ACTION STATIONS

Whilst all our friends and family basked in wonderful February weather in the UK, the shift in weather patterns brought two weather systems to Crete with dire consequences. The ground already waterlogged by weeks of rain (on and off since November) came under a very cold snap first and then the most vicious cyclone on Monday and Tuesday this week which caused widespread damage over the whole island to roads, bridges, water services (to add insult to injury). Inside our house, the noise of thunder and lightning kept us awake for two days and nights while we tried to keep the force of water cascading into the house around the window frames and through the kitchen and bathroom ceilings at bay. The tiled terrace above the kitchen was a paddling pool and swooshing the floodwaters with a pool bungee mop towards the drain holes had no effect whatsoever since the rain was cascading down faster than I could sweep and even a few seconds in the open air soaked us to the skin. We kept thinking that it was too heavy and severe to last, but it just kept on going! We have layers of plastic, old towels and plastic bowls and containers lining the trouble spots.

Weather Map from local paper!

Our friendly builder was overwhelmed with requests for help, but he hasn't been able to get to us yet and we have had the mops out and the dehumidifier going to help dry out the ceilings and floorboards. It was bliss when the sun came out this morning even though the snow is thick on the mountains and the air is icy cold. We find out that our village – neither too high up nor too low down or on the sea front fared a lot better than other places. Lots of people were without power, phones and water for 3 or 4 days and the Municipality of Rethymno are working hard to sort out the pumping stations. All the valleys and gorges from the mountains couldn't cope with the torrents and the sea was brown with dislodged earth nearly to the horizon.

Dodging the rain, we spent a morning at the Police Station locally where we had to exchange our residence permits for others which denote settled status. We needed to collect information from our Accountant, Bank and take a Greek person with us. In the event, it all worked easily enough and our Greek friend smoothed the way for us with explanations. We just thought that we had had enough of bureaucracy for the time being when the Urology Specialist needed us to get a form signed at the Microbiology Clinic and then asked for all the reference numbers from passports, resident cards and health insurance books. Then the UK needed us to post back DWP forms to say that we were still alive, so we needed the Pharmacist to witness our signatures and queue up at the Post Office to send them back by registered post. However did we find time to go to work?

It is Carnival time and the beginning of Lent. I was surprised to see a young girl in Rethymnon with zombie make-up and a blood stains dripping from the side of her mouth! Not the harlequin colours, jolly coloured masks and fancy dress of past years. We were very shocked to open our front door after a loud banging while we were getting ready for bed last night. On the door step were two ghouls dressed entirely in black with face masks resembling 'the scream'. K completely freaked out and told them to leave in no uncertain terms and I had to remind him that it was Carnival time but in the past we have always gone to the carnival … it has never come to us before like trick or treating. I don't think the bods involved will ever come to our house again and we are a bit embarrassed that they may have been children of somebody we know. Oh dear! Sorry everybody!

Carnival Fancy dress shop

Today was the first fine Saturday for months and a good day to catch up with mounds of washing and housework which have been impossible to do while the storms were overhead. The vegetable van came for the first time since before Christmas and disgorged lovely greens, broccoli, beetroot and mushrooms for Lenten veggie fare. We are studying weather forecasts and can see another crop of rain tomorrow but after that the sunshine should prevail for a while. It will make the building work and mopping up operations much easier. The roads still show signs of stones and boulders which have been dislodged by the deluge but the hedgerows are carpets of yellow flowers looking wonderful when the sun is out.  Although all our flower pots are waterlogged and need to be emptied, the rainwater has brought many plants back to life and washed the house and car paintwork squeaky clean. It won't be long before the beaches will be cleared for the next tourist season of all the flotsam and jetsam. We have our work cut out!

Kalomina … the first-day-of-the-month greeting to wish everyone a happy March 2019!

