The Glory and the Power

8 – 11 March 2011

On Tuesday the sun finally came out, although it was still very cold.  Dave couldn’t resist going to check the water heater, so we darted up there before going to the yard.  The sun was on the panel and warm water was coming out of the taps – glorious!

We started work in the yard, and realised we had left all the tools we needed back up on the land, so I went back for them.  I took this photo on the way up the hill, thinking how very Alpine it looked with snow on the peaks (if you ignore the olive trees in the foreground).

On Thursday we heard from Tina and Shrimpy that they were back, so after work we went to their place in Geni to pick up the batteries.  They are small but extremely heavy, 27 kilos each.  Dave and Shrimpy loaded the van, and then we sat in the evening sun and had a glass of Tina’s home brew.  This shouldn’t have been a problem, but may have contributed to what happened next.  While reversing down the hill, Dave missed the edge of the road and crunched down on to the chassis.  He couldn’t drive back out, Shrimpy’s van couldn’t pull him out, and in the end, we just had to build up the verge with big stones until he could get back onto the road.

Well, we weren’t going to get to the yard on Friday – not with those batteries begging to be installed.  We ran into Mad Robbie on the way, and he decided to come and see what we were up to.  Engineers, huh?  He was fascinated by the generator.  Still, if Bobstock is going to happen ...  Have I mentioned Bobstock?  You’ve heard of Woodstock.  We’ve got a field, and a stage, and power – so we have to have a concert: Nidristock, I thought.  Dave’s son Rob got hold of this idea and revised it – his birthday is on 8 April – lets have Bobstock!

The batteries fitted nicely into their box, and Dave started wiring.

Meanwhile, Michael and Alison and the kids were also set to move to Goat Bottom.  They had variously considered and rejected an old wooden boat and a Mongolian yurt, and had eventually settled on a Winnebago.  More practical, but less romantic.  The Winnebago was there on Friday morning – much huger than we could’ve imagined.  

They asked if they could bring in a ‘bobcat’ mini-digger to level the site.  Well, we’d had a digger put in our driveway and level the top edge of the field, so it didn’t seem right to refuse.  They also wanted to put in a soak-away for the toilet, as the Winne was equipped with a chemical toilet which isn’t very nice.   Apparently the bobcat could do that too. 

Kieran’s contribution to the building site.

Thirteen hundred hours on Friday 11^th: we have power.  It’s not easy to show electricity flowing – but that jigsaw was buzzing!

It was far too late to get motivated for the yard, so we stayed at Goat Bottom for the afternoon, too.  We built this plinth for the gas cooker to stand on and to store oven trays in.

Clean Monday

Monday 7 March 2011

We did some more on the land on Sunday, but Monday was a holiday.  The first day of Lent in the Greek Orthodox calendar is known as ‘Clean Monday’.  For some reason, this is a festival of kite flying.  We were invited with a group of friends to have a (non-Lenten) barbeque on a quiet beach in the Meganissey channel, and fly some kites. 

I wanted to buy one of the bright coloured kites in all the shops, but Dave had different ideas.  To the amazement of all, he produced a bin bag, two sticks of bamboo, some string and sticky tape and started to construct a kite from scratch.  The dogs were most fascinated, and kept trampling over the bin bag to inspect the sticks.

First attempt took off like a rocket, but nose-dived.

So Dave increased the length of the tail, and tied some paper bag bows into it, and tried again.

Here he is, controlling the kite with half a fishing rod and reel.  It flew brilliantly, fifty metres up, then the wind strengthened and a gust took it.  We last saw it disappearing into trees high up the hill.  A bit of littering, unfortunately, especially as I wanted to keep it.

Here we are, shivering a bit.  Someone phoned to say it was snowing in Karia – the village up in the mountains.  Very British, barbequeing in the cold.  Kelvin put his 4x4 where we could serve salad off the back and shelter the bbq.  But as the wind got up over the sea, we called it a day and went somewhere warm.

Inept Eco-warriors

Saturday 6 March 2011

Another day, another puzzle – on Saturday Dave started constructing the shower cubicle, as hot water might happen soon (if the sun would come out).  We’d cut costs on this one, and bought a folding plastic cubicle.  The instructions were in pictograms, and lacked something of detail, but eventually, after medium-level swearing and some hacksawing, it was constructed. 

It turns out to be more robust than expected, and has little magnetic strips where the doors meet, to give a good seal.

I reckoned it was time to start clearing the camper, so I got to work on folding and tying the tarpaulins, plastic sheeting and olive nets that were cluttering the interior.  The tarps went under the back of the truck, but the precious olive nets went into the shed loft space.   Which still left lots of room for anything else we want to store up there.

Happy with the shower enclosure, Dave suggested that we put both Howard’s sinks into the worktop in the camper.   A radical idea!  The worktop already had two smallish holes in it – one where a cooker had been and one for a tiny sink.  Our current apartment has a small sink, which is a constant annoyance: washing up creates so much splashing, you come away with a large damp patch at waist level.  Two big sinks – how wonderful!  I scrubbed them clean, Dave cut the two holes into one big one and we tried them for size.

We had to tear ourselves away at 5 ish, as we wanted to join the Carnival in Lefkas.   Some friends on Facebook had been talking about the proposed waste oil refinery in Vassiliki.   Apparently, despite years of struggle by the local ecological lobby, a licence had been granted to the refinery to start work.  As I understand it, the refinery accepts used machine oil and processes it, it also takes olive stones and crushes them for a low grade olive oil.  Both these operations release smoke and toxins into the environment, polluting the local water supply.  Why anyone would licence a factory of this nature in one of the world’s best windsurfing resorts is a mystery.   (Thinks ...) or could it be corruption ...?

So we wanted to join the protest, which involved dressing all in black, getting to Lefkas for 6 pm and joining the Carnival procession with whited out faces and red rimmed eyes.  We got to the appointed meeting spot in plenty of time, and found no-one there.  The Carnival had already started to move off, so we trotted quickly after it to find our group.  They weren’t at the end, where some floats were still waiting to start, so we moved on down the line.  We walked the length of the procession - inside the barriers as the crowd was too thick on the pavements – looking for them.  We weren’t made up – that was supposed to happen when we met them, but we were wearing black, and looking cool.  At least till we got to the very front float and I turned round to find that while I had escaped all the spray string and confetti, Dave was covered!

We made our way back, disappointed that we hadn’t had a chance to make our presence count.  Later we found out that the group had had a late flustered start and had joined the Carnival just before the final float at the last minute – after we had gone past.

Tap Water - what luxury!

Friday 5 March 2011

It was still raining, hurrah!  Off and on, anyway.  So we continued. 

Dave had to reopen the back of the shed to fix the leaking shower fittings.  This filled him with a calm sense of peace and fulfilment (?)

I built some shelves over the loo to move nails and screws out of the truck.

Dave finally made water fall out of the tap (rather than the pipe joints) - what luxury, no more visits to the standpipe to fill the kettle.

I brought this storage box from the apartment to see whether it would fit in the projected wardrobe space.  Look at that - magical!  The universe is unfolding as it should when something fits that neatly.  The metal to the left is the wheel arch, and therefore not easily shifted left a centimetre or two!