And the rain it did rain...

The weather that seems to be affecting northern Europe is having a knock on effect in Greece and in fact in the Mediterranean as a whole and this weeks pictures on the news of landslides in Italy remind me that we are not getting the worst of it, although neither are we getting the best. Looking at the weather forecasts it looks like out dear friends Allen and Jean are having a much better time of it in Cyprus and it's reported as being 25 Deg. C. in Crete which isn't a million miles away. For us, we have had temps of 10 - 14 C. for the last week and rain, thunder hail etc. on five of the last seven days, although the air temperature over the last couple of days is definitely warmer than it has been this year to date. Yesterday Sandra was in Preveza shopping at sea level and said she had sun and was forced to take her jacket off, I was here in the house at 330 Meters. high in the cloud and drizzle and sat near an electric heater. Oh well as the song goes, "things can only get better".

Last Saturday Sandra had arranged to go to her Greek dancing lessons and then on to a taverna with Mantha, as usual things did not go according to plan. Due to the Greek governments austerity measures the fuel tanker drivers had decided to go on strike for three days from Monday, this meant that Jorgos had to deliver as much fuel as he could to get another delivery in before the strike hence the dancing lessons start at 6pm and Jorgos didn't get home until 7:30pm and Mantha had to hold the fort until he returned and then get ready, so they missed the dancing and went straight out to the taverna. Again on Sunday which was supposed to be Jorgos' bi-weekly day off, he needed to get oil out to the old people who needed heating especially in view of the current weather. He has been rationing his deliveries to 100 litres and will make them up to full deliveries when the strike is over it just means he is having to visit many places twice and this will cost him rather than the tanker drivers. Anyway this had the result of Jorgos not being able to go out for our usual Sunday ride out (not a good thing to tell a woman on Valentines day!!). Irrespective of this we took to the roads and took Mantha and Effie with us to Parga even though it was raining quite hard Praga is still a beautiful place. Effie bought Sandra and I a rose each seen in the first picture picture. The second Picture is of Parga taken in better weather from near the castle down onto the town and island.

During the week I have been doing a few jobs at the Kafenion like repairing some wiring that was really dangerous. The feed for the cooker was three bits of cable just screwed together and taped up it had got wet were it was dangling on the floor and gone bang, giving Mantha an electric shock. When I had a look I was horrified by it, it could well have caused a fire not even connector blocks joining the wires anyway it's safe now! Jorgos has also lost his satellite connection. When I got onto the roof to have a look the device at the end of the arm (LNB) is just hung on with tape and tie wraps, I'm going in a minute to get a new one from Louros, a small town near here. There's still no guarantee that it'll work after replacing that.

Tomorrow we are going to stay with our friends at Lefkas for a few day so I can prune all the plants in his garden and generally get de-Greeked for a while but I'm sure there'll more to say on this next week