WORST WINTER EVER

OK, it's official (in my book). This is the longest, nastiest, winter ever. We have had rain, more rain, freezing rain, power cut offs and regular soakings, colds and 'flu. And the bathroom roof leaks. Boo!

Mr Crozier had a nasty fall and damaged his ribs along with a badly cut leg. Having fallen when Ma Crozier was in town for the morning, he stayed on the floor until her return. Despite daily dressings, the cut did not heal and he ended up in hospital for a week on IV antibiotics and a minor clean up op. In case you don't know, families have to provide all the hands-on care in Greek hospitals. So that I was still doing all the daily dressings, washings, clothes changings and bed makings, but away from home in ghastly weather. So exhausting and a challenge to a mending ankle! Now home again, the rain keeps falling with thunder and lightning going on for hours and the router needs to be turned off at regular intervals inter-dispersed with lightning tripping out the power in between. We will soon be on to our third wood supply of the winter as the log burner is the only thing to stand between us and the elements without central heating and power supplies being so unreliable. ….... Any chance of help with winter fuel payments if you retire abroad?  No, not for us, although we paid for it along with everyone else. The prefecture of Chania declared a state of emergency as the storms were so bad.

Utterly, utterly ... had enough of this winter of discontent.

The backdrop to this is the need to get all sorts of documents that we never needed before to prepare for a possible hard Brexit. If the UK is no longer in the EU, none of our EU docs or UK docs will give sufficient security for us to be treated as we were before. Gov UK via the British Embassy, keep sending us emails to tell us of new information which are couched in 'government speak' and really difficult to sort out. Once you glean through the links and paragraphs, nothing seems any different from the last email. As a precaution, all our driving licences were surrendered and new Greek ones applied for at great cost. A trip to the Police Station to convert our existing residence permits to ones denoting settled status is 'strongly recommended'. Some Police Stations are welcoming and easy-going … but not ours. Our local Wild West Police Station is requiring all depth of jobsworth paper trails. We need five years of Accountant's certificates, house and land documents along with photos, passport copies, original permit and over 5 years of utility bills. We are all tearing about in between storm clouds and drenchings to comply with bureaucratic stuff. Our Accountant helped us with our documents and recommended taking a Greek person with us to act as a translator. We also realise that the IKA book, recently queued for and updated will necessitate another trip as Mr C's passport was renewed recently and the numbers will not add up. Greeks are frankly non-plussed by all this activity initiated by the UK, not Greek Government. Getting able bodied people backwards and forwards is irksome enough, but getting K up and down stairs to various offices is really difficult.  Joy it is not!

Half the filing cabinet to take with us ...

Such comings and goings to hospital with bags and supplies and the regular soakings resulted in the loss of my local bank card. I had moved so many bags, bowls, bandages and food backwards and forwards, I had no idea where it could be and turned every bag and basket upside down. So this resulted another queue at the Bank, a trip back to get an Accountant's certificate plus passport in order to cancel the lost card and get a new one. After lengthy queuing, the nice lady supplied me with a new card and just as I had signed various docs and packed all my papers away, she asked me for my mobile number. I reached into the phone pocket of my bag and just spotted an extra zip tucked away behind the flap – the little purse with my original bank card inside! Bother, bother, bother!

Perhaps this is a message about all the frenetic activity we are involved in at the moment. Nothing we can do or re-arrange is any better than what we have already. Just wasted, wasted effort for something so much worse for everyone!

B*!!*x to Brexit! Hopefully there will be an end to all this and life will settle down again.

We know that under the olive trees of our region are the yellow clovery flowers and anemones growing wild. We can't wait to get out of doors to enjoy them again.

Roll on Spring!

WORST CASE SCENARIO

It was with some regret that on Monday I surrendered my decades old clean UK driving licence to comply with local laws. I had hoped to keep my UK licence to use with an International Licence, but despite a visit to three post offices in England, whilst stuck with a broken ankle, I could not get to any of the ones dispensing licences.   So that was item one. Item two was medical cover for the next year which requires visits to the Accountant for a form and a second trip into town and a long queue at each place. Worried Brits in Europe are chasing their tails and trying not lose sleep about a situation which is entirely out of their control.

