January 2008 Newsletter

Introduction
A happy, healthy and prosperous New Year to one and all! Hopefully nobody disgraced themselves over the festive season! This is a time of year that I guess most people look forward to. To us (well me anyway) it is like a clean slate. Yes there are a few trials and tribulations left over from the old year but that doesn't seem to diminish hope for the forthcoming twelve months. I wonder how long it will take for this optimism to wane?

Health wise, we seem to be holding our own apart from the occasional aches and pains that I guess we can begin to expect. Hopefully this will continue. (Our good health that is, not the aches and pains!)

We are looking forward to getting the house up to standard during the first part of the year. All the materials are sitting in the garage awaiting the first mild weather. Hopefully they will be sitting alongside our new car within a couple of days. ... Finally!

Having been keeping abreast of what is going on in the UK through the medium of Sky News, we were of the opinion that the end of last year seemed something of a slow news period. There appeared to be the usual stories of fantastic sale bargains in the shops none of which are replicated here until well into January. I guess that in a way that's fortunate, because Tricia and I could run amok!

There were the usual reports on the New Year's Eve revels accompanied by the reports of alcohol related violence and the strain placed on the emergency services. Fortunately, it appears that the emergency services are one area of British society where this didn't come as a surprise and they appeared prepared for the extra workload. This is unlike Greece where everything seems to be a bit of a surprise. Things like Christmas, New Year, Easter and of course, the beginning of the tourist season!

Whether, the news becomes more interesting as the month progresses is anyone's guess. I suspect that from our point of view, it might!

On that note, I reckon that is as good a point as any to get on with the proceedings.

January 2008
The 1st January was a quiet affair in the Giles household (Corfiot branch). The weather was showery and outside the temperature rarely got above 9°C. The central heating continued to work well after the scare just before Christmas. What with our inner warmth and general cosiness, we had a long overdue lay-in. The festivities of the previous night and early morning might just have had something to do with it as well!

For my part, I thought it unwise to try performing with power tools and Tricia kept the housework to a minimum. The Christmas turkey was finally finished at lunch time in the guise of turkey soup. We are both unlike many of our friends who profess to get bored with turkey. We generally enjoy it as has been borne out by us having devoured roast turkey on Christmas day, various meals of cold turkey, turkey and ham pie and turkey soup!

The day was spent around the house, generally relaxing, watching Chelsea scrape a win against Fulham and ended up watching Casino Royale until the early morning. We managed to exchange New Year greetings with several family and friends throughout the day.

All in all it was a pretty relaxed day. Will it continue? who knows.

One of the phone conversations that I had during New Year's Day was with friends David and Eda. During this conversation, David commented about us getting snow on Thursday. David, you were nearly correct. We had hail during the morning of Wednesday, 2nd January!

In the hope that we will take delivery of our new car within a couple of days, there were a few phone calls to be made along with that inevitable trip to the bank to collect a cheque to pay for it!

I finished clearing the garage on the 3rd January in readiness for the impending new arrival. We had psyched ourselves up to receiving our new car on Friday, 4th January. Can you imagine our dismay when after nearly four and a half months wait, we received a phone call from Costas at the garage to say that they had yet to register the new car or get the number plates for it. Furious is one word to describe my reaction. In fact, I was so furious that I threatened to cancel the order.

That had some effect, albeit delayed! Somewhere around 7 o' clock that evening we received a further phone call. This time it was from the owner of the dealership. He was definitely in a placatory mood and assured us that we could collect the car at 10.30pm the following day.

We decided to take a chance that the car would be ready for us and took the 7am bus into Corfu Town on Friday, 4th January. This meant that we were in town much too early to collect the car and so we had a good couple of hours to kill. We drank coffee at the 'Olympia' on the Liston before walking back into the centre of town.

Those who read our last publication will be aware that Tricia had gone without her Christmas present on account of there being no stock left. We decided to check out 'Multirama' to see if their stock had been replenished. It had but with a later model TV than Tricia wanted originally. Needless to say the new model was bristling with new (unnecessary) features. Oh yes, it was considerably dearer than the old model! I took the line of least resistance. Tricia has a new TV for her kitchen!

From there we started to head for the car showroom, our intention being to get a taxi. However, we were still too early. We decided to stop for a further cup of coffee at a pavement cafe.

