K has gone down with man flu’ and a nosebleed last night was a bit of a sign that his blood pressure is high and that he has been overdoing the driving, stressing, interpreting, spending lots of money and confronting bureaucrats. Getting chilled in Venice without a proper coat did not help any either.
Bearing this in mind, we decided to spend a lazy day at home to unwind today and so, this could turn out to be a bit of a boring blog. In addition, the sky was overcast all day, although the temperature was very warm, spits and spots of rain have had us nipping in and out of doors to catch the warmth but to avoid getting books and washing more damp than necessary. However, we can report that the solar water heater does provide lovely hot water even when it is not that sunny which is one of those recommendations that you hear in the advertisements in the UK about solar heating, but never quite believe.
In the course of domestic pottering this morning. I made some discoveries and did an inventory of the learning curve of the last 10 days living the good life.
Taking pity on K who was up a ladder painting the frame for the bamboo canopy and not exactly suffering in silence, I reckoned that it was my turn to clean out the log burning stove this morning. This meant raking all the ash into the bottom ash tray and sorting out the larger lumps of charcoal which did not slip through the grate easily. It was a bit of a Harry Potter moment when with my head inside the stove, I could hear a long distance sound of the village activities picked up outside by the tee shaped chimney pot on the roof - then down the stove pipe, boosted by the acoustics of the large iron stove. It was a bit like a huge telephone. K and I listened for a minute or two and thought that we should have had some ‘magic flue powder’ in our pockets to be transported elsewhere.
We have also discovered in our first two weeks of being “retired” and spending more time together than we ever have before that it will take a bit of time to work out what our new roles are. We keep duplicating each others’ efforts by trying to start things which the other has just done and wondering where things are that we are searching for in cupboards, when they have just been removed and are being used for the job you were just planning to do. At the moment this is quite funny, but I have memories of my in laws having “His” and “Hers” tool kits because they were never able to share things like hammers, pliers and screwdrivers! (K is welcome to these, but lay off my knitting bag and sewing machine, OK?)
Words I have learned so far:
aftoh – this or that
loulouthia – flowers
katalaveno – understand
poli crio – very cold
zesty – hot
paboutsia – shoes, pantoflez – slippers, caltzes – socks (the travelling shoe shop came round yesterday in a truck with loud speaker)
xartopatchetta – paper tissues (needed for man flu)
(My score at Scrabble 321 – K 181 – he is not happy)
We made a little trip out in the car at lunchtime to Perama which gave me the opportunity to drive on the right when the road was quiet without incident. Later on this evening, our neighbour Costas (there are 3 people named Adonis and 2 named Costas in the village which is really confusing) but this is the Costas married to Angeliki. He looked at the lemon tree we bought yesterday and said that we needed to cut it almost down to the bottom. We wondered about this but to prove a point he gave Kimon a bag of oranges, lemons and clementines picked straight from their trees. I can’t begin to describe their flavour – just marvellous. Kimon said that he would let Costas have one or two of his lemons in a year or two from our tree, which made everyone laugh. Not sure why …?
Anyway, I have made Mamma’s anti-biotic chicken broth with lots of lemon and garlic on the stove top and lovely fresh fruit salad with loads of Vit C but K is still suffering loudly and in need of TLC. Kalinichta ! x
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