RED CROSS AND RASHES

We were terribly impressed on Friday to have received a call back at home from the Doctor that Kimon had consulted at the Health Centre on Wednesday. Our visit there had been the usual scrum to begin with whilst we stood in an orderly queue and everyone slammed their papers through the window in front of us, as though we were invisible. Kimon was too ill to fight back but I did wonder how we would cope if it was an emergency. He has been very unwell for a couple of weeks and we thought he had caught a mystery virus which had made him horribly ill. A full check up and bank of blood tests, taken and analysed at the same building, did not seem to come up with anything, but the Doctor gave him one tablet from her desk drawer and said that it might help with the pain. It did - as K had the first full nights sleep for a good, long while, but we couldn't help wondering what it was that she had given him. When she called us at home, she asked how he was and whether the medication had helped. K said that it was very good and she replied “Come back on Monday and we will give you a prescription for more”. So we set off again today and deliberately waited until the early morning rush was over. We are not sure why everyone goes to the Health Centre so early in the morning, but it is always nearly empty by 11.15 am. So we turned up at 12.45 pm and more or less walked straight in. The nice doctor gave K two more tablets but said that she needed him to go the hospital in Rethymnon to have more tests, because she was fogged. The pain sounds like shingles, there is a rash, of sorts, but nothing like any rash I have ever seen before and K cannot bear going anywhere in the car because all the jolting around hurts so much. We'll get the bus into town tomorrow and hope that Rethymnon Hospital has a brilliant diagnostician at work.

Our new neighbours in the village from France arrived here on Saturday afternoon after an exhausting move out of Marseilles and an equally exhausting unloading here at the other end. They were celebrating being here for good and although we did make up beds for them in the outer guest room at the Mill, they realised that for a few months they would need much more space and found a very reasonable two bedroom flat nearby which will be somewhere they can house their furniture and settle down until their new build is complete, it is signed off by the powers-that-be and the electricity and water connections can be made.

Sunday was the annual Red Cross coffee morning celebration fund raiser. Accordingly, lots of us were up early making or icing cakes to take with us. I thought I had followed the instructions very closely from the Edmonds Sure to Rise Cookbook for my savoury muffins, but they were the usual lacklustre effort which greets all my efforts in Crete with the local flour, absence of cheddar cheese and then the discovery that (still stuck on imperial measures which mean something to me) I had put 25 g of butter in the mix instead of 50 g. The only thing I could claim about the finished articles was that they were slightly healthier than I had anticipated but nothing like the delicious cakes and morning tea offerings that we get in New Zealand. I have also heard that the power fluctuates so much here that the oven temperature is never as high as it indicates on the dial. Fortunately other guests had been much more successful with their efforts, so it was an enjoyable outing and the weather was fabulous. K was not well enough to go, but I bought a ticket for him and took back a paketo (=doggie bag). Sadly, we did not win a raffle prize, but as such things as live goats had been offered as prizes in the past, so this might be regarded as something of a bonus.

With K poorly, we have spent much more time in the house than usual, so there is nothing scintillating to report except that we eventually found out who had been helping themselves to Ian's pumpkin plants after suspecting one or two people of the heinous crime. It turned out to be some very large lizards who were living in the old stone wall around the outside of the garden. We have some seedlings to put into the keepo (garden), and a few fruitful tomato plants (which we are hoping will come up trumps soon) so we are hoping that the lizards are not minded to walk too far away from their wall to the veggie cafeteria! It is Spring Watch with a difference here!