I cannot explain why, but my attention was drawn to a double parked Mitsubishi Colt a little way past us. What am I saying? My attention was drawn by it's unbelievable, I mean unusual colour! I am pretty sure that nobody other than our friend and confidante, Philipos owns a car that colour on the island ... possibly in the world!

We ambled up to the car to find Philipos sitting in the car. He was on his way to see his accountant. I explained our mission to him and he immediately offered to take us to the showroom as soon as he had finished at his accountants. He got out of the car and vanished across the road whilst we clambered in and waited for him in the still double parked Mitsubishi. We know that everyone does it here but I have to confess that I felt really uncomfortable and imagined all sorts of rude comments being hurled in our direction. In reality, I guess that we went unnoticed amongst all the other cars doubled parked around us!

Philipos returned and true to his word, delivered us to the car showroom. Imagine our surprise when he came in with us. It turned out that he had known the owner of the dealership, along with his wife, many years ago.

What can we say? The car was waiting for us and after a guided tour of it, we set off on our way home. Can you guess our first port of call? Unbelievably it was the nearest petrol station as the car only had about four litres of fuel in it! I will confess that, at this juncture, compared to any other car that we have owned, the car is a delight to drive. I don't care what Jeremy Clarkson says about it! I hope that the love affair continues!

We had invited Pete and Carol for dinner the following day and so Tricia spent much of the rest of the day preparing for it. Needless to say that she didn't want to cook after these preparations and so it was a fish and chip supper for us in Roda!

The weather during the 5th January was a bit 'hit and miss'. There were high winds and occasional rain. I managed to get the hire car washed before Tricia and I returned it to Telis.

I had forgotten that the 5th January is one of those days when the local children come around 'Carol' singing whilst beating hell out of their triangles. Needless to say that whilst out washing the hire car I was easy prey to two groups of children! That will be the last until next Christmas! My biggest worry was that having forgotten all about it, I would have no change to give them. We survived.

Pete and Carol came to dinner that night and it proved to be a good meal with good company. I even dug out some bottles of single malt whisky that I had forgotten about. It was both a good and a late night. Suffice to say that the next day was something of a slow one on account of that late night.

Monday, 7th January saw me feeling guilty about having finally bought Tricia's Christmas present but not having installed it. Er ... I had received one or two gentle reminders about this! I decided that I would bite the bullet and fit her new TV in the kitchen. I must confess that I wasn't worried about that aspect of the job but I was concerned about installing the wireless transmitter between the satellite receiver and Tricia's new toy. Apart from the fact that it was quite a cheap kit from Lidl's, I had no instructions in English. Still it's amazing what one can achieve with the aid of pictures. To our collective amazement, everything worked first time. (Mind you we were to discover later that the microwave occasionally plays havoc with the transmitter!) I hope that I won a couple of 'Brownie points' for my efforts!

I must confess to a little excitement about the new car. I even cleaned it on the 9th January. It won't last! However, following the first clean, I was left wondering about the wisdom of owning a black car! Still, we can't complain as we have always wanted a black car!

Thursday 10th January saw me up early and off to town on my own leaving Tricia to enjoy the opportunity of a lie-in. I know that this is going to sound sad but I was off on a purely selfish mission. I wanted to pick up a set of drawers from Lidl's for my office and also see if I could find a replacement for my electronic personal organiser. There, I told you that it was sad. However, I feel the necessity to explain the circumstances in an attempt to exonerate this sad behaviour!

I had noticed that my venerable organiser (circa 1999) had been going through batteries at an alarming rate. Then one day, it totally discharged itself and lost all of my data. Luckily, I have always maintained regular backups of this data on my PC. (We all do that, don't we? Yeah! I bet you do! Not!) I attempted to reload the data but to no avail. In fact, things went from bad to worse. The organiser died! Hence my mission to find another organiser that would accept the data from my backup. As the organiser in question was based upon the popular Palm system, I felt that this should not be a too onerous task ... even in Corfu! How wrong I was. Oh yes, I forgot to mention that the manufacturer in question no longer exists!

Yes, there were newer organisers that 'might' have accepted my backup but they were very much more than I wanted to pay. I didn't want it to take photos or make phone calls or provide me with geostationary satellite mapping. I just wanted a simple organiser with memo functions. I share this attitude with regard to mobile phones. If I want to take photographs I use a camera. If I get lost, I consult a map. When I want to make a phone call, I use a phone!

