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Introduction
Well, we are into December. Christmas is looming and all of our preparations are well under way. Cards have been sent and presents either ordered or dispatched. I would like to claim some credit for such efficiency but it would be a lie! Tricia has been slaving over a hot keyboard for weeks. I only have one present to arrange personally - Tricia's! True to form I haven't a clue what to get her at the time of writing this. With a little over three weeks to go, I am beginning to panic!
The weather will almost certainly deteriorate as the month wears on. By the time Christmas is here, we will be needing all the extra warmth provided by over-eating and copious whiskies and brandies!
It is, of course, a time when friends and family are in all of our minds. When one moves to a foreign country, your mind tends to be concentrated. I hope that we manage to speak to many of you over the holiday period. If we can't get in touch with everybody, it will not be through lack of trying. Of course, we will be delighted to receive phone calls! Despite the vagaries of the Greek phone system, it works far more often than it doesn't!
I am going to leave the introduction at this point and get started on with the newsletter.
Enjoy!
December 2009
As last month ended with us having enjoyed quite nice weather, this month has started with foul weather. Tuesday, 1st December started wet and became torrential as the day progressed. The rain was accompanied with extensive thunder and lightning which of course meant power outages - lots of them!
Whilst Tricia was sweating in the kitchen making this year's batch of mincemeat, I was slaving away trying to complete November's newsletter. Completing it wasn't an issue for once. Uploading it was! I lost count of the number of power outages which caused absolute mayhem. They were so frequent that I was quite concerned about leaving the computers on but decided to place my faith in the uninterruptible power supply, power filters and phone line filters. It was nearly midnight before I managed to inform the world that we had succeeded! Fortunately, Tricia's mincemeat came through unscathed.
The rain was very heavy but thankfully, the immediate effect to us was nothing more than an irritation. The same can't be said for the inhabitants of Cumbria last month. Thoughts of the images of floods running through main roads and washed away bridges and resulting loss of life, will remain with us for a long time.
Wednesday, 2nd December started in much the same way as the previous day. The storms had abated although they had kept Tricia and I awake for much of the night. Unfortunately, the rain didn't let up.
The highlight of the day was being invited to supper with Dave and Alex. Lancashire hotpot made by Dave was the main course followed by a crumble. Joy! What a great evening. Dave's cooking skills put mine to shame! What a late night!
The weather improved on Thursday, 3rd December although it was damp. Needless to say that after our very late night, we weren't in a hurry to get up!
I had to go into Acharavi and whilst there, I stopped off to check out Christmas lights in what we laughingly call the 'Euro shop'. I can't recall ever seeing anything for under a euro in years! Still, they do sell the best selection of Christmas lights around. I came away with a box of white lights, working on the theory that you can never have too many Christmas lights!
I stopped off in Peritheia to visit the postman and came away with three parcels and a couple of Christmas cards. That makes a total of three cards to date. I think that it was significant that our first Christmas card was received from our old friends Sid and Shirley. They live in New Zealand and clearly understand the need to post mail early for foreign climes!
I called in on Darryl and Paula's butcher's shop to see how the work was coming on. There is a serious chance that they could be open in time for Christmas! Work is progressing!
This was all very thirsty work and so I gave in to the urge for coffee with Spiros Gelati! It's always a good place to call in for a chat! It was soon time to venture home for lunch!
Tricia and I made the fatal mistake of getting too comfortable after lunch. Our late night the night before finally took its toll!
The weather was quite nice for the next few days. Tricia slaved away in the kitchen baking in preparation for Christmas and generally filling our freezers with all sorts of goodies. I think that we could probably feed most of the village if we had to! (Thinks ... I do hope that there is room for things like turkey ... gammon ... !)
Sunday 6th December was a pleasantly sunny day even if it was a little cool. We had arranged to meet Alan and Pauline for lunch at Zephyros Taverna. It was surprisingly quiet there. I say surprising because it was the name day for Nikolas and being one of the more important name days, we expected a lot more people to be out celebrating. We can guarantee that the 12th December will be busy as it is the name day for all the Spiros's on the island and especially as St Spiridon is the island's patron saint.
