The ten days…

 

This morning after a stormy evening and before another deluge, as I walked down to feed the cats, there was a horizontal gap between the clouds on the horizon. In this gap the sun was rising and it was just about to be obscured again by the upper layer of clouds.  Another few minutes and I would have missed this shot. The sunrises here are very variable at this time of the year. I make no apologies for posting this photo, as it seems different from any I have snapped so far.

I decided as it was going to rain to drive the car out of the car park after feeding the cats, and park by the Coffee Shop. As I walked towards it, I met the guy who helped me yesterday at the hardware shop. I wanted to fix the door handle of my friends house that I am looking after, as it had fallen off when I closed the door the other day. The guy tried really hard to get screws to make the handle secure but his efforts were in vain, so I bought a new handle. I fitted it yesterday, the paint on the door now needs touching up. I showed him the photo of the door and thanked him again. He said “Bravo”, and also said that it looked good.

When you arrive at the shop, the first thing you get is a glass of water. When mine arrived I could understand Marinos when he said that I should sit in another place as I might get cold, sitting next to the door, I heard the word for “cold” and “there” and  I moved. When the coffee arrived I had three Euros ready but the payment was refused. Marinos counted to ten and said my friends name. The penny then dropped. Yesterday I had paid for my friends coffee when we met in Livadi, despite them warning me not to! This was their way of getting back to me but by a multiple of ten. Using Google Translate I explained this to Marinos and the guy next to me, and like me they could not understand why a payment of one coffee was inflated to ten here. I said I did not understand in Greek too. It is very funny. Later on Marinos showed me a slip of paper, with ten numbers on, with the first crossed out, he counted through them using the days of the week, which I now know thankfully. I told them both I was seeing this friend later on!

The incoming rain was on everybody’s mind, with some of them popping out and looking at the weather. The rain is coming from the mountain behind my house, and heading onto Sifnos. As I type this, in my house it’s chucking it down. I parked my car right outside my front door ready for seeing my friend later on.

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