Fingers worn to the bone...

Sandra's Giant calzone pizza

 It's been a week of hard work and eating out this week.  Friday night Tree  & Mike had a going away party for a few friends, about 25 in all, at the taverna "Ola Kala" (All Good) in Nidri.  As usual, nothing was booked and so we arrived early with Mike and Tree to ensure that they could cope with such a large party at such short notice (about half an hour until everyone arrived) and yes they could but it would be a case of all the tables full of various meze's  (plates of mixed dishes) for starters and then more Meze's for mains to follow.  This was fine and the food was excellent, I would recommend going there to anyone.

Wild flowers down the roadside.

Saturday, we had been invited out by Vi & Les for whom I have been doing some work for installing their new Sky+ system, she is delighted to be able to watch UK TV again and even more so that she doesn't have to watch Corry at eleven o'clock at night and can just record it and watch the next day.  They insisted on taking us out for a meal as payment for the work as I wouldn't accept money seeing as paid work is something I used to do!  We went to the Italian in Nidri, see Sandra's pizza above, and had a great night, thanks L&V.

"Izola" with her clean bum!

 On Friday during the day Tony asked if I would help him clean and anti-foul the bottom of his little yacht "Izola".  It was gone Lunchtime when the yard lifted her out and we spent a hard afternoon scraping  her bum and got the first coat of paint on her before I had to leave to get ready for the night out which had been planned.  Anyway the weather forecast for the coming weekend was not good although Friday showed no signs of it deteriorating.  Saturday morning came it it was obvious that nothing was going to get done outside in fact the whole weekend was a bit of a washout, it seems that whenever the UK gets decent weather ours takes a downward turn.  Tony Managed to get another two or three coats on her on Monday but unfortunately we had already agreed to go and visit our friends in Assos, so I couldn't help him, poor old Tony all this work and no "little helper".

Me making sure they don't drop her whilst on the move.

The people at Assos were so pleased to see us it was like the return of the prodigal son.  We just seemed to have a parade of people coming up to us to shake hands and ask how we were doing and how were things on Lefkas, some of them had heard about the cart race and the injuries to Mark and the Greek boy so we had to try and explain all about that to them.  They all without exception asked us to pass on our best regards from them to Mark which is very nice when you consider they don't know either Mark or Maureen, so if you could do that Mo we would appreciate it.  Anyway after some shopping for Easter on the way back it was home to the sanctuary of Lefkas.

Safely in her natural element.

Tony rang Monday night to say that "Izola" was being launched again the next day and he would appreciate a hand again with cleaning the hull above the waterline and also getting her blue "go faster" stripes on.  So Tuesday it was back to the marina and more elbow grease required.  We cleaned off all the old adhesive from the old blue line which was a real trial and T-cut all the hull.  Fortunately Tony had bought a machine to take some of the strife out of this but nevertheless it was still a tall order to get it ready for the lift at 2:30pm.  Anyway we managed it and even managed to have half of shandy each before the crane arrived.  A right good time we've had doing it and not a sign of any osmosis in the old girl.

We had a few people around last night for an evening meal which Sandra prepared in her own inimitable style.  We'd like to thank you all for coming and hope you enjoyed all that home made fodder!

Just preparing now for the Easter festival which is the biggest annual event here in Greece.  All week we have heard various church services going on from one or another of the three churches here in the village but I'm sure there will be a tale to tell about that next week.