However, Ex-Pat life bordered on full scale panic mode this week as all our friends have been exchanging advice over swapping UK driving licences for Greek licences - with varying requirements according to your local town or village. Why? As the exchange renewal would no longer be automatic after a no-deal Brexit and none of us can face the ordeal of a Greek driving test or want to be stopped on the road with an invalid licence from a non-EU country, we were advised to act before March 29. We need to do our annual pilgrimage to the IKA Health Insurance Office to renew our books this week which would normally ensure health treatment for the next year. Now we do not know if and how long this cover will remain and how long we would survive here without health cover. This will certainly cease with no co-ordinated agreements and the situation is especially worrying as we all grow older and more vulnerable. In our case we are in the middle of cancer treatment and not sure how easy it would be to leave Greece so I am taking deep breaths and treading down the growing anxiety day by day.  Happily, the IKA Office renewed our books, so we are OK until next February.

The British Embassy keep emailing us complicated updates about contingency plans. It feels like Armageddon. We have been visiting dozens of offices about all these documents and permissions. We have been examining our residence permits to see if they are valid. The locals are frankly goggling at us wondering why we are renewing stuff that has not expired since the implications of Brexit mean nothing to them and they shrug when we say “Brexit”. Nobody I know here wanted it and few were given the option to vote. The local photographers are doing a roaring trade in all the passport photos needed for all these transactions. Photocopiers are working overtime on copies of passports and household bills to prove how long we have been here. We are spending hundreds of euros paying out for all these contingencies and not getting much sleep.  I have managed to have medicals and eye examinations also to back up the driving licence application.  It's all go!

Living as a UK pensioner in Greece after a Brexit with no deal will be hard for most and calamitous for many of us and I feel stressed at the waste of it all. The health care provision is the crunch point.  Without that cover which was automatic within the EU, many could not get private insurance and find themselves stranded with long term health care needs.  Trying to sell up would be extremely hard and other European buyers would certainly cash in on our self-induced fire sale wondering why the Brits took such a crazy decision.  We are hopeful that it won't come to that but we are praying for a deal to sort all this out.  

Otherwise ....

Our pensions, which have already been badly devalued by the fall in the value of the pound would not be given annual increases according to inflation, and we receive none of the benefits that UK pensioners receive anyway. We worked, paid our way for as long as any pensioners who remained in the UK. We pay our taxes in both countries, we are honest and hard working and did not lawfully settle in another country to live the life of Riley. Many of us had smallish pensions and thought that we could live more simply and less expensively as Europeans elsewhere in Europe. For the most part, our hosts have treated us well and welcomed us as good neighbours.  So, if the worst happens, there will be an awful lot of impoverished people landing at home to add to the woes of the National Health System and homelessness in the UK. What a self-induced mess! 

 I had an extraordinary conversation with a visiting UK Brexiteer who talked about "regaining our sovreignty" in one breath and then talked enthusiastically about the possible break up of the United Kingdom and saving money. I wondered what "sovreignty" actually meant to this person because it obviously meant something completely different to me. I asked what in particular from European law had impinged on their life. "Unelected representatives" (what about MEPs?) and some water restrictions in Wales were the only contributions to the debate. We were on completely opposite sides of a divide trying to argue that Black was White and vice versa. I had to stand back from the front line and try to pour oil on the troubled waters. There was no way that we were ever going to agree about anything. The pound has not devalued at all according to this family. What planet are they on? Our UK pension has decreased steadily as the exchange rate plummeted over the previous two years.

