the Mill to be sorted little by little. It was great to have a look round the Mill now that it had been finished because Rik, our friendly builder had finished it off to a very high spec. – well out of our price bracket. We noticed that a swallow had made a nest in the top of the mill gear machinery which Rik had kept, refurbished and set in the inner courtyard outside the guest suite.
We were so grateful to Mark and Tracey that we took them down to Kostas and Angeliki’s traditional taverna and had a couple of beers to quench everyone’s thirst. We told them that Kostas did hair cuts on the premises as well, but they did not quite believe us until an elderly gentleman came for his short back and sides. Kimon and his mates think it is so great to sit down at Kostas’ for a beer, a dish of olives and nibbles and have a really splendid hair cut while they are there. One of K’s friends dines out on the story and a whole cavalcade of them turn up when they are in Crete, just for the novel experience of it!
Tracey and Mark have lived in Crete for five years and their children settled into the Greek school system very well indeed. We had a good chat about life here and found out that Tracey’s parents and sister have moved out here too. There seem to be a great many Brits who have settled in Crete and we hope that the indigenous population do not mind too much. They both say that they cannot imagine ever leaving Crete and love the life and the people here. We want to write to Nomad to thank them because the whole operation was very slick but we need to find the legs off the arm chairs and the sewing machine before we get over fulsome!!
After they left with a water bottle full of Kostas’ wonderful wine and a shopping bag of potatoes, I spent the rest of the afternoon unpacking one or two baskets and boxes … Yay, I have woolly jumpers, a dressing gown, bath mats, comfy chairs, cushions ….
… I even have the beginnings of an art studio although we haven’t found the boxes of art materials or canvases yet … and I think it will be a while before we have sorted out all our books and boxes before I can make a start. And I now have a desk top computer and printer (when I have unpacked them) so that Kimon can read the blogs before they get posted). It will be a while before we get on line, though. Fortunately the man installing the bamboo canopy (known to us as Mr Bamboozle) did not turn up today -–so we have that pleasure still to come and no fisticuffs outside the front door had everyone had turned up together.
At the moment we have collapsed on our very English three piece suite with soft cushions after the best supper of baked potatoes and chicken salad ever. On Saturday, we had visions of opening our own Cretan version of Spud-u-like (pronounced spood-oo-li-kay a la Victoria Wood) but that is another story. Sufficient to say that we have been giving away shopping bags of potatoes all week and we now have a reasonable number left to supply our small house for several weeks.
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