Alan and Pauline hadn't been to Zephyros before and being unfamiliar with its location, managed to miss the turning. Thank God for mobile phones! The meal was simple but tasty and reasonably priced as always. It was a very pleasant afternoon.
I must confess that I have been spending a lot of my time somewhat self-indulgently whilst Tricia has been baking. In my defence, I will say that she generally prefers me out of the way and I am always on hand to charge off to get her supplies at the drop of a hat! So what, you might ask, have I been getting so engrossed in?
I fear that this may be a bit boring and will do nothing to enhance my reputation of being something of a boring old geek! The truth is that I want to revamp one of our websites and maybe even www.loutses.com as well. I also have an idea for another site in support of open source software and the Free Software Foundation.
I have pretty much drifted away from the Microsoft fold and tend to use the Linux operating system almost exclusively. My reasons are many and I won't bore you all here. Let's just say that Linux is reliable and seems less prone to fall over. (Don't you just love those 'Blue Screens of Death' which regularly feature under Windows and its variants?) Linux is community maintained and, oh yes, it's free!
There are a few areas where the availability of 'heavyweight' applications seem to be lacking under the Linux platform and so occasionally I have to resort to Microsoft applications. For example, there is little by way of web development software that runs natively under Linux that comes vaguely close to what is available under Microsoft. I am perfectly willing to be told that I am wrong but believe me, I have checked out all of the offerings that I can find. This leads me to my current bout of lethargy and general self indulgence!
There are a number of 'Content Management Systems' that are open source software. I have previously mentioned 'Wordpress'. I am now looking at 'Drupal' which I think may be more suited to my needs. The downside is that there is something of a learning curve and it requires features that are not available under the current packages that we have with our Internet Service Provider. As a result, I have been researching other providers. It seems that I will need to do a balancing act between cost, services offered and the amount of drive space and bandwidth that we can anticipate. I think that I have found an alternative ISP and am in the process of testing out their services. Watch this space.
I have only chosen to mention how I have been spending my time for a couple of reasons. Firstly I don't just sit around doing nothing. I sit around doing something! Secondly, Tricia doesn't do all the work around here ... just most of it!
Enough of this digression!
On Wednesday, 9th December, I was out replenishing Tricia's store cupboard when I received a phone call from TBW. That must make it two times that she has actually taken the trouble to call me this year! She wanted to meet me the next day to sign a paper. Unsurprisingly, she could not explain the purpose. She promised to call me the next day when she would be in Acharavi. I can't help feeling that we are about to be let down ... yet again!
Thursday, 10th December started off very cold by our standards for the time of year. It was somewhere around 7°C and very grey. Suffice to say, Sofia didn't disappoint. By about 11am, I hadn't heard from her and so I telephoned her. Things were put off for a further day.
In the evening, Tricia and I went for supper with Dave and Alex at Sarah's house. Sarah had cooked a beautiful dinner of which the Aberdeen Angus fillet was probably the highlight. After a leisurely meal we settled down to that most British of pastimes, a board game. The game of choice was 'Risk'. I say game of choice with some reservation as Tricia and I had never played it! For those of you have never played it, I will summarise the object of the game.
Essentially, each player has armies which are deployed all over a map of the world. (Topical, eh?) Each player is given objectives relating to continents to be captured or other armies to defeat. Battles are fought and are decided on the roll of a number of dice. After some fiercely fought battles, Tricia won. The others expressed surprise at someone who had never played before, winning. I kept quiet and didn't say a word about how ruthless she can be! (Just kidding!) I thought it appropriate that "We are the champions" by 'Queen' had just finished on the CD player!
We eventually arrived home at about 3.30am to find that one of our three phases of the electricity supply had failed whilst we were out. It affected our kitchen and meant that we had no cooker or fridge working there, nor could we boil a kettle in there. The fridge / freezer in the utility room wasn't working although the chest freezer was. I hastily ran an extension lead to the fridge / freezer whilst Tricia transferred the contents of the kitchen fridge into the fridge / freezer. It was not what we wanted to do at that time of the morning!