Apologies, dear reader that I am feeling so gutted by it all, and that this blog is no longer taken up in the dear little stone house in Crete and our life here. It could well be that the retirement dream is in danger. It would be hard to walk away from our little house and a last resort to contemplate leaving all our wonderful friends and neighbours here in Crete. It would be devastating to have it taken away from us by disenchanted Brits who wanted to make a protest and had been fed a whole raft of lies by the media. We feel as if we have been shafted by a totally disillusioned electorate who put the blame on the wrong people and ended up pushing the self-destruct button. 

Oh well, you can fool all the people half the time and half the people all the time ... but you cannot fool all the people all the time.  We will see what the history books make of this debacle in the fullness of time.  Here in Crete, we need some resolution to these contingencies;  we assume that the UK Prime Minister is doing the best she can but no one could blame us for wishing that the whole caboodle had never happened!  

Winter seems to have gone on for ever this year and we are in need of some fresh air and sunshine to blow all these cares and cobwebs away.  

Kalomina!

LIGHTING UP TIME

(imgur.com) Not my image, but a beautiful photograph from the
summit of Mount Psiloritis

We woke up this morning in complete darkness and a quick snap of the light switches changed nothing. As with the frequent storms of which we have had so many lately, the power has gone off and we have no way of knowing for how long it will be gone. Nine out of ten times, it is the red button on our electricity meter at fault but today it is the whole of our village. We discovered later that a telegraph pole feeding one town and at least three villages blew over in the wind and it took 12 hours to mend. The village cafeneon was full of people wanting to eat their breakfast!

Groping around the little house to light lamps and replenish candles – more to give some cheerfulness than light or heat and fiddling in semi-darkness to attach gas canisters and find camping kettles, we eventually had the promise of a warming cup of tea and then when the power did not come back after an hour or two, we made porridge and returned to bed to keep warm. K and I always pity the poor souls at the Electric Company who have to go out and fix things in this unremittingly cold, wet and stormy weather. The mountains and hills are snow covered and we are eternally grateful to our faithful log burner and our makeshift bathroom radiator which we discovered by accident. A dear friend bought a gift for us on her holiday visit to Crete of a terracotta lampshade This looked pretty but managed to block out most of the light generated by an economy light bulb and had been discarded. Eventually, I tried a few tea lights using it as a shade and realized how warm it got. We now buy votive candles and have them burning permanently under the shade in our small bathroom. Just by candle power, they give enough heat to take the chill off the room and make it cosier. I've bought several terracotta lamps since then to use as mini radiators! The conical shaped ones work the best. We are getting to be experts in the best candles, torches and kerosene lamps this winter.

Anyway, without light, power, telephone or internet … it is either back to bed or out and about in the car to get warmer and a good cause to stop and think about how much power we use every day almost without realising it. I find myself in a state of inertia, in semi darkness catching up with my blog with paper and pencil by candle light. There must be a message here somewhere! How refugees survive under canvas is more than sobering and makes me very thankful for four walls and a 99% effective roof.

Following the broken ankle, the dreaded “boot of doom” is OFF! It is a great relief not to be hobbling about with such a heavy passenger and I can get upstairs again now. I immediately fixed an appointment with the Physiotherapist for treatment which is hard work but in spite of a sore ankle and aching legs, it is getting loosened up and mending nicely. All we need is some dry weather for gentle walking; the Spring cannot come fast enough this year!  The blog will be so much more interesting when we can get out and about again.

We hear that a lot of Europe has been brought to a standstill by severe weather. Perhaps it is time to pause and have some quiet time for some “thoughts and prayers” about peace in the world, the UK Parliament in its deliberations and everyone we love.

Happy New Year! Chronia Polla!

CROZIERS AND CRUTCHES

Morning sunshine

What a lot of time has passed since the last blog in the series. The cooler weather did come at last and with it the hard work of changing over clothing, washing blankets, and all the roofs to paint, the trees to pollard and garden to trim so that the cuttings can be taken away. The log pile has to be put in place and various brokering undertaken for other neighbours and friends who wanted logs for their fireplaces.

