July 2014 Starts Here!

Hi all,

As our last post was something of an epic, I thought that it might be opportune to keep the ball rolling! Looking at the calendar, I have realised that we are now into the second week of July!

We really should be getting ourselves ready for the forthcoming visit at the end of the month by Corinna and Dave, not to mention our grandchildren, Lauren, Rebecca, Ryan and Maggie. We have made a start – honest! For my own part I have spent four sessions strimming in the garden assisted on Friday, 4^th July by our friend Doug. He returned for a further three hours on Monday, 7^th July and finished the job. Looking good!

The biggest job of the week was undertaken by Yiorgos, our jobbing builder, who put in long hours repairing and re-plastering a pillar by the garage as well as repairing and re-plastering the ‘arches’ at the front and rear of our garage roof. Like all builders, he managed to find a few extra things like about 18 cracked roof tiles that needed replacing.! He worked solid from Tuesday, 2^nd to Friday 5^th July and even put in a couple of double shifts when he worked in the evenings as well. He finished at lunchtime on the 5^th. He charged us €150 which included materials. I thought this reasonable but began to wonder whether he had developed a conscience!

Our friend, Filippos took himself off for a break in London but before he did, he dropped off a laptop for me to sort out! It wasn’t his but had been bought by a neighbour for his children, Spiridoula and Konstantinos. I agreed to have a look at it before he came back but by Saturday, 5th July There was a cry of “Bob” as I returned from walking Jake. It was Spiridoula and Konstantinos who wanted a progress update! There followed some ‘hedging’ by yours truly who had barely looked at it! I have since dealt with this job and it awaits collection.

We did have a couple of fun things occur during the week. It wasn’t just work!

Over the many years that Tricia and I have visited and lived in Greece we have seen many ‘Greek Nights’ at a variety of establishments. Having experienced Greek musical nights out of season that tend to be quite impromptu, we rarely go to the commercial ones that are put on for the entertainment of visitors. In our opinion, some are okay whereas others can be very good.

Four friends of ours were returning to the UK on the 4^th and 5^th July respectively and so we decided that a ‘last supper’ was in order on Thursday, 3^rd July. Our venue was Taverna Nikolas in Agni Bay and it was ‘Greek Night’!

Periklis, the owner, is probably our oldest friend in Greece and is also probably one of the reasons we live here! He has been putting on Greek nights for as long as we can remember. We have witnessed their evolution into what we consider a really good spectacle for visitors. This is now what I call an adult Greek Night!

There was a good vocalist, Yianna, backed by good musicians and excellent dancers in local costume. There were demonstrations of dances from Corfu, the mainland and other regions of Greece. There were ‘cameo’ performances by Periklis and his son Nikolas along with the statutory plate smashing!

It was a really enjoyable evening – probably one of the best ‘Greek Nights’ that we have ever been to. You can see some photos here.

Last Saturday, 5^th July, Tricia and I took ourselves off for a walk along the track from the village of Lafki to Old Peritheia. We were on a mission! We had been told of a location that was supposedly teeming with butterflies, one of which was quite rare. – The Two Tailed Pasha (Charaxes jasius).

Sufice to say, we never did see the Two Tailed Pasha but Tricia took some photos of butterflies that are worthy of publication. For my own part, I was more impressed with the image that I took of a bug – an Antlion, which although quite large is totally harmless – to humans at least! You can see a few images  that we took here.

That evening we had a nice meal at Tassos Grill Room. That was a pleasant way to end the day.

Well there we are! This was a short blog entry which I hope shows that we haven’t been idle! This was what I was hoping for when we redesigned this site. It is hopefully not too much to digest and it is simpler for us to put together.

Enjoy!

Bob & Tricia