Casualties of Wall

Dinner was great. Marjory and Adrian, the couple who we went to have dinner with, both looked great, and it was lovely to see them again. Typical that Marjory, who I adore, was just off back to England as we've barely begun our holiday, but it was so nice to see them before they went. Jane and Barry were there too, and we had a nice dinner.

I had my first Goges of this trip. Goges is a local speciality pasta dish, which essentially consists of hand-rolled pasta covered in a local cheese that is similar to Parmesan, and olive oil. It's very light for pasta, and though rich is a favourite of mine. I noticed the new supermarket sells them, so Chris is going to put his own spin on them one night this week.

Yesterday morning we went to the beach, had a lovely lunch, courtesy of Chris (basil, tomato, Mozzarella, and propera, my favourite Greek bread), and wondered at the amazing progress the men have made on the boundary wall. I'll post pictures at some point.

The contractor is wonderful. He's a cousin, and is the most lovely man. He turns up each morning looking very spruce. He works in nice shirts and jeans, and gets progressively dirtier throughout his really strenuous working day, but still doesn't look like a builder at the end. He built the house, and is incredibly methodical and conscientious, so he's a bit special in a country that has a most slap-dash building industry.

His wife is a very warm, pretty woman, who comes up every day with food and drinks for the men, and strongly resembles Rachel, though isn't as beautiful. She's very nice though, and I can't help feeling an affection for her, because of her Rachel-ness!

Unfortunately we have had a casualty of the landscaping. A wild fig tree, which was a very pretty and useful (when the sun is setting) screen, lost too many roots in the preparation for the wall to go up, and blew over the afternoon before last. It's sad, as we all liked it, but now it's gone we get a stunning view of one of the huge limestone peaks that surround the village. Once a pull-down sun screen is fitted to the north-westerly side of the terrace the tree's screening function won't be needed anyway, so the glass is most definitely half full.

Poor old Chris spent ages on the phone to Greg last night, as they sorted out the fall-out from a power-cut at home. Some of the systems we're running out of our server room are not tolerant of interruption to power, and Chris says that the cut we had was too long for a UPS (emergency power unit) to have prevented this, but I'm thinking we should get one anyway. Greg obviously did the trick and everything seems to be running smoothly now.

This morning the green grocer's truck comes, so we'll go down to the beach a bit later. Chris has an online appointment at 9 AM, so his sleep-in won't be as long as I'd like, but at least he can have a siesta this afternoon.