We had a few complaints about not being in touch, but we have had our hands full with hospital scans, nasty injections and other miscellaneous aspects of getting on a bit. Also a few visitors over the summer and autumn.

Trauma Teddies (I have a simple pattern, if you are interested in
having a go!}

The refugee crisis in Greece continues and the weather was getting much colder, so there was a call for help to knit lots of baby woollies which exercised the knitters and crocheters of our group … and just in the midst of that our most expert knitter had to rush back to the UK after hospital tests had detected cancer.

Mrs Crozier took a short pre-Christmas trip to London recently and, having a very early flight opted to stay at an airport hotel in Heraklion to be almost next to the check in desk for the morning. Unfortunately, after dropping off her luggage she took a little walk down to the nearest coffee shop and had a nasty fall on the lethal Cretan pavements injuring her ankle. Knowing that going to A & E in Heraklion was likely to take all night, she did her best with frozen peas, bandages, strapping and Ibuprofen. Also knowing that Greek airlines give the best passenger assistance in the world, called the airline and was wheelchaired through the airports in Crete and in Athens. If passenger assistance was an Olympic sport, Greece would win gold medals every time. Those guys manoeuvre two wheelchairs at a time across Athens Airport from Domestic flights to International and from the gate they use trucks with elevator platforms which gets wheelchairs right to the front door of the plane.

Wheelchair assistance broke down at Gatwick when waiting until all the passengers had left the plane, no one arrived to meet the patient. A well meaning flight assistant used a large pushchair to move Mrs Crozier off the plane and down a corridor to be parked at the bottom of a staircase, outside a lift. And there she stayed, very very cold and alone for quite some time. Shouting “Hello is anyone there?” a few times, and getting more and more desperate as no one was around and even with a mobile where was no one to make contact with except family on the wrong side of passport control. After a very long wait, desperation meant that by turning sideways in the pushchair to hold the brake off and scooting crablike with the good leg, Mrs C made it into the lift and tried to decide which floor to go to. The door opened into one of those long corridors with a walkalator halfway along and Mrs C paddled along the deserted area beside the moving walkway wondering where everyone was. After a long period of scooting, stopping, resting and scooting some more, she came to a hallway at the far end where the passengers from another flight were bursting towards baggage control. By some miracle, one of the electric carts came round the corner with two people in the front and waving her arms, Mrs C asked for help. I guess the predictable jobsworth UK response came back from the driver, “Oh I can't help you, I'm on my training”. (What are you training for if not to help people?) but the accompanying Trainer did (reluctantly) get on her walkie talkie to summon help. Eventually a puzzled person wearing a beanie hat appeared saying that he had been to meet the Norwegian flight but no one had showed up. I noticed that the Norwegian plane was in the next bay down to the Aegean plane … and think there may have been a walkie-talkie mix up. Anyway, I was at long last packed on board the swishing buggy and swept through baggage claim and passport control towards Leo who was beginning to give me up for completely lost.

At A & E the next day, the Xrays showed that the ankle had a break and the lovely Doctor took a photo of the Xrays on the screen to take home on the Ipad and prescribed a large, heavy, black boot covered in velcro strapping. It rather put paid to any ideas Ma Crozier had about achieving much in the UK or Christmas shopping but the Christmas cards got written and posted and she made it to the Stone Revellers Pantomime, which was a great evening after all the hassle. So that was an improvement on last year, when the Christmas cards took two months to arrive and she missed the Panto altogether. She arrived back to Crete a couple of days ago with instructions to get everything checked by an Orthopaedic doctor asap. So Mr and Mrs Crozier have had their wings well and truly clipped with neither of us able to drive for the next few weeks. Watching the pair of us hobble down the street with sticks and crutches is almost comical unless you're doing it! Negotiating our rustic stairs with the boot is a no-no!

