Oh no it isn't....

Newly sanded woodwork.

 The first thing we noticed on returning home from Cyprus was that all our outside woodwork, which was a bit shabby, had been rubbed down ready for painting with wood preservative.  It had been done previously with varnish but this was peeling and allowing the wood underneath to turn black with the moisture.

Orange tree - a shadow of it's former self!

Tree and Mike, our landlords, had employed Spiros in the village to sand back to good wood all over while we were absent so the muck and dust didn't trample into the house, very thoughtful of them.  Mike has provided the new stain so on Sunday I started to paint it all, unfortunately the weather has not been good enough since so the staircase remains in it's nude state at the moment but as soon as it improves we will get that finished.

We have also given the Orange tree it's spring prune, quite a severe haircut really but it needed it.  It was blocking out all the sunlight from Liz's apartment below us but now she'll need some sunscreens to make up for it.  The downside will be that we will not get many oranges this year but we have salvaged what was left on the tree and made some more marmalade, orange curd and juiced the rest.

Audience at Cinderella. 

Anton AKA Tree.

 Saturday night was the last night of the NIVADS (Nidri Very Amateur Dramatics Society) annual pantomime presentation.  It was excellent and hugely acclaimed by all.  The story of Cinderella with a very localised twist to it.  Held at Vliho Yacht Club as usual the evening started with an excellent meal from the Yacht clubs new chef followed by two hours

of really first rate entertainment, oh no it wasn't....

"Tom" the Purrrfect cat.

Cinders and the mice, brilliant. 

All of the cast and crew deserved the rapturous applause when the curtain fell but I think a special mention must go to Cinders (Ciara) for her lovely singing voice and the mice (Hannah, Thailia, Cassandra & Sarah) because we have never seen cuter or more talkative ones.   Well done everyone we look forward to next years event.

Hopefully the weather is going to improve soon as we will soon have to buy some more heating oil and I was hoping that this could wait until next month but that may now be the case we are also beginning to run short of fire wood so we may need another load of that before many more cold days are up but what the hell it's only money and we are not going to be cold for the sake of a little fuel.