Chilli day
Tuesday 31st January 2023
I had some lovely news the other day. Two friends from the UK are hopefully coming over in March. It’s probably not the ideal time to come, the weather won’t be super warm, but the timing are really down to their other commitments. I am helping them sort out getting here, the ferry schedules for the so called slower ferries are not known yet, but are expected to be what they are now. The faster ferry schedules are known.
Photo Interlude - Hora this morning
I checked my Greek numbers from one to ten today and they seem to have stuck. Of course that’s not the end of it, but it’s a start. I am going to start on the Part five of the Michel Thomas today. With all the other things going on, I have had to give the Wordle quiz a miss. It’s quite crazy in a way, but I don’t actually have spare time with all my other activities. However I am not going around like a working dervish, but I think I spend enough time on this iPad.
On the guitar front, my two chord change is sounding a bit more like the Horse with no name. Unfortunately I removed a load of rubbish by a partially ruined Taverna in Hora yesterday and despite using gloves, the tips of my fingers are a bit sore and not able to hold the strings down so well. But the next page of the book has a three finger chord which is just an additional string to hold down to one of the chords on the HWNN excerpt. This then gives me a total of four chords which can be changed by moving one finger, ( the pivot finger ) between each, if you change to each in the right order. These changes are good for my confidence and I can strum away moving one finger going through the four chords.
I was thinking about the ruined buildings you see around here and often you see canes in the rubble. It’s obvious what they are doing there when you look at buildings that haven’t been refurbished like the ceiling of Marinos coffee bar. The ceiling has canes visible. Some friends who own a house here, have canes visible in their house, and they told me it’s part of the ceiling structure. Of course modern day buildings are just concrete, so the canes are not used in construction anymore, but there are lots of canes still growing about. The canes are usually varnished, and are decorative but I imagine with their air pockets the canes act as good insulation.
Marinos coffee bar ceiling.
I went to Marinos a bit late as I wanted to do some Greek and guitar before setting out and I did not feed the cats this morning. I said to him “I arrive late” in Greek, my late wasn’t said very well. He saw my shorts and told me off, as he does and I said “not cold” in Greek. I then sat down, I was the only one there. There was something on the TV in a harbour, he said it was a plane, coming down I will have to check the news. He gave me a mandarin, he said it was from his garden, he has some ground with trees growing in Livadi. You don’t see fruit trees in Hora, silly me. We then looked at the photos in the coffee bar, I had seen the one of his dad and grandfather, he showed me ones with his mother in. I pointed out his grandad was in shorts! There was a photo of where my house is and the Taverna, there were more windmills then, and I could not see either my house or the Taverna. I told him using google translate that I was checking on a friends house. ( he knows them )
I walked down to my friends house, then took the alternative path to the school. It was nice down the track not windy but not super warm. As I passed the distribution centre in the industrial estate they were clearly getting ready for a ferry, and sure enough Artemis is coming in.
In Grans I managed to count from one to ten, for them, just a bit of pronunciation work to do. The young girl said her daughter who is three could do that. That blew my bubble! I did use a few other words. I just need to stop and think, can I say this in Greek first? With my sandwich and coffee in hand I went to the port where the Artemis was about to leave.
Photo Interlude - Can you see. The butterfly?
The reason I did not feed the cats the morning, is my lot are going up to my friends house where because other people are not there to feed cats, a lot of the stray cats are going to be fed. ( they know where my friend lives ) There must be at least twenty’s there now. So the idea is my friend is going to try and get the cats I am feeding to get used to being fed where I am trying to feed them. Once they get back to doing this hopefully I can resume.
I did the first chapter of the Part five of the course, most of it is revision except of the introduction of the word kalos, which is the male version of kalo (good). I then saw the lady who does Greek language tutoring here, I have only met her a couple of times, she had a woolly hat on so I did not recognise her. When I was in Grans I also saw the lady who walked past my door on the way to the Taverna when it was open, I had not seen her close up before, I saw her husband in his truck earlier today, he waved at me.
One of my friends is being super proactive with my Greek learning. I think I mentioned they are sending me voice messages and texts of Greek to translate, but they are now wanting me to do the same in reverse. So I sent them a stock Greek course questions, “ when do you eat at the taverna, it’s always open, it’s always good and it’s nearby”.
In the afternoon I went to visit the lady who has the dog rescue place on the island. Before I walked up there, I did the next refresher chapter in the Part five of the course, I think the following chapter has new things in it. I saw the lady and her four dogs in her house half way up the Hora mountain. Her daughter was there too. Her dogs she has at the house are all rescues from the island. She then has the others at a place further away. We discussed all sorts of things in front of a lovely log burner she brought over, from Switzerland, which heats her house. She has a lovely house, traditional and beautifully decorated.the dogs had all enjoyed a walk with her and were sleeping around her happily. I will start feeding the car park cats from tomorrow. Her daughter drove me, the sackful of cat food and the other bits I need up to my house. I promised as soon as I get my wheels back to go and see the rescue dogs and go out with her and have a walk with them. It was a perfect end to a lovely day, I still have a chat with my old work colleague and a portion of chilli I have bubbling away right now.
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