Sadly, we won't be able to comment on what is happening much this festive season as we will be at home, indoors most of the time...I expect you, like us, have watched a lot of TV coverage about Brexit and are still none the wiser! We seem to have daily doses of it for two years and nothing gets any better, only worse. What an unholy mess! PS I visited three Post Offices by taxi in the UK to get forms for an International Driving Licence in case my current UK licence becomes invalid in Greece. Not one of these quite large post offices could supply an application form. This is only one of the problems we are encountering as UK subjects in Europe. The complications could be ghastly … or not. Only time will tell and I'll worry about it when driving becomes an option again!

However, we can wish everybody a very blessed Christmas and happy New Year from wet and windy Crete. Kala Christouyenna!

SLEEPLESS NIGHTS

View from the roof top

Saturday morning has come around again. It is the time of the week for showing our best face to the world at large and I busied myself with brooms, brushes, mops and buckets to make sure that our front door step was clean and respectable enough to show to the local neighbourhood. The houses of the village are quite rustic and in our corner of the village look exactly as houses would have looked in biblical times. Flat roofs, whitewashed, very small windows, very thick walls. However, the cleanliness of the front door steps cannot be neglected. We have our pride!

The old part of the village

The leaves are dropping fast now from the mulberry tree which shades our porch and I had barely finished sweeping up the two or three piles of leaves and hosing away the dust from the front path when more were dropping minute by minute to keep me hard at it. The Cretan winds seem to disperse masses of dust and debris in every nook and cranny, behind flower pots and under gratings and it takes a fair while to gather it all up. As I turn on the hose to wash rivulets of dust away down the hill, I hear Angeliki at the Kafeneon with her brooms and buckets and again another neighbour sets too in our effort to clean our little areas … so all of us - Mrs Mops - are hard at it … a bit like a Mexican wave of water power.

The swallows who nested in various spots down the street seem to have left; this means that we have no protection against flying insects and mosquitoes now except for citronella candles and mosquito coils. Our evening sorties to water the garden always gift us with a fresh crop of midge bites! Ants are still on the prowl and we have been hard put to keep them outside the house this year. However, we have banished any explorers we find in the kitchen or bathroom, squeezed clouds of ant power into likely trails and hope that we can keep the numbers down, come the winter season.

Bali

Now that schools are back, the tourists have changed appearance and there are more older and retired people coming to holiday instead of the families of the high season. It is slightly, but only slightly less busy in the local resort, but the roads have been really clogged this year with more cars and many more lorries bringing supplies for the hoards. Trucks and Coaches block the village on a daily basis. We are guessing that the local business have had a spectacularly good season. We know that they all need the business, but we have been getting increasingly crabby as the days move on. Driving, parking the car and trying to get out and about has been no fun at all. For some obscure reason, our favourite beach lost its sunbed and umbrella licence this year, so now there are sunbeds to be borrowed on the beach and tourists are buying their own umbrellas. The beach has a much more free and easy appearance without the regimented rows of beds and it makes getting into the water much easier .. so we feel for the poor lady who paid for the licence and then lost the business so early in the season. Hopefully she got her money back, but we have our doubts. On balance, we like the beach better now. Rumour has it that another jealous business owner stitched her up, but everyone is characteristically tight lipped about it.

Panormo

Sleep is hard to come by in this heatwave summer and the summer weekend weddings have tried my patience. K and I have always enjoyed cheerful and upbeat Greek music, but the traditional Cretan songs are long, mournful, repetitive and, to be honest, torture! The heat, the flies, the native drums, the Greek weddings …..!

Grape harvest earlier in the year

Crete has still managed to produce wonderful food, in spite of it all. Large quantities of wonderful fruit and vegetables are around and so I began my autumn chutney making this week. I usually wait until the weather is cooler, but needed to use the produce while it was in good shape and stood in blistering heat stirring the bubbling brew and bottling up yesterday. K will approve as he now has a stock to last him through the coming year.

