Bad luck comes in threes?

 Saturday 7th January 2023

btw I am not being flippant, I know there are a lot of people in a worse situation than myself, due to no fault of there own

So yesterday I asked two of my friends wether they knew why a young girl with a triangle knocked on my door on January 5th. As both of them have lived here a lot longer than me, they knew the answer of course. The answer is Kalanda Day The day children go round, singing carols accompanied by a triangle, which can be on different days including the evening of the fifth of January. The idea is they sing a Carol and you give them money. The interesting thing is why she was doing up here in the first place? All the other houses up here are empty, and this one was until the other day. Maybe her parents know me and it was suggested that she go up and sing me a song. I hope she understood my apology and my explanation that I don’t speak much Greek. I feel a bit bad about it, well I know now.

Photo Interlude - Boat photo from yesterday, nice reflection I thought.

The Thai curry I photographed for yesterdays blog did not turn out so well after all. So just before my friend turned up yesterday, I heated it up, to warm it through. While I was waiting for my friend to appear, I looked at it. There was an oily scum on the surface. It also tasted not so good. So when my friend appeared, I asked them to taste it and I said please be honest. They agreed with me. So we went to the Taverna by the beach, that we went to before, and I drove there. Another friend of ours was on the beach, and he joined us. We had a lovely meal, thank goodness, I had the Horta leaves for the first time, they are a bit like Spinach. I actually understood, quite a lot of what was said to the owner of the Taverna and her husband. They gave us some little Christmas cakes when we left, that I have had before. So my theory about the meal, is when I heated it up, I overheated it, so it bubbled away for too long and the coconut milk split, hence the oily scum. I have used this Thai paste before and it was ok. So maybe next time I will make the curry for myself and see what happens. I have used that brand of coconut milk before and it was ok.

Video Interlude - I got this present from a friend yesterday, it’s in my window at the house. It’s behind the insect screen, so she looks like she is in prison bless her!

When I met my friend yesterday, I reflected on my bad luck on the meal and that in the UK, we have this thing about bad luck coming in threes.  Well wether you believe in that or not, another event happened to me in the middle of the night. I was aware as I lay there that I could hear the sound of running water. We were not forecast rain, so I got up to investigate. It did not take long to realise that the water was coming out of the hot water side of the shower mixer tap. I tried to stem the flow of water with a couple of things, but it made no difference. The water is heated by a solar panel on the roof and I went up there, torch in hand to see if there was a tap, that I could turn to stop the flow of water. When I was on the roof, I could see the pipes to and from the solar panel and its tank. It looked like the hot water feed to the house had a tap on it, so I turned it. I went down back into the house and the shower was now silent. Phew! Of course this means all my hot water has gone down the plug hole, but that will be fixed by today. Having a shower might be a bit tricky as most of the water will leak out of the tap. But I have sent a message to the landlord and hopefully he will come soon.

Photo Interlude - Classroom for Greek Revision

So today is an enforced day off, no driving, just sitting on the roof. I am doing some Greek revision. While doing this a lorry came trundling up the track, then could not get further because there were building materials on the track. It turned round. A bit later on, the owner of the taverna turned up. The lorry was there to scoop even more rocks that have been excavated out, from his renovations. He moved all the materials out of the way. I said hello to him, he did the Greek “how are you doing” and I eventually replied with the usual “very well”, which means all is very good. I then said to him “ I speak a little Greek”, he replied “I speak a little English”, he actually used the word for little that  I have been told not to use, so it just shows you how varied the language is, and how those five million words are the potential for a lot of confusion for us Brits. 

Some good news, when I fed the stray cats today, the fluffy one known as Alina has now reappeared and both stray cats my friend feeds when she is here on the island, are now by her house. Alina, unlike the other one is quite happy to have a cuddle, Meli is a bit more timid.

It’s trousers day today, having washed and dried my smalls, T-shirts and shorts, the washing machine has washed the trousers I took to Sifnos, tomorrow will be polo shirts day. Even with the cloud, it’s still warm and washing is dry by midday. There is a bit of wind up here, as usual. My final household job of the week has been to use the one part bleach to three parts water solution, to wash the small amount of mould I have on my walls away, the recipe provided by my friend who I went out to lunch with yesterday. Unfortunately all the yummy scones that they gave to me yesterday have all been eaten, a similar situation to that what used to happen when I lived in the UK and my neighbours gave me treats like these…

Finally, it looks like tomorrow when I go out, I will get to see the garden that  I may end up using for growing things for myself, the owner of the land and my friend, who is friend of us both.