Heading towards Easter

 

While the UK enjoys its last day of the Easter holiday, we are heading towards our own. I am going to an Easter Sunday meal with friends, I also hope to observe many of the things that happen over here too. The so called “Jet” boats are now coming here, to bring people to the island in half the time it takes the slower traditional ferries that have been running all year. I think on Sunday there won’t be any ferries at all.

I fed the cats, not so many of them today, the numbers of them ebbs and flows, with no reason that I can fathom at all. I have made some covers for the food out of huge plastic buckets that hold paint and get thrown away. I also found a small bookshelf and used that to protect the dry food. I few old frying pans are in use too, to try and give the cats more space and avoid fights. 

At the coffee shop, it wasn’t super busy, the guy I met on the beach, he said something to me, asking why I wasn’t with my Dog Palace friend, I said I would be there Wednesday and Thursday, in Greek. I think there is a fascination with how I am surviving here, I don’t clearly work, and for fun, they said I could work in Marinos’s garden. He wasn’t involved in this conversation however! I was showed a video of someone using the implement they use to turn over the ground, it’s not like a spade, it’s more like a pick axe. I said “no” in Greek, and I asked what the hourly rate was by means of Google Translate. They said two euros, I said “no” again! I told them I get lunch at the Dog Palace and I showed them my walking history when I am up at the Palace. It’s all in fun.

You don’t get many females at the Shop, so it was nice to see the lady who serves at the next door supermarket coming in for a coffee and a sneaky cigarette. There are signs saying no smoking which are ignored! I usually munch the ice cubes at the bottom of my cold coffee, they are covered in creamy coffee, what a waste not to enjoy them. That made them laugh too. 

Today it’s a quiet day, on my own, the sheets are in the washing machine. I am meeting my friend for dinner, who runs a shop here in the summer, they are here for a few days to organise a few things, before going back to Athens for more preparation work there. I want to do a bit more Greek, and I hope to find time to start to read the first of three books A Time of Gifts by Paddy Leigh Fermor. I plan to walk to Livadi and come back by way of the reservoir.