Too much cycling and the job list just gets longer. . .

2009 has got off to a pretty good start out here, the weather has been good and we have managed to get out on the bikes a bit. So the job list has suffered and just continues to get longer. From the things we have to do before we come home list we have insulated 1 bedroom are on with the second, painted half of the barrier posts not done any mortaring or sorted the knackered door. We have knocked a hole in the apotheki (outbuilding)wall so we can get to it from the garden instead of going round the front and down the lane. We have also been spreading the rubble from the internal walls around the ground where we park the car as it was getting a bit soggy.

The door saga continues as PVC doors out here are extortionate and it may well be that we bring one out here from the UK as there is a lot of difference in price. That will be an interesting sight - a six door car!!

I've been chatting a bit with a guy who has a workshop at the back of us, he keeps his olive oil in it. He also has a veg plot in there, chickens and some super orange trees. He gave us a litre of olive oil at the weekend that he had just pressed the day before. Then we got a carrier full of home grown caulis and the best fresh oranges. All this is too much for Mrs D who is frantically looking on-line for cauli and cabbage recipes as we also had some cabbages a couple of weeks ago. Anyway the upshot of all this banter and receiving of fresh produce is that I have landed myself a job helping the guy - Spiros for a change - to move some bags of olives from his olive grove to the processing factory . ..watch this space well see how it goes.

Today has been a beatiful day so very little chore undertaking was done (a little graffting was done after 4pm when the sun started to go down.) We have to admit to sitting in the sun with a book and a drink and feet up. What a pair of dossers. The forecast for the next few days is wet and windy so we will be catching up on the chores. I hope to have the second bedroom insulation finished this week.

This isn't very exciting to you but last week we received our first letter from the UK!!!! It made a change to have a letter instead of a bill in the mailbox. Such excitement just shows what quiet lives we lead out here, an excuse for needing to get out more I think.

Watching the weather in the UK looks like you guys have had a bit of a rough time with the old cold and snow. We can see the snow on the Albanian mountains from here and we hope it stays up there it's OK like it is down here thank you very much!!

Well it nearly movie time on Greek TV, there are plenty of English speaking movies to watch with Greek subtitles, you get used to the subtitles.

So its away to get the wood burner cracking before the movie comes on - yes it does get cool here on a night. (We also now have a new fancy Italian axe for chopping wood - we know how to live you know.)

Will blog again soon.

Mr D

Happy New Year!!!!!

Well it's 2009!! Hope you all had a good Christmas and New Year. We have had family over for the break and as our first guests out here it was good fun too.

We had Christmas eve with the Brits in a local bar and New Years eve with the Greeks in a local restaurant. It was a good night we had the usual countdown and then we were all given a bottle of fizz or two per table and we all counted down again and had a synchronised cork poppin!!! A lovely cake then appeared iced in 2009 and it was shared amongst us all.

We left about 1.40 am and came home to see the UK New Year come in on the news on the internet, isn't technology wonderful. We then had another New Year toast and finally got to bed around 3.30am.

We had a rest whilst our guests were here but they left us last Friday and renovation started again on Monday 5th January!!! Oh it is my mums birthday today so happy birthday to you Buffalo if you are reading!!

Well lets hope 2009 is a good year and less eventful than 2008 was for us. Although with the state of the economy, currencies and labour markets it's not got off to the best of starts. Anyway enough doom and gloom.

We've had the shortest day its about 3 minutes a day extra day light now up 'til June. I have to say out here we are 2 hours behind the UK and the daylight saving mess that happens in the UK does not happen here and it is better. It's light just after 8am and dark just after 6pm it's loads better. (It's also a few degrees warmer too - sorry.)

We have a list of chores to do before we ferry to Venice on the 17th March. The back door is knackered and needs replacing - we opened it when we got here and it took us an hour to close and lock it again!! It is like paper at the bottom, well rotten. We have a barrier to install across the drive to stop the Greeks abandoning another car in our garden - we had an old VW golf in it when we arrived. There don't appear to be any scrapyards out here and there is a sea of abandoned cars all over the place. Anyway, we have the posts and the barrier from a local welder - Stokatis - it was fun getting the spec right - (his English was marginally better than my Greek but we got there.) There is a bit of mortaring to do on the outside walls of the apotheki (outbuilding) to stop it from falling down. It really needs re-roofing but that will be a long way down the job list. The first job is to insulate one of the external walls in the middle bedroom. It gets cold on a night and the construction of the building means it retains the cold in winter and the heat in summer so we are attempting to create an insulating barrier which will hopefully give the opposite effect, we will see . . . .

Well it's sign off time now and I will try get back to the old weekly rambles in a few days time.

Good health and prosperity to y'all for 2009!!!!

"D"