We climbed into bed at about 4am. Our rest was short lived as Bella woke us at 7am, barking at something imaginary! The power was still not restored and in the end didn't get fixed until 7.30pm on the 11th December. At least the weather was bright and sunny but again, it was very cold first thing.
Oh yes! Sofia failed to appear but did fax a form for me to sign.
Saturday, 12th December started off cold and damp. It was also a public holiday in Greece and in particular, Corfu. It is the day when the miracles performed by St Spiridon are commemorated and as I have previously mentioned he is the patron Saint of Corfu. Hence, there are celebratory marches in Corfu Town and all those people called Spiros generally have a good time! Unless one is going for the celebrations, It is a good day to avoid Corfu Town.
Tricia and I decided to go out for dinner to Apnoea Taverna that night. We were welcomed like long lost friends by Yiannis and Theo. It wasn't busy but they had a blazing log fire. Without wishing to sound too gushing, I must admit that it was very cozy. There wasn't a menu in sight but Theo reeled off all of the fresh food that they had. What a feast we had and unlike our summer visit, what value! It turned into a great evening. Before anyone accuses us of always eating out, I should point out that our Saturday night out was very much an impromptu thing. The same cannot be said of Sunday lunch!
If readers remember our November newsletter, it will be recalled that we had a wonderful meal at 'The Invisible Kitchen'. We had fancied a return visit nearer Christmas and as they are only open at the weekend, we were restricted as to when we could visit. As Ben and Claudia were due to return to the UK for the Christmas period, time was of the essence! It just so happened that the 14th December was our friend, Alan's, birthday and so Sunday 13th December seemed the perfect day to visit 'The Invisible Kitchen'.
Alan and Pauline visited us at home before we set off to lunch on 13th December. Alan had included some skirting boards for us on the last load that he had shipped to Corfu. As they were anticipating moving into their new home before Christmas, they needed the boards out of their house, hence they kindly brought it up to us first.
Our meal was superb and regardless of what else was planned for Alan's birthday, we think he enjoyed it. To finish the day, we called in at Spiros Gelati's for a Metaxa (or two!) and coffees. It was a great way to finish what had been a very pleasant day.
Monday, 14th December saw me setting off for Roda. We had ordered a leg of pork from a local butcher. This may not sound very newsworthy but bear with us. Every year we have a gammon at Christmas time. They are always prepacked and to be honest they have sometimes been less than tasty. This year, Tricia had decided that we were going to dry-cure our own gammon as she had seen a website that explained the process. Not only that but the company was also able to supply everything to undertake the curing.
As in many countries, butchers here trim their meat very well. In our opinion it is too well. There is invariably no skin or fat on meat joints. As a result, we had to order a leg of pork with the skin on. My first visit to the butcher was abortive. The joint had not arrived. However it had arrived by the time that I visited a second time.
Actually, the leg was still attached to a side of pork and so I had to tell the butcher how much I wanted. I had been instructed to get a 4 kilo leg of pork by Tricia. Unfortunately 4 kilos didn't mean a lot to me. More to the point, I think that the butcher was equally unsure! By the time that the severed leg hit the scales, we discovered that it weighed 5 kilos. Oh well, "close enough", I thought!
In the end, we cut a small joint off the leg and roasted it. Very nice. The actual curing process took place over the next week or so. Having applied copious amounts of salt and some magical powder by rubbing it into the joint, it was allowed to stand for a week in the fridge, being turned daily. At the appointed time, it was rinsed off and left for a further couple of days in the fridge. The result? ... A perfect dry cured gammon joint! We will definitely be going down that road again! Next, we are going to attempt curing our own bacon.
The run up to Christmas always involves a lot of work for Tricia. The gammon was a new addition! After the initial coating with the curing powder and salt, it meant storing it in the fridge and turning it daily for a week. After this, it was to be rinsed off, dried and stored a further two days before it was ready for baking.
For my part, I kept out of the way as much as possible. I spent my time trying to get to grips with a new bit of technology, Drupal. Drupal has been around for a couple of years but is new to me. I hope that I will use it later to reinvent a couple of our websites.