I hope that this has not been too much of a moan about the Summer heat, but we are over it now and waiting for some Autumn coolth, a few showers, the lovely smell of damp earth and a bit more energy in the mornings!

Sto kallo! Go well!

HORRIBLE HEAT WAVES

We wonder if many of our Cretan village neighbours actually know where New Zealand is on the globe but when family make the enormous journey to spend time in Crete, everything else is put on hold for the duration because the time is so precious. We know it will be a year or two before we get to catch up again, so many apologies for the lack of blog. Our oldest daughter, husband and three children have been with us for 10 days and it has been fabulous spending time with them.

You will know that it has been a very difficult time for Greece (and many other parts of the world) with record temperatures and bad fires in many places. The Monday when forest fires broke out in Attika, our little house, renowned for being cool in the heat of summer, came to the boil. The floor boards were hot, the carpets were hot, the blinds were down, we had trays of water on the window sills to try and create some coolth and sleep was almost impossible. We hosed down the walls and paths outside the house as well as the garden and stayed under cover as much as possible. There were one or two fires in Crete also, but the helicopters with buckets soon put them out. We can report that some days have been like a blast furnace. We are devastated that so many lives were lost over this period. The local council set up a collection point to send emergency supplies over to the mainland and I took a car load of food, water and basic needs to a little school in Perama who were organising one of the collections. It would be good to have a few civil defence contingency plans in place that we could read up on in case of fire, flood, earthquake, tsunami and so on! In the meantime, we are just doing our best job in keeping outer walls of the house well watered and the surrounding streets dampened down.  

Holidaying with the family was a little restricted and they were happiest in the hotel swimming pool or in the warm sea. We had a few issues with the hotel they had booked, which seemed ridiculously expensive and had banked the entire holiday cost four months in advance of their stay. But when we had first hand experience of the hotel we could see why. Our family would have left before the end if they could have done and found somewhere different but the hostelries are all fully booked. Panormo has been very nearly impassable with so many cars and people staying there. They had to deal with conjunctivitis and ear infections from the swimming pool during their stay;  an unidentified smell coming from the air conditioning vent which could  not be halted, finished off by a horrid journey home with four out of the five of them having sickness and diarrhoea on one or all of the legs home - Athens, Istanbul, Hong Kong and Auckland. The children were wonderful though and trekked with their cases around Europe like real troopers. The difference in temperature will hit them now in Auckland as it is a mere 7 C but I am sure they will be glad to sleep at night!  We were so exhausted on Friday after the trek to the airport that we missed the lunar eclipse completely, but friends achieved really good photos of the red moon in the night sky.  Early this morning here we were woken by a heavy shower of rain and it was so welcome! We have struggled to keep any of our garden pots going amongst so much desiccation!

Over the years we have been here, it seems that the sleepy old village has gradually come back to life and many more people and new buildings are re-energising it.  So we all had a Watermelon Festival a few weeks back and it was an amazing evening organised by the youngsters of the village with barbecue food, music, dancing and tables for 550 people, blocking off the village square! A miracle of organisation which seemed to use boat loads of plastic in the form of bags, plates and cups but I did not actually see any water melon … we may have left too early.  We will keep plugging away at the theme of saving the planet!

Summer Saturday nights have continued to rob us of sleep due to the Cretan weddings which, at full volume from one side of a hill megaphoning the lyra music from midnight until six am on a regular basis. I have now learned which shutters to close and which ear plugs and YouTube meditation music works best to cancel out the hullabaloo! Cretan music is an acquired taste and lovely,  so long as you are in control of hearing it! All night drunken celebrations which deprive you of sleep are the end!!

The largest fruit salad ever!

Waiting for Ice-Cream

I am travelling back to the UK for a week or two, but I hope to have more interesting reports once life is back to normal again! For the time being, I have spent days looking for my pack-away rain jacket, which has completely vanished, just as I will be needing to use it.

Happy Holidays!