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thing is with pools you spend more time cleaning them than you do in them….

swallows are all well and good outside swooping about eating bugs and being wonderful.. but inside they are somewhat of a pain..i dont mind the geko’s that live up the chimney.they dont make much noise..occasional squeak and only come out at night to snack on insects.. but this swallow keeps getting stuck in the living room..swooping about in semi panicky way and adorning my floor with partly digested mozzies.. 2 hours i have been trying to persuade the thing to leave but to no avail.. now working on a recipe  for swallow souvlaki.. well here animal rights aren’t quite the same.. one of my neighbours told me that when his friend shot one of the elanora’s falcons its stomach was full of bees! i couldnt understand the reason given for the shooting but in england he would have a vegan encampment outside his house by now throwing petrol bombs …things are different here…!

  so the cultivated flowers are doing almost as well as the wild ones in the garden and as far as wildlife goes at last i got a snap of the strangely crested hoopoe bird.. next will be the quest to get it with crest en flagrent…and this i think is a geko called kotschkis geko or something similar, the one that lives in the chimney is  i think a turkish geko and is the colour of elastoplast…i will try and photograph its nocturnal hunts..

the swallows whom nested in the downstairs bedroom last year returned and re-nested in the basement-as the presence of doors and windows thwarted their return,so as we started with 2 birds we now have an entire flock- between 20-25 of them difficult to count as they fly so quickly. Every evening they perform around the pool an amazing acrobatic show which includes them sipping from the pool in the manner of firebrigade planes collecting water from the sea.not sure what drinking chlorinated water does for them but they seem to like it,and they also reduce the mozzie population as the dip and dive around the house. not to many mozzies around-maybe thats why- the young ones arent always as adept as their parents though -i suppose its a training flight -and as they dip for water they sometimes get it wrong and crash!I will try and take some more photos before they leave but they are so fast i am shooting at 8000th of a second and still getting movement on some of them.Sometimes the sky above the pool is full of birds like swallow wallpaper-will try and capture it.

so the first splash in the pool its on and working,there is a bit of a leak coming into the cellar from around the pool cleaner inlet and somehow they have managed not to put a waste water pipe from the filter to the outside …….but in general it works and with a mad 2 weeks of activity the house is just about ready,so a french family who’s house isn’t complete move in for the month to see how renting goes.The outside work isnt finished but inside bar some painting and shelves etc is finished.I even managed to construct the wardrobe for the downstairs bedroom -a task of herculean proportions-i never liked making models when i was  a kid and this was a nightmare-still its there and looks ok. the living room is set up as is the kitchen and even at the very last minute managed to get some bamboo matting to shade the living room terrace.so finished with 10 minutes to spare.as usual. That was 2 weeks ago and everything seems ok just had a day on the phone with the plumber as the french people reported the pol wasnt working. i had great difficulty persuading the plumber that there should be more water in the pool-evaporation and leak- as he kept saying the pool is full but of course needs to be more than full to get the water to go over the end wall-still eventually persuaded him there wasnt a problem with the pump and he refilled it and-its works fine now.so we hope the next 2 weeks remains calm.before i left the normal buzzards which soar around the house had been replaced by 3 pairs of ellanoras falcons which are beautiful but i wonder where the buzzards are?

one of the big things in Greece is water,the people speak of it as the french do wine,its the basis of life and it is a joy-except when you dont have any. So with not being able to empty the pool until pipes were fixed -cant leave it empty in the sun- i couldnt use the water for anything but garden purposes which is fine as i have put about 30 tons of water on the new trees and plants which will hopefully get them through the drought period. The roof collected about 50 tons into the tank(sterna) but of course that is in use by the house on a constant basis so its down to about 25-30 tons now. and of course the pool needs about 60 tons. so to fill the sterna and the pool need in excess of 100tons. It sounds a lot but the average person in greece uses a ton(1cubicmeter) a week and of course in places like the usa domestic use is over triple that. Its 20€ a ton to have water delivered.so i decided to try and get the water from the spring down the road.Lividaki is its name and its famous for being the best water this end of the island-better than bottled all the old boys say- and also in full flow in june. The beaches below the house have had waterfalls and springs on them until just a couple of weeks ago and there are many cold water outlets under the sea. So there is no shortage of water just have to stop it running away. Also a family have a small cottage about 3 minutes down the road and he has a pipe up to his house from the spring.but i havent seen them around all year. So i hatched a plot with nicos the plumber as it turns out he was at school with the wife from the cottage so he was to ask if we could add on to their system. Eventually he found the man(Lakis) and he agreed a pump was ordered from athens and we set it all up. First we had no luck at all but discovered that some hunters had managed to pepper Lakis’s pipe with shot so eventually we replaced pipe all the way and after 1 1/2 days toing and frowing managed to get it working. So i am drawing approx 400 litres per hour up 300 meteres of pipe and after 3 days the pool is half full. Just bumped into lakis this morning though-very nice man- and he says that we have put our pipe slightly off his land onto a neighbours land(how can you tell there are no mrakers!) and that he is a difficult character so may have to get the boys out and move the pipe.The water is beautiful though and its a bit odd to have a pool full of spring water a bit cleopatra-ish!

time to go home .2 months since i left home to drive down i have to go back for a job.the house is now lockable only the last fit of the electrics to do,finish the balcony .then painting finishing etc etc… 1 year 1 month and 2 weeks since we started.!

the time has come to choose the paint so here is top choice at the end of the colour chart a bluey greyey chalki colour…. and meantime the stone is up in the living room and tomoroow the mt athos grouting begins.it will be much lighter making it all feel more in keeping ..

The unusual testing method of putting a spaniel on your floor stone has been tried out for the first time in agios georgios today! we started to lay out patterns of the floor stone and had a very greek half hour discussion about where the lines should be joined by a guy from up the hill spiros who spend s half the day in my house watching the goings on . eventually we all decided that the idea was stone is a natural and variable thing so nothing should be  in precise order which is what i wanted so i am glad we agreed! the spaniel certainly liked the stone found it cool to the touch and was happy to roll on it so presumably my basil dog will also be approving! i now have two teams on the go yannis’s boys and mikhalis from glossa he has the worlds oldest cement mixer which makes a terrible noise and they all shout anyway so its bedlam …and hot hopefully cooler tomorrow so yannis can start plastering tje pool while the others get on with the floor stone. the doors and windows guy just announced they wont be ready till the 20th july 3 weeks late so i am trying to push him for 15th coz i am supposed to be in finland on the 18th…i think its alosing battle but nil desperandum am planning to move in soon as upstairs finished maybe next week….

At last the first roof goes on and making them cut the mistaken ceiling out seems all worthwhile! meanwhile i have been laid out with a chest infection in the uk and then i had an alergic reaction to the antibiotics- so now i am 2 weeks late have to rush down to greece and get things under control ,the stone floor isnt ordered yet and such a lot not sorted i just havent been able to do anything! First time i have been ill like this for maybe 20 years ! Still this beautiful bedroom ceiling makes it all worthwhile ,all that cutting out when they mistakenly filled with concrete is now justified! yannis is started on the main living room ceiling now and that should be great 6.5 meter chestnut beams -cant wait to get there feels like months since ive been there and the weather has been amazing too. cant wait to get out of freezing england. So tomorrow i drive down taking lots of fittings for the bathrooms and ither stuff which is much cheaper in the uk especially now the pound is almost on level with the ruppee!