I had all but given up hope of finding a suitable replacement when my attention was drawn to a side window of one of Greece's prominent retailers of mobile phones, Germanos. There were a number of rather old, dusty looking cartons on display. I couldn't believe it when I saw the exact model of organiser that had recently died.

A quick conversation with the sales assistant ensued. I pointed out that this item was discontinued and would therefore be available at a knock down price. To my amazement, he agreed with me. In fact it was about a quarter of what I had originally paid for the now defunct organiser. Needless to say, I bought it and left the shop before they changed their minds.

It was a really pleased Bob that arrived home at about 11.30am that day. Building the new flat-packed drawer unit and reinstalling the data to my new organiser took care of the afternoon. In fact, I was so pleased with the drawer unit that I wished that I had bought two!

The stud walling in the loft was at the stage where we had effectively reduced the space open to the stairwell to about 6.5 x 8 metres. The door aperture into the remainder of the loft space had been temporarily covered with polythene. The difference in temperature in our lounge was amazing. In fact, with the radiators on in the loft, that side of the room had changed from being the coldest to the warmest part of the room. It was time to make a decision about a door to replace the polythene.

We decided to bite the bullet and attempt to buy a ready made door rather than make one. You should be aware that because of the restricted roof height, there was no possibility of fitting a full height door. Armed with the measurements of the aperture, Tricia and I went into town during the evening of 11th January. Our destination was Simonetis' wood yard, arguably the largest and most comprehensively stocked in Corfu.

Imagine our surprise when they were totally undaunted by our request for a door to fill the peculiarly sized aperture and we were met with a reply of 'No problem'. Having chosen a design, we received a quote allegedly based upon the size of the door. Mind you, I think it was probably based upon what they thought we would pay! To be honest, the cost of €135 for the door to be made, fitted to the frame with hinges and lock already fitted didn't seem too bad to us. The door was promised within ten days but then this is Greece! Still, we were in no hurry.

We had heavy rain and thunderstorms over the night of 13th / 14th January. The rain continued throughout the 14th. At least with the loft project, I had plenty with which to occupy myself. I must confess that as there is no urgency to complete the loft, I have tended to do a bit as and when I felt like it. It's quite nice with there being no pressure!

On the 15th January, I took the car up to Mike Beckett's house to show it off. Before anyone says anything, he had asked me to bring it up! I found Mike outside the house with Pete. Pete was enlisting Mike's woodworking skills to route out some panels for his and Carol's kitchen. After an abortive attempt at winding me up by pretending to be too busy to check out the car, they burst out laughing and proceeded to give it the once over. Whether they liked it or not, they made lots of nice comments!

The afternoon saw a first for Tricia. She drove the car for the first time. It was a good excuse to go to Sidari to Diella's for a bit of shopping! She declared the car OK but was a little daunted by its response compared to our old Mitsubishi!

Much of my time was spent either working in the loft or out buying bits for the project. There was a fair amount of rain from the 16th to the 18th January which meant that work was done upstairs on each of those days. However, I received a plaintive call from Pete and Carol on the 18th. Their latest home improvements involved removing the old kitchen and building a new bedroom, en suite bathroom and walk-in wardrobe.

The old kitchen sported a marble worktop which I guess was in excess of three metres long. Pete and Carol have got a great idea of creating an outdoor kitchen and barbecue area. The idea was that the marble would be removed in one piece and stored outside until that stage of the project was due to be completed. As you can imagine, the marble worktop was far from light! Add to that the fact that the aperture where the sink had been removed meant that there was a natural weakness there which increased the likelihood of it snapping.

Suffice to say that between, Pete, Carol and myself, the worktop was removed, intact, and safely transported to the outside of the house. Of course, this was achieved only after considerable effort involving equally considerable bad language. (I must have a word with Carol about that! Just kidding Carol!)

In the afternoon, Tricia and I went to check on John and Michelle's house as we had had some pretty bad weather up until then. All was well. Following that we decided to go up to Old Peritheia to check on the work that Yiorgos was doing at Costa's new taverna and to assess how much space Thomas was going to lose from his. Yes, yet another Taverna in the centre of Old Peritheia. That will make five. Lunacy! There was an ulterior motive in that I wanted to pick Yiorgos' brains!

