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"

Merry Xmas from Corfu . . ..

Life on Corfu - not Mars!!!!

We have been out here six weeks today (seems like a lot longer) and we have officially owned the place a month on Saturday - could be a cause for a celebratory drink!! Well so far we have moved the kitchen wall cupboard, insulated the roof space, knocked through the pantry wall, assembled a flat pack wardrobe for me, moved bedrooms twice, made a big hole in the kitchen to sitting room wall, made some shelves for the TV and DVD player. Lynn has painted the sitting room, bathroom, toilet, swept and mopped on the hour every hour and made inroads into the vast expanse of garden which included the hacking down of "the old bamboo" thank you Dick Van Dyke and trimming back of the Olive tree. Our pace I have to say has probably been a bit quicker than local tradition would be.

As I pointed out earlier everything is done when everyone is ready and usually not in a great rush. The lawyers took their time, the 2 couches we ordered from Athens took their time and we had to wait nearly 2hrs in the shop for them to arrive from the ferry port 15 minutes away. Our local Greek delivery man - not Spiros for a change - was very patient and just sat drinking coffee.

Our village is quiet and away from the busy bits - well I say busy but there is not much happening in them at the moment it would be busy during tourist season. We have been for coffees with some neighbours and we attempt to speak to everyone else in the village and they all either wave or speak. We have a workshop to the side of us where a guy keeps his 4 wheel drive and usually turns up on a weekend to sort his olive oil out. we don't see much of him other than that. His mother on law lives at the bottom of the hill down from the villa and she trolls up and down six or more times a day to tend the chickens or get some wood for her fire. Have you ever watched chickens? (doubt it, much better things to do with your time) they are quite amusing scratting and pecking around in the compound. We can see and hear them when we sit on the rear balcony with a brew, we haven't made an occupation out of it!!!

There is a local bread man who comes everyday and parks outside the villa selling fresh bread and there is a mobile veg van, carpet/rug van who park at the bottom all selling their wares.

Apart from the girl across at the back who is from Glasgow we are the only Brits in the village. People leave keys in doors, in cars and bikes and nobody bothers anyone - long may it stay that way!!

Then there is the Sunday morning ritual, no no no not that, it is the gentle sound of gunshot that awakens you just after 8 on a Sunday morning. The Corfiot males like to go "hunting" and all you hear on Sunday is the sound of gunfire echoing around the groves as they shoot anything that moves. There isn't much 4 legged wildlife left to shoot at so the birds have a rough time trying to avoid the "hunters." They have portable kennels attached to the back off their four wheel drives to house the hounds on the journey to and from the hunt. So no lie in on a Sunday!!

There is quite a big Brit population in and around Sidari and there are one or two of the bars on the front there open all year round if you want a "Brit fix" they are OK, friendly enough and a wonderful source of where to get things and get jobs done!! They also serve draught Mythos which is OK.

There is a supermarket about 1km away and a bar next to it, in fact most of the shops have bars with them and they are all usually busy with Greek guys drinking Greek coffee and water putting the world to rights. We frequent a Greek cafe bar in Acharavi and there is also a nice Greek restaurant there where they do spit roasts and splendid Greek salads!!

The weather is variable at the moment, it was good in November but we seem to be going through an unsettled patch with winds and showers - some quite stormy. Having said that it is not cold like the UK. The days are warm and we usually see some sunshine ever day at some point. We are not complaining!!

The cycling has slowed a bit apart from the odd trip to the shops, as we have family coming out here this Sunday and a week on Monday so we are trying to get the place a little orderly for them. We will carry on with a few jobs next week but we will then be on holiday until they go after that.

We are getting used to shopping now, we know the wood yard guys, the local DIY shop and there is a good one in Corfu we use - German owned we think. We have a big shop for "heavies" (booze and water, I jest) and we have a good supermarket locally which is very well stocked.

Well today Lynn has been painting the sitting room - second coat, and varnishing the new door frame. I have been to Corfu town shopping and then cutting olive wood logs with my new axe and messing with the washer trying to get it a permanent home to stop the wheeling to the bathroom on washday scenario we have!!

It is getting near beer time now so I will sign off and see how my make shift washer waste extension has done so it is "Kalespera."

Let's start at the top!!

Well on to the famous roof job!! There was (past tense - now a new larger hole in the hall) in the bathroom the smallest of holes to get through into the roof space. On venturing through not knowing what I would find in the way of bugs and crawlies never mind roof problems.

To my surprise no bugs or crawlies, a relatively new felted roof - the construction of which amazes me and they left the old chimney up and built the new roof over it see picture. You could however see the light from below coming through the olive wood ceiling!! What to do - the only thing to do was to lag it out.No problem I hear you say we do this in England all the time however we are are in bungalow type building with 12o square metres of lagging to buy and fit.

