Cold, Hot then Cold again.,.

 Sunday 15th January 2023

This morning was my first feeding of my friends cats, to give them a bit of help. Not surprisingly the cats  were a bit surprised at my arrival, and even though I put the food out, they really did not look at it, or let me get close. But this happened when I started feeding them, when my friend went away for a holiday. My friend has given me some tips, on how to win them over. The kittens have grown a lot now and the one I called cry baby has a lovely coat. 

Everything apart from  Marinos’s coffee shop, is closed today, the supermarkets will be closed in Livadi too. Eventually  things will come back to life, as the year goes on, but for now this quiet feeling to the place, reminds me of when I was a young boy, in a small town in Norfolk, which had half day closing and was certainly closed up on Sundays. I decided to pop down to check on one of my friends house and open it up and check for any problems,  there weren’t any. I also fed some stray cats that they feed too. This meant that my walk down to Livadi from Hora took a slightly different route, I love this little garden that you see on the way.

As I looked down to the port, I could see another ship coming in. It turned out to be a different type of fuel vessel, it was already unloading by the time I got down to the port, and when I was walking back up, the other one departed.

I rejoined the main path down by the school and war memorial. The Laurel wreaths on the memorial are looking a bit sad now, all brown and dried up. I got a different view of the school from the memorial garden.

As I crossed the road, by the other school, Father Daniel was getting out of his car, I said hello, in Greek, he returned the greeting and said Kala to me which can be used as a  question, are you ok. I returned Kala, a Poly Kala might have been better, in other words, very good. Not far from here, I saw some little birds, they were standing in a rock, and I had just time to see they had little crests on their heads, they were brown all over. There was no hope of photographing them unfortunately. It was very quiet, apart from a pneumatic drill on a building site somewhere in this area.

Further down, I spotted one of those bulbs that are growing here, most just have leaves on and last years brown and dried up flower stem. But this one is in full sun all day, has flower buds, so hopefully it won’t be long before they open up and reveal the flower!

On the path down, I was getting really hot, my fleece was off, and I wish I had shorts on. But it was positively freezing up in Hora and by the port it wasn’t too warm either. Looking at Hora, there was some really dark clouds, I was in fear for my washing! I bought myself a pie and a drink and consumed both. Meanwhile the Artemis turned up in the port, so there were three vessels in the port at  once. As I got close the Artemis, I saw my Taverna owner who works for the electric company in his truck and we said hello and shook hands. 

I decided to go through the next chapter of the Greek course, in the shelter and it’s all about eating and drinking words. The word for I drink is Pino which is very apt. After the chapter I started to walk back up. One garden I saw had a huge bush with loads of what looked like chilli peppers on it, it was in a very sheltered sunny position. I was then looking at some huge oranges, they weren’t ready, as they were yellow, then one of my friends from yesterday turned up and we had a chat about yesterday and the oranges. I said I was going to keep an eye on them, my friend said very often the fruit are left to fall and rot and are not used, which is a shame. There were some flowers on the tree too. My friend was off to the beach taverna for their Sunday lunch. I continued my way up. This tree, on the same plot has an amazing number of lemons on it

Near Hora, I saw one of my friends from the Medical Centre, unfortunately they were driving, but gave me an enthusiastic wave. When I got back home, I got most of the washing in, will try some more Greek, and guitar. It’s a meal from the freezer tonight.