A stolen hour

My friends have offered to get our bread so I have an hour spare and thought I would put it to good use and update the diary. I should really help Ashley who as usual is busy this time varnishing doors, but he says he will manage. We are varnishing because after watching our painter, who incidentally made a very good job of painting the walls and is an extremely nice guy, we realised best we do it ourselves. Enough said.

We set off for Kalamata one morning and turning out at the top of our track we noticed there were three men and a neighbour of ours digging in the road. Nothing strange with that here in Greece, probably a new water main or similar being connected. One man raised his pickaxe and struck……………… a water main, water spurting everywhere. Never mind, off to Kalamata we continued. On our return, you guessed it - we had no water! We checked with some friends who live close by to see if they had water, yes they were fine and suggested that we check our mains tap to see if it had been turned off. It had! We turned it back on and hay presto it was our pipe that had been broken and the men had obviously done no more than turn off our water supply and leave. To cut a long story short, after two days of walking the length of the track, turning water off and on when needed Vagelis finally fixed it for us by putting in a joint.

The telephone was finally connected yesterday 15th, five weeks after it was promised, even though we paid our 1,010 euros connection charge. (It cost this much because we are further than the free 250 meters apparently). Of course the first thing we wanted to do was download emails, it seems an age since we have been on line. I must admit even I was having signs of withdrawal and couldn’t wait to get back in touch with the world.

There seem to be numerous jobs left to be finished on the house, the biggest, or maybe the worst, is the fireplace, which still has to be built. I think that even Vagelis is a little concerned about the mess and how I will cope with this one as he has suggested that maybe I should go away for a week. Fat chance, he will just have to be a man and face the wrath of Lainie.

We are getting used to living on a building site now and have almost become impervious to the dust, which we now accept as being an integral part of our lives. However, what I still am finding hard to get to grips with are men coming in and out of my HOME carrying cement. We have a slight conflict of opinion here, we consider this to be our home and as such should be respected, the men however seem to still regard this as a building site. Isn’t life grand!

The cats have settled in nicely, after a few initial hiccups, which are still apparent on Ashley hands and arms, and seem very happy in their new environment. So much so we hardly see them except for meal times, they eat and then disappear again. We wouldn’t mind this so much if the amount they eat these days hadn’t at least trebled.