Thursday, 17th December was wet with sunny spells. Tricia and I set off to Corfu Town to do our Christmas food shopping. We had hoped to buy our turkey from Darryl and Paula who were hard at it setting up their new butcher's shop in Peritheia. Unfortunately they had been the victims of numerous setbacks and so we decided that we would buy the turkey in town.
We could not believe how difficult this was going to be. It took us ages to find a turkey anywhere near the size that we wanted. Everything on offer was the size of sparrows!
That evening we had a phone call from our accountants who had just returned from their weekly visit to the tax office. It was not good news! The tax authority were after €5,000 in respect of the original purchase of our land. The worst thing of all was that it had to be paid by 31st December. We have to confess that we were not totally surprised by the claim but had foolishly hoped they had forgotten about it! We had previously queried it through our accountant but had been told that we owed nothing. Ho hum!
I paid a visit to the accountant's office that evening to get the full story. The best thing that I can say that came out of that meeting was that I received a few tips on how to limit the damage! I decided to visit the tax man during the following Monday.
Saturday, 19th December was a grey, wet stormy day. I returned home from a minor shopping expedition to learn that my cousin, Hazel had died. It was a very sad day. She was so young.
Sunday, 20th December was as grey and wet as the previous day. We brought our Christmas tree down from the loft. It was the first Christmas decoration to go up. We couldn't believe how lax we have been this year as we both really like Christmas.
We went for lunch to Apneoa Taverna with Alan and Pauline. The food was terrific and Yiannis was on good form! We learnt that Alan and Pauline's house had suffered from the recent heavy rainfalls and their boiler room had been flooded. This meant that they would now not be in their new house for Christmas. They were obviously disappointed but had been very practical about the issue. They had booked themselves into the Corfu Palace Hotel for Christmas!
Monday, 21st December was sunny and dry but very cold. The temperature had fallen to just over 3°C overnight.
This was going to be a busy day for me as I was off to Corfu Town on a mission! Tricia remained at home preparing for Christmas. We had previously watched the Christmas series of Jamie Oliver television programmes and Tricia had been very taken with his concept of preparing as much as possible in advance. Add to that the fact that we had both been impressed with some of his recipes, I guessed, rightly, that Tricia was going to be well occupied!
My first port of call was to our car dealer. The Golf was due for its 22,500 Km service and as the car was to be 2 years old on 4th January, we wanted it serviced whilst the manufacturer's warranty was still in force. I dropped the car off and went hunting in vain for a taxi. I ended up walking into the centre of town through Mandouki. I guess that it is a couple of kilometres. It was a lot easier walk than in summer!
I found my way to the Tax office and actually found the office of the person that I was due to see with relative ease. The tax official turned out to be a really pleasant man. As I mentioned earlier, we had an inkling of what the tax bill was for but for the first time, I had it explained clearly. He even provided me with details of the applicable statutes! As I mentioned earlier, I had been briefed by our accountant as to how to approach the situation and for once our information was correct!
The tax man explained that if we paid before 31st December, we were entitled to a 5% discount. In reality, what this means is that we didn't incur a 5% penalty for not paying! I pleaded poverty as had been my briefing! The ever helpful tax man went on to explain that if we paid €1000 down before the end of the month, we could pay the rest in instalments and better still, we did not incur any penalties. I agreed before he changed his mind and told him to draw up the papers there and then!
It was whilst my friendly tax official was busily pounding away on his computer that I incurred the first bit of bizarre Greek bureaucracy of the day. To be honest, I was surprised that it had taken this long. I will keep it simple! There I was, about to make a tax payment to the Greek government. However, I was then required to pay a Municipal tax of 3% on the tax payment. Work that one out! It gets better though!
This meant that now had to pay €1030. That, I thought, was no problem as I had been to the bank prior to the tax office. How wrong could I be? Very wrong as it turns out. The tax office, like IKA has a ceiling on the amount of cash that they will accept per transaction. Yes, you've guessed it. Their ceiling was €1000! I was required to go to the bank for a bankers cheque.
