Saturday 20 January 2018

"Live long and prosper"

After three days of open windows and doors, and painting, the first part of the great work is finished. We awoke this morning to the task of putting our house back to the way we want it. It's all a bit strange as all the curtains were taken down and sent for cleaning, and with the blinds down and the net curtains sitting in front of them, the house has an echo with which we are not familiar. Every sound is amplified. Spooky.

The second stage - the installation of the wood burner - will take place at some stage in the near future (when the company who are installing it for us have finished their current jobs), and we look forward to that. We shall rearrange our sitting area as if the wood burner is there, so that there should be no great upheavals when that happens.

Two days of high winds and rain have caused the dogs to be a little twitchy (especially our foster puppy, Mister Sprout). We shall have to start putting appealing photographs and videos on Facebook in the hope that someone can offer him a permanent home. The difficulty will be appraising potential owners, as he has already been abandoned once in his short life. No doubt our chum, Ruby Pearl Evans, will be able to offer valuable advice. It would be heartbreaking if he was cast out again.

Blue skies and sunshine today suggest the storms of the last couple of days are over. But water is in desperately short supply, especially along the southern coastal region. Reservoirs are running very low there and rain, and then more rain, and even more rain, is needed. The thought of our government having to import water by tanker from Greece, as apparently happened in 2008, at great cost is awful to contemplate. And yet, everywhere we go, we see people hosing down their drives without a thought for this year. It would be easy to blame the Greek Cypriots for this profligacy, but I suspect that expat residents are equally thoughtless.

This weekend we are "in the bubble" to recover from the excitement of the last few days, and will raise our heads above the parapet on Monday. Until then, as the Vulcans say, "Live long and prosper."

Wednesday 17 January 2018

The "Magnum Opus" begins ...

Well it all started at 07.32 this morning when we saw Antreas' multi-coloured van coming up our long drive, followed by one of his guys in his car. We were, of course, up and dressed (surprising to those of you who know us), and organised after a fashion. Antreas told us that the work would take four days, and that tomorrow there would be a greater number of workers here.

We had chosen to have our bedroom done first, so that we had a secure base for the week. Daisy was in her "house" and behaved brilliantly for the whole day. Sprout was in various locations but survived the day with some dignity. Honey and Jaz pottered around, coming in and out at will, but we're not as distracted as we feared.

Work proceeded apace and Savvas and his Vietnamese girl arrived to remove the big curtains for cleaning, as they had been affected by the mould. He also sorted out a problem with "back washing" the pool, which saved calling out the pool man.

A phone call announced that our local log burner firm would be able to fit our log burner in the next few days. So, fingers crossed, all systems are go. We are taking the opportunity to rearrange furniture and have a clean in those parts which are not normally cleaned. The day was fine, although with all the windows open, and the kitchen door being opened and closed, it was quite brisk. By the close of play, when our guy left, we had to rapidly heat the house and take some alcohol on board.

We will find tomorrow more demanding as the forecast is a bit grim, and the guys will be working in our living area. We may decide to retire to bed, with the electric blanket on, and dogs and cats lurking  with us. But the end is nigh ... I trust.

Tuesday 16 January 2018

"Action this day"

Winston Churchill's famous comment on communication when he wanted something to happen urgently always strikes a chord when I hear it, and it is so apposite to those of us living in the land of "slowly ... slowly". A friend whose mother lives in Spain used to recount the story of "MaƱana" which translated literally means "tomorrow". She explained that it didn't mean that in Spain. It meant "Not today", which gave no promise to do something soon.

Well we have action on our damp, condensation and mould problems - which have worsened this year (despite the fact that we have had hardly any rain). A succession of experts have been up to the house, a civil engineer, the architect who "designed" the house, a builder, a decorator - in fact everyone except Uncle Tom Cobley. An absolute flurry. The end result is that we are getting action this week. The decorators are arriving tomorrow, to clean the mould and are then painting the whole of the interior with an anti-fungal paint. Demotronics, although at a date to be confirmed, are coming to clean and service the air conditioning system (this apparently can cause problems). And then the icing on the cake is that a local firm will come up and install a wood burning stove (a convector stove) which will give a dry heat and thus cause less condensation than our gas fire.

It is ironic in such a country with a warm climate that these problems should arise for three months of every year. Many times it is warmer outside than inside, and so the wood burning stove will be a real boon. It is being fitted into our fireplace which should look good as well. As I barrow the logs from the drive to our storage area I shall be singing "I'm a lumberjack, and I'm okay". Perhaps a rugged checked shirt might be necessary.

"What price salvation now?" as George Bernard Shaw wrote years ago. Well the cry might as well go up "What price a damp course?" as they seem to be almost unknown here. We are told that this should resolve the problem. If it doesn't, the next step is proper double glazing. It's like setting fire to a vast pile of Euros. And that might keep us warm ...