CROZIERS IN THE KOUZINA

Disorientation reigns and there is DUST everywhere in the house, in spite of sheets and precautions. This is because Rik the Builder arrived this week to start preparation works for the new kitchen. The project has been a long time in the planning because some components needed to get here by ferry and the ferries stop during really bad weather.  Drilling of channels in the walls and the ear-splitting noise did nothing to enamour us to our neighbours and we have been sweeping up old tiles and ankle deep dust from the kitchen floor. K is doing his best with a broom and long handled dustpan, but finds it hard to balance and carry heavy stuff. I was amazed at how much was stowed away in the kitchen cupboards in the way of crockery and foodstuffs since it seems to be evenly spread throughout the rest of the house at the moment while the kitchen is gutted. The sink unit has gone. We have now discovered why it was so low and hard on the back as it was semi buried in a small quarry all of its own and the stone floor had been laid around it. The wall cupboards and worktop will go today and we will have an interesting weekend – camping in the living room and washing up in the bathroom. Takeaways would be an answer, except this is closed season and there are not many places round about to cater for us during the Winter. We will definitely look for a meal out on Sunday because for even something as simple as a coffee, we are twirling round in circles looking for mugs and teaspoons in the enveloping chaos.

Meanwhile, the sun reappeared on Wednesday after a long absence and white-out on all the hills and mountains hereabout. We donned several layers each day and even more by night, burned our way through our third delivery of logs and have asked Nikos-the-Wood for another consignment. This is always a tricky time of year;  we don't really want to be left with an enormous log pile during the summer because it takes up the most part of the front porch. Guestimating needs versus weather forecasts is a fine art.

Our time has been spent keeping dry and warm – not easy in Cretan houses. Our French neighbours (to be) arrived after a prolonged absence complaining bitterly about the flat they are renting (I think this is their third attempt to find somewhere dry and warm) - which has water running down the walls and which a humidifier does not seem to help. They are so longing for next winter when they finally move into their own house after a 2-3 year finishing off process. We hope there are no leaks in that one! We are just working out where the leaks are coming from in our roof and working on them one by one. We think the outside stone staircase may be the cause of our problems but we can't really deal with it until Summer when things have dried out a bit. The top roof has been brilliant all winter but the bathroom roof has sprung a few leaks after heavy storms. Fortunately, the drips are all onto stone or tile floors, so the damage is minimal.

New Lighting

Inside with the fire lit in the evening and with arts and crafts to make the most of the winter blues, we have managed to track down programmes from the UK to link to the TV via the computer. This way we can keep up with the news from home and pit our wits against the EggHeads with predictable results. No, we can't beat them either … how do they know all this stuff? Do you think it would be interesting to be sat next to any of them at a dinner party? I digress. Outings to meet up with friends for lunch have been welcome diversions and we enjoyed a meal out at a favourite haunt for Anna's birthday – our table blithely ordering chops and lamb, when all the other Greek diners had started their Lenten fast and were eating seafood, fish and vegetables. I noticed that most tables were ordering big platters of fish and chips, so the Lenten fast did not seem to be too onerous. Kimon and I had prawn saganaki – prawns in a spicy tomato sauce with rice, which didn't seem too severe either. We got his PSA results from the lab at the end of last week and the results were even lower than last time. This and some good scan results when he goes to the hospital next week would really be good news. We are keeping optimistic.

LIGHT!  At last

The new Greek Prime Minister seems to have won a reprieve from the big guns of the EU who are demanding loan repayments. Nobody really knows what on earth is going on, but he seems to have started a shift in thinking about the dynamics of economy even if none of the sums add up … we will see what happens. The exchange rate from the UK is very good at the moment and petrol prices have gone down considerably which is great. People we know here are relieved to be in a position to afford central heating oil, after a few years without, but I notice that my retraite payment from France has gone down! This must be because it is paid in euros! You win some, you lose some!

The pension from France is well earned each year in all the bureaucracy involved. I made my annual trip to the town hall in Perama to get the Attestation d'Existence form signed. It says “I certify that the lady standing before me named .. birth date … nationality ... is alive.” (Hmm .. Just about) The form is translated by the French Government to every language in the EU (including Turkish) except Greek. To be helpful, I translated the paragraphs and sent it back to them two years ago, but they haven't changed the form. It seems a bit much for people to sign something they don't understand, but the kind folk at the Town Hall seemed to accept my Google Translate version! We find the application so useful for official documents and instruction books.

As blogs go, this is a bit of a dull one but I have “before” photographs of the Croziers Kitchen and will post “after” pictures when the work is done. Yassus/yassou!