I have long since learnt that in such situations, kicking up a bit of a fuss often works. I did, albeit politely! Guess what, the taxman scribbled on a post-it and told me to give it to the cashier! I also had to pay the car tax for the Fiesta but thought better of pushing my luck!
I then went to the cashier's office to be met with an enormous queue that snaked around the building. It was generally good humoured until one man decided that a row of empty cashier’s windows, except for two which were open, was too much to bear given the number of staff milling around! To say the least, things became noisy, even by Greek standards! It seemed as if half the queue were siding with the irate man and the rest were in stitches and goading him on! A local priest who was initially quite amused by the whole affair, clearly decided that he should not be associated with the rumpus and slowly made his exit. The incident was over within five minutes and seemed to end as quickly as it started.
I reached a cashier's window and presented my post-it which was received as if it was an everyday occurrence. Perhaps it was! With that bill paid, it was off to another office to pay the car tax for the Fiesta. Actually that's not quite correct. I joined a queue and after presenting the car's 'log book', I was presented with a piece of paper which I had then to take back to the cashier's office. I went back and joined the snaking queue ... again!
As an aside, I should mention that our new centre left government (bless them) have seen fit to increase vehicle tax this year. On vehicles over 15 years old, the increases are monumental. Our Fiesta is marginally under the 15 year cut-off point and as a result, our bill was not as bad as it could have been. There was one poor old boy in front of me in the queue who was clearly unaware of these increases. I thought that he was going to keel over when he heard how much he was being required to pay. The news was received with a flurry of muttered prayers to the Virgin Mary and many signs of the cross! I fear that he was not about to receive divine intervention!
Having paid the fee and had my piece of paper stamped, I then went to another office, where upon presentation of the stamped piece of paper, I was presented with my tax disc for the car. Hmm! Efficiency, Greek style!
I should add that if one receives the 'renewal' reminder, you can just walk into a post office or bank and get your tax disc over the counter. Unlike the UK, it is not necessary to produce insurance or test certificates.
With the tax authority appeased, I caught a taxi back to the garage. For once I had a pleasant surprise. The charges were only €72. I was then off to visit almost every supermarket in Corfu Town armed with a list from Tricia.
By the time I eventually arrived home, it had been a long day.
I have already mentioned that we were late putting up our Christmas Tree. On Tuesday 22nd December we started putting up the rest of our decorations. We both braved the rain whilst I secured the rope lights to the gutter. Before anyone asks, it was me up the ladder whilst Tricia steadied it. (My reputation with ladders precedes me!) We completed our inside decorations as well.
It should be born in mind that here in Greece, the site of me putting up decorations three days before Christmas Day did not draw any odd looks as the major celebration here is at New Year. Santa spends so long getting to everybody else that it takes him until New Years Eve to get here! As we often quip on an ecclesiastical note, Greeks are more into crucifixions than births! Hence, Easter is the major religious celebration here.
Wednesday 23rd December was grey and damp. Despite my protestations, Tricia continued to slave away in the kitchen. I took the opportunity to do a runner to Acharavi. We needed a bottle of port!
That night we received a phone call from Spiros, our local baker, to inform us that Lakis, the husband of Katina, our former landlord, had died that day. The funeral was to be the next day - Christmas Eve. It was unexpected news to us as we had not seen them for about a year. Many of our readers who are frequent visitors will know Lakis from their visits to Mitsos Taverna in Nisaki. He was a real character.
Throughout the 24th December, Tricia worked in the kitchen. I'm sure that Jamie Oliver was there in spirit as well! We had visits from three groups of carol singers. The first was Angelos (Spiros 'Gelati's' son) and his friend. They were followed by a trio, armed with a guitar and accordion, and finally, in the evening we had a visit from a group from the village, accompanied by guitar and bouzouki. We normally get a few other children but they didn't appear this year. I couldn't believe how few we had, especially as we had made an effort to keep a load of change handy!
In the afternoon, I drove down to Nisaki for Lakis' funeral and to pay my respects to the family. It was an extremely well attended funeral.