From what we can see, it would appear that Thomas is going to have his quota of outside seating reduced dramatically. He has also lost the outside toilets. As always, Thomas remains philosophical about the antics of his cousin Costas.

Unless it snows during January, we don't anticipate there being too many photo opportunities. However, our trip to Old Peritheia provided us with one. We spotted a goat that had just given birth to a couple of kids by the roadside. I didn't want to get too close but I think that the photos have a certain 'Aaah! factor'!

Saturday, 19th January was bright and sunny. I whiled away a couple of hours washing the car for the second time. Mind you, I promptly got it dirty by driving through a puddle whilst going to buy some cable!

That afternoon and evening, Tricia and I had something of a football fest by watching Newcastle draw 0 - 0 with Bolton Wanderers and Birmingham lose 0 - 1 to our beloved Chelsea.

After the football, Tricia and I made a speedy journey to Maestro for dinner. It was pretty late by the time we arrived but true to form, most Greek customers arrived long after us. As usual, it was a good meal with excellent entertainment. Needless to say, it was a late night!

Sunday, 20th January was not that unusual except that I managed to do a bit of work in the vegetable garden for the first time in a long while. You could be forgiven for asking what I had achieved as it is still in serious need of weeding and turning over. I did manage to work up something of a sweat though. The diabetic clinic should be pleased with all that exercise!

Monday, 21st January saw us up early and into Town on a shopping trip. Okay, so the shopping was ancillary to me getting to Lidl's early for one of their 'specials' - a set of wood bits on this occasion!

Upon our return, we discovered that we had missed a phone call from the carpenter that was making our chest of drawers. A return call revealed that the chest was ready for our inspection. Woo Hoo! This meant that we needed to do a quick cash transfer from the UK as our funds here had become somewhat ... er ... depleted. There followed one of the worse experiences that we have had with Barclays International.

For starters, it took me over an hour to get through. The transaction appeared to go as normal once I got through. For those unfamiliar with the process of internationally transferring money from Sterling to Euros I should point out that it is as simple as giving details of the amount, the account from which it is being transferred and the IBAN and Swift codes for the receiving bank. I do not exaggerate when we say that I have done this dozens of times and never with any hitch.

I have no idea what prompted me to check our bank account online but suffice to say that I did. To say that I was unimpressed with the fact that £42 had been deducted from our account for the privilege of transferring our money was an understatement! I was expecting a £20 fee as normal.

A check online revealed that there had been no change to Barclay's fees for this service. Yet more phone calls to Barclays!

It transpired that they had charged us (wrongly) £35 for their priority service and a further £7 for not providing the correct IBAN number. The air went a delicate shade of blue on account that the correct IBAN had both been provided and checked when read back to me. Further, for the service requested, there is only one fee - £20. Like many companies that one deals with over the phone there is a pre-recorded message about phone calls being recorded... I suggested that they checked their recordings. The money was refunded!

We are now considering a different method of money transfer and bypassing Barclays. We are considering a company called UKForex having looked at and dismissed offshore accounts. Any information on this front would be gratefully received!

For the first time in quite a while we had a power cut on Tuesday, 22nd January. To be totally honest we actually had three power cuts. One learns to live with these problems. It's more of a problem when the water supply fails. It was a bit of a worry as I had promised to help out friends Debbie and Doug with their computer that afternoon. The power returned and I made what was to be the first of a few visits to resolve issues with their new laptop. Microsoft Vista? Ugh! I dare say that as with all things, I will get used to it but my first impressions are that as an 'upgrade' it would be a retrograde step.

Yiorgos helped me to wire up a 'two - way' switch at the top and bottom of our staircase on the 23rd January. As it had been partially wired during the construction of the house there should have been little problem. However, as is often the case, there was scant regard to the colour coding of the wiring. It took a while but eventually we were successful. Just to keep me on my toes, Tricia decided that it might be useful to have a socket at the top of the stairs for her vacuum cleaner and just for good measure, another to plug the fairy lights into at Christmas. I am not kidding!

If this had been all that we had to report for this day, it would not have been that notable. However Tricia received a distressing phone call from her sister to say that their Mum had fallen at home and had broken her hip. A hip replacement had been scheduled for the following day.

When one is so far from your parents, it is difficult to know what to do for the best. We are both realistic enough to know that jumping on a plane and flying back would achieve nothing at that stage. We had to await further news of Mum's progress following the operation. We decided that once she returned home would be the time for such decisions.

