THIS AND THAT ....

We've had lots of trivial things going on recently and it has been hard to stay in one place long enough to put anything down for the blog diary. After a couple of weeks of freezing cold weather, snow and horrible torrents of rain, we were relieved last weekend that the sun made an appearance again and the temperatures changed dramatically within a few hours. We kept emerging from the house in thick layers of woollies only to find that the temperature in the car was boiling and we had to go back inside and rethink our layers again. K and I spent last Sunday down on the harbour wall with a thermos of coffee in Panormo while he fished and I did some painting. It was a glorious morning.

One of the things that has now become tricky is getting huge lumps of wood chopped into small enough pieces to burn more easily on the wood stove. With half a leg out of commission for balancing purposes, it is just a bit too risky to let K on the loose with an axe or chain saw. We made an agreement with Nikos-the-Wood to purchase a new chain saw for him in exchange for two loads of logs and he seemed to think this was a good deal. Monday morning was spent at the Store being given a detailed demo by the man at the agricultural counter while farmers came in and out with tools which needed fixing, oil cans for filling and driving away again with trucks full of equipment for the olive picking, which is very busy this year. We think that world forces have meant that Cretan olive oil is in high demand in 2015. Every truck in the village is off at 7.30 a.m. and not back until 4.00 p.m. We have been given two large water bottles of local oil as Christmas presents. It tastes wonderful – if only all this beautiful oil would help with the country's balance of payments!

Then we made the decision to have a proper Crozier kitchen fitted after an elongated delay and I unearthed some squared paper and started measuring and drawing. After marking the fixed points for the windows, doors and immovable objects, I progressed around the four walls of the old house in diagrammatic form. Inevitably, the old walls were so aged that when I got to the final corner of the room to complete the scale drawings, the edges did not seem to meet properly! Nothing is square, nothing is straight. I am so glad that I am not a joiner, but presumably they are used to it by now. Just as we had totted up the expense for this and needed to think about moving funds about, our son called from the UK to tell us that the offer for the house in the UK had been accepted and we needed to get on line fast to tie up loose ends. Almost synchronised to the second, the laptop developed a peculiar fault and told me my user profile had changed … (HOW AND BY WHOM?) ...so I could not use it. We needed to take the laptop to a knowledgeable guy who could twiddle about with it in Safe Mode and make the necessary alterations. It seems to be cured now. There is also a General Election in Greece tomorrow and although all the UK news agencies are “terrified”that Greece will leave the EU, no one hereabouts thinks that it will happen. We will see.

Minoan cup designs - Aren't they beautiful?

We heard from our friend Gianna on Monday, that her husband is out of Intensive Care but still quite poorly. I dropped off a ripple mattress the following morning so that the dreaded bed sores could be prevented and looked up the vitamins and food supplements which I had used for K to build him up and replace all the body weight lost while in hospital. Things are still quite tense, but Tony has three good nurses looking after him round the clock and Gianna (who is a marvellous cook) making wonderful soups and drinks at home and bringing them into the hospital to feed to him and get him stronger. Tony may soon be taken to a clinic in Chania for rehabilitation which we heard about last year. We are still hoping and praying for his complete recovery.

On Friday we paid a second, much more enlightened visit to the amazing Archaeology Museum in Heraklion. Explanation and signage had been much improved since my last trip in the summer and we had the input from Don Eveley, our friend from the British School of Athens, Archaeologist and former curator of the school at Knossos. My take on all the myriad of objects, so beautifully displayed was as irreverent as ever … would you use that portable clay stove for egg poaching .. how on earth did you get stored materials from the bottom of that enormous man size pithoi (terracotta ali baba style pots) .. did you have to suspend a small child by one leg over the edge with a jug or ladle … how did they fire such huge pots and what size of kiln would they use? Fortunately, as a group we had evolved and moved on from using limited brain power worrying about Minoan toilets and sanitation! As we progressed around the museum, the statuary section of the later eras gave us a long pause for thought and I stopped to take a photo of the bust of Caesar Augustus, simply because I had heard of him. The bust of Caligula was next to him and in spite of his reputation, he didn't look so very different from anyone who might be travelling on the same bus to work. Scary! The facilities at the museum were excellent and all the guides and people so welcoming and friendly but after two or three hours our feet were suffering, so we went for lunch in the busy tourist centre of the city. I had spent an inordinate amount of time snapping away at the ceramic designs to see whether I could get some inspiration in the colour choice for kitchen tiles – What a flibbertigibbet I am!

If anyone has seen the online version of a small heater made with two inverted clay flower pots, one candle and lots of metal nuts and bolts to hitch them together, and been assured that it gives off an impressive level of heat at minimal cost … look no further. I was intrigued to take a look at all the clay artefacts displayed so well at the museum and there is one design that looks as if it would do the same job. It made me want to have a go at creating one of my own, but there is far too much happening at the moment for potting 'Minoan' radiators. January is Marmalade Season. I had forgotten to mention that three people had dropped off loads of oranges for me to make marmalade and quite a lot of time has been spent spooning pips out of bubbling marmalade confections and sterilising jam jars. It is a great way to keep warm!