That evening, I had to put my foot down! I suggested that Tricia had spent too long in the kitchen and that we should go out for dinner. On Tricia's admission, everything was ready for the big day and so there was no need for her to return to the kitchen. The problem was that Tricia was reluctant to go out as she was tired. Commonsense prevailed. We went out!
We went to Maestro for the first time in a long while. What a great choice. The meal, suckling pig, was fantastic. The live music was brilliant. As far as we could tell, we were the only foreigners there. It was a real Greek celebration which, to be honest, took us by surprise. We can only assume that following a bad year, many people had decided to let their hair down. We booked for New Year's Eve, there and then! Christmas started here and it helped to briefly take our minds off events of the past few days. We were home around 2am ... but only because Tricia was worried that she might not be in a condition to prepare Christmas dinner!
Christmas day was wonderful. We (Tricia, that is) had never been so organised. Christmas dinner was on the table by 2.45pm and what a feast it was. All of Tricia's efforts, ably assisted by Jamie Oliver, had not been in vain! The turkey was great and our home cured gammon came up to our expectations. We will definitely be doing that again!
It was a really relaxed day without any of our usual last minute panics. On top of that, we didn't over do it, food-wise. We were even boringly sensible over our alcohol intake for once. It seems a long time since the episode years ago where Tricia couldn't find her saucepans in her own kitchen! Bucks Fizz has a lot to answer for!
Boxing Day was more of the same really. The only difference was that where we had sat down to a feast the day before, we spent our day picking on leftovers and nibbles generally. How people can say that they get fed up with turkey, we will never know. We look forward to it cold, in pies and as soup after our Christmas dinner. If we have a complaint, it is that it is finished too soon. We have yet to get around to turkey curry!
We took it easy for the next few days. On Tuesday, 29th December, Tricia and I drove into Corfu Town to meet up with friends, Neal and Bev, along with their friends Steve and Diane. We had arranged to meet at the Greco Coffee shop just behind the Liston. From there, we went into town for a meal in a traditional taverna. For the life of me, I can't recall the name of it which is a bit daft as Tricia and I have been there many times before. We had first been introduced to it when we first moved out here. It was an excellent long lunch, accompanied by a significant amount of red wine! It may have been long, but we were early enough to catch a couple of shops on the way home!
We chilled out until New Year's Eve when we had arranged to go out with Alan and Pauline. We again had a visit from Angelos and his mate to sing the traditional New Year's song and again, we were ready with some change!
We met Alan and Pauline in the evening at Gelati's for a drink before heading off to Maestro Taverna for our New Year's Eve feast. Tricia and I always enjoy New Year's Eve there. There is always a great atmosphere and the music is brilliant. The special thing for us was that Alan and Pauline thoroughly enjoyed it, never having experienced anything like it in Greece before.
The evening was just that little bit more special for Alan and Pauline as they had finished moving into their new house that day and by the time they returned home to bed it would be 1st January, 2010. What a great way to start a new year!
Conclusion
Well, there we are, the end of December and the end of 2009. As we leap into 2010 I have heard the past decade referred to as the 'Noughties'. It's not quite the description that I would give it!
Despite the pleasantness of the Christmas and New Year's festivities, the end of this decade has been tinged with great sadness following the deaths of my cousin, Hazel and our friend, Lakis.
Our weather has not been the best, despite not being particularly cold. It most certainly has been wet! Still, when we look at the UK news broadcasts and see what has befallen the UK, not to mention other parts of northern Europe and the mid-west of America, I suppose that we should be grateful. I defy any summer visitors to try and convince us that the UK didn't have a bad winter! It reminded Tricia and I (not mention many others) of 1963. That year, snow fell in London on Boxing Day. My parents were in the process of buying a house in West Wickham. It was touch and go whether we could move in during March that year. We hope it clears quickly for you all and that there are no floods as a result!
Well, that's it for this year. We hope that you are all safe and well and that the weather isn't getting to you. Hopefully, your Christmas was all that you expected. There is nothing else to say except,
Happy New Year!
Bob & Tricia
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