The morning of the 24th January saw us in town, checking out the chest of drawers. It is a traditional Corfiot design and quite tall with a marble top. We think that it is beautiful. It was delivered to us that day.

Tricia's Mum had her hip replacement and the hospital were apparently pleased with her progress. We could do nothing other than await for any developments, particularly as to when she was likely to return home. Our concern was that as home is a first floor flat there were going to be a number of difficulties for her.

That evening, to kill some time, I converted a storage unit to a stand for my bench drill/press that had, up until then, been residing in the corner of the lounge. What I won't do to try and cheer Tricia up!

Did I say cheer Tricia up? Well, if my efforts were unsuccessful, our son David made a better attempt. During 25th January we received a text message saying that we ought to get an early night as we had an early start the next morning. He had booked a flight and was arriving on the morning flight from Athens! Panic! We were however to have the last laugh as his arrival was subsequently 14 hours late and he ended up with an overnight stay in a hotel at Heathrow, courtesy of Olympic Airlines!

Tricia's Mum appeared to be progressing well which was good news.

We went out for a fish and chip supper with Pete and Carol and broke the news of David's imminent arrival. Carol immediately invited us all to dinner!

We had a reasonably early night only to have our slumbers disturbed at 2.15am by a text message and subsequent phone call from Corinna to say that David's flight had been cancelled and that we didn't have to get up early. It didn't matter as we never got back to sleep after that!

David eventually arrived on the evening flight from Athens on 26th January. He was starving and in true David-style had left one of his bags and a jacket at the overnight stop. It appeared that nobody woke him to tell him the new flight time. Suffice to say that he only just made it.

We were sure that we could do something on the food front and made our way up the coast road home. We couldn't believe it but everywhere we had thought of was closed. We ended up in Peritheia at Gelati's. Spiros could be relied upon not to let us down. He didn't! Suffice to say that it was a late night by the time we all got to bed.

Interestingly, our somewhat excitable dog, Jake, appeared to recognise David and went berserk when he saw him. It was as if his long lost friend had returned. Jake was even more impressed when David produced an enormous toy for him, not to mention the world's largest hide 'bone'!

David took the opportunity to chill out which was just as well as nearly everywhere was shut at this time of year. We did manage to get a few meals out though. I guess Tricia had a holiday from some of her usual cooking chores!

We had a first class meal at Pete and Carol's on Wednesday 30th January. True to form it turned into a late one and we didn't get to bed before 3am!

I was glad of David's help on Thursday 31st January as I had to collect the door and frame for the loft from Corfu Town. I was amazed that it barely protruded beyond the tailgate of the Golf. We also took the opportunity to collect the new cushions for the settee(s) from Neoset.

To my astonishment, the door frame fitted the aperture perfectly. What were the odds of a Greek carpenter getting the size right? Come to that, what were the odds on me measuring the aperture accurately, not to mention my construction being 'square!

Conclusion
I guess that you could say that the month ended on something of a high for us with David's surprise visit. It helped to take our minds off Tricia's Mum's plight with her hip replacement although she appears to be progressing well.

The new car is all that we hoped for. Tricia hasn't driven it as much as I would have expected but looking on the bright side, it means I get to have more fun in it! It is the fastest car that we have owned since our old V8 Rover. Thankfully, it is a lot more economical.

Again, after waiting a couple of months, we had the pleasure of another new acquisition - our new chest of drawers. It is one of the largest pieces of furniture we have ever owned, not to mention the dearest. Still another prospective heirloom for the kids to fight over!

Weatherwise, we have had something of a mixed bag. The winter rains meant that David got to see our land green rather than the golden brown that is the norm for summer visitors. However, upon reflection, I think it fair to say that winter has not been as bad as we would normally anticipate. Having said that, February normally produces the worst weather of the year. I guess that's something to look forward to. Not!

Work has continued on the new office up in the loft space although to be honest, it is somewhat sporadic! David's arrival provided a ready made excuse to avoid some of my work! The good thing though is that we have stopped the drafts from coming down the stairs. The central heating is working even more efficiently than usual! Forget all of those romantic notions of log fires!

That's about all the news for this month so I guess that it's time to say goodbye for another month.

All the best,

Bob & Tricia