Buying and fitting no problem, it was the clean up job first of olive leaves, dust, sand, beer tins (empty sadly) and other rubbish the roofers had left behind. It took two days to sweep it all out - my turn to do some sweeping - Mrs Sweep was emptying buckets of filth for me. Once swept you could see even more light coming up through the boards. Off to the builders yard for some rock wool, when I told them I would need at least 12 bales as that's how it comes out here he threw 1 bale down (10 strips to a bale) and gave me two strips from another bale - in his mind 12 strips. I said no 12 packs - he nearly fell off his roof - in that car he asked?? Any way I took two went home unloaded and went back for another 2.

Ever worked with fibreglass?? Lovely stuff it gets everywhere, no itch too small and it goes on for days. A further two days was spent grovelling about in tight corners, over beams, banging my head and generally being too hot.

12 bales later, lots of swearing, sweating, showering and to great guffaws of the guys at the builders yard when I kept going back for more it was all done!

Not a job I want to have to do again but you can certainly see - dust wise - and feel the difference.

Mrs sweep was getting well hacked off with continual sweeping as I grovelled about in the roof space and pushed more filth down through the cracks and I was well hacked off with banging my head and knees on beams and joists - which incidentally are not uniformly apart like they are in the UK just as and where so the rock wool does not always fit between them so I had to cut everyone to size.

Well we now have cosy evenings and the occasional shower of dust as things continue to settle above.

We can now get back to planned jobs but we are convinced there will be more surprises along the the way.

A little more on life on Corfu next time - keep on blogging. . . . .

The Greek way. . . . .

Back again for another episode. I forgot to mention our banking experience on a trip to Corfu town with Steve the estate agent. We were heading into town to see the both lawyers and the notary so they could tell us first hand what was going on. We were also going to the bank with Steve to sign some papers for our account. Our lawyer had our bank book as she opened the account for us and she was away and we could not get hold of it. We signed up but we needed some cash and Steve asked if we could have some cash and explained that Chryssa had the bank book. To our amazement they said "as it's you Steve. how much would you like" and asked to see our passports!! We can't imagine that happening in Barclays down the high street.

Well the place is now ours and we have a shed load of things to do. Oh, by the way we have a washer in our kitchen and when we tried to use it for the first time we found it that it was not plumbed in!! In fact it had never been used the transit tape was still on it from when it was shipped over from the UK. What to do, well we found a tap under the sink in the bathroom and they also have plug sockets in bathrooms out here, not the safest of ideas but when needs must. In order to wash we wheel the washer to the bathroom, connect up to the tap for water and put the waste pipe in the sink - makes washing day an adventure!!

In an attempt to make life easier we decided to knock a door through the pantry wall because as a pantry or cupboard it was useless. The plan being to knock a door through then put the washer at one end and plumb it via the bathroom and also put the fridge in there as there is another door way we want to knock through into the sitting/dining room. The pantry door was successfully knocked through and the next job is to paint it prior to fitting the washer and fridge in there.

Oh no we have yet another problem . . . . . the ceilings in the house are of traditional olive wood and look very nice too. However, this flimsy wood is all there is between us and the rafters so any heat generated through the day is lost straight through the ceiling, that plus the fact all the mess and debris the guys left when they put the new roof on constantly comes down through the cracks in the lovely olive wood ceiling. Well not only is this a waste of energy, the constant mess coming down is driving Mrs Mop to distraction!! More on the loft saga next time and believe me it is a sage as it has put all other jobs including the washer move on hold until completion. Well sign off time now. more later Mr Mop . . . . .

Oh no, what next . . . .

To continue the saga, Steve left us and within ten minutes we had no water. So a quick call by Steve to the vendors who were in the UK and we found the elusive stop valve and all was well. Not a real problem Houston I hear you say, no the real problem was that the deal had not gone through and the house was not ours yet!!

The contract signing was supposed to be happening whilst we were at sea on the way down, in fact it had been happening for the previous few weeks but for varying Greek issues it had not. This time however it was the fault of the vendors and some paperwork which they had not submitted.

This went on for two weeks, its tomorrow, its tomorrow whilst we lived in the place. We actually went to the signing on Thursday 13th November. It was in a Greek notary's office in Corfu town. At one point there was two Greek lawyers, a Greek notary, the receptionist, the agent Steve and myself all stood round a table looking at the topographics - deeds as we know them. It took over three hours to sign the contracts after we first had it read out to us in English. It was quite a stressful day but at the end of it we finally owned the place. Funnily enough, most of the money was handed over in cash - cheques are not so good over here.

Well you can imagine the relief for us as we could now actually get on and do something with the place where as before we were in effect living in someone else's house and could do nothing, not a pleasant experience but all sorted eventually.

Contracts now signed, the place is ours more, fun and games later getting to grips with the place and the shops . . .