Bye bye Blackbird

In the picture is Yanni who lives below us wrapped up as though it was Siberia about a dozen or so Blackbirds and a bag full of Horta.

Well I've been offered more blackbirds this week and this time I did have my camera to show the proof, I refused because Sandra won't have anything to do with them, but I think I asked the woman, Youta, who is the wife of my landlord Spiros, to save me some when she cooked them. I may have got this wrong as they have not yet appeared. We have finally met our landlord and landlady, they are very nice and very accommodating. They live in Olympia or as the Greeks call it Olymbia but at first hearing it sounds like Lybia which had me thinking of Colonel Qaddafi coming down the road to evict us. Spiros and Youta want to take Yanni back to Olypia with them to live but he won't leave as nosocoma (Nurse) Sandra lives above and he doesn't want to leave her! Looks like we're here forever then!

We started off the week with some very fine weather, sat out on the terrace to eat breakfast and lunch but the last couple of days have been stormy with lots of rain thunder lightening and hailstone but overall starting at about 16-17 degrees and now about 12 so nothing to really complain about.

Sandra has been out walking with Youta and called in at a taverna located at the far end of the village were we had kept saying that we would go, she said it was beautiful and clean and everyone again made her most welcome although they all knew her before she got in (once seen never forgotten), she was also supposed to be going out with some of the women on Sunday to gather horta (weeds which they cook with like dandelion leaves) but she felt ill on Saturday evening and missed her Greek dancing and also the horta hunt on Sunday morning.

Tuesday she went with Mantha and her daughter Effie to Ioaninna to the hairdressers, this time she came back with an acceptable bill of 16 euros rather than the 140 Euros it cost me when she had it done in Arta last year, I still have nightmares about that one! They spent the entire day there shopping and doing girly things and left me in peace at home to do the men things like washing and hoovering etc, am I a new age man or what!

Yesterday (Wednesday) the rain started and despite the fact that Sandra had been in town all the day before we needed some groceries. The car started misbehaving on the way down to |Thesprotiko cutting out and generally not being a good girl. I thought it was water getting into the fuel line so while she was in the supermarket I drained the water filter and re primed the fuel. We set off back home and just got out of town when the old lass died on us. A guy in a house near where we had pulled up came and asked if I wanted a lift back into town to see a mechanic which I took him up on, the man from the garage came back with me and another guy he had picked up as a translator and said he couldn't do anything in the pouring rain and that I would have to get it back to his garage for a looking at. The two guys duly left and Sandra and I started to roll the car back down the hill in the rain when the interpreter came back in his car and offered to tow me back, which we did. After about four hours of connecting to the computer (which said I had an injector problem on cylinders 1,3 &5) and messing with the fuel filters etc the mechanics happened to touch a wiring loom and the thing started spitting again and then when he released it it ran fine. Anyway to cut a four hour story short it turned out that my car has before I bought it been fitted with an additional immobilizer which when disconnect renders the car running fine. He cleared all the faults on the computer and they have not come back since. 3 guys working for 4 hours on my car with a new water separator filter thrown in cost 100 euros. In the UK it's 60-70 quid to even get the computer attached so really I was well chuffed. He asked me to take the car back again today just so he could check that all was still well which it was. Thanks to all concerned.

I got a message via reading this blog from a young lady in Ontario, Canada who thought that we may be related which was a really nice surprise. After a few emails back and forth it seems very likely that we are and she has kindly sent me some information about some of my immediate ancestors which make fascinating reading. She has also told me a story of her Great Grand Uncle Wilson Waddingham who was part of the first generation of Waddingham's to be born across the pond, he ended up being one of the wealthiest people in the states. He owned the largest Ranch ever in the history of America (The bell ranch) and used to play cards all night with John Chisholm whom John Wayne portrayed in the film. So just thought you might like to know that we have money in the family just not this part of it!

Oh well I've gone on long enough for this week.