Blowin' in the Wind

Well, the weather a couple of nights ago was not just wild, it was really wild. It was blowing a gale for most of the night, but at something around 2.30am we were lying awake listening to things banging and bumping outside, accompanied too by the sound of hailstones and vicious gusts when, as per usual in such conditions, the power went out again. There was no way we were going to open the front door to take a peek, so we just vainly tried to get back to sleep, but it ain't that easy when the thunder and lightning gives you the distinct impression that someone's banging a collection of dustbin lids right outside your window and the lightning flashes are so bright that you also half-expect to hear a voice coming over a bullhorn saying "Come on out, you're surrounded, give yourselves up!"

Fortunately, by the time we got up next morning, the power was back on and so we weren't going to have to endure another 15 hour outage like the previous time, a few days before. We ventured outside and there it was, the evidence that we'd had the worst storm in over nine years of living here. Smashed terracotta ridge tiles from the roof were lying around the tiled path beside the house. 

How those tiles, in falling around fifteen feet, didn't smash the floor tiles, is a mystery to me, but one I'm glad to ponder on. Anyway, I won't go into the rest of this story too much, only to say that on two separate ridges of the villa roof there were ridge tiles missing. Could have been a lot worse. The roofing tiles themselves had clung on without further damage and, after a quick phone call to the local builders' yard, where they guy knows me quite well, we were given a phone number for a repair man, who as it turned out was someone we'd known a few years ago. Yesterday he turned up at the crack of dawn, quoted a more than reasonable price for fixing the damage and, by lunchttime had finished the job. 

Y'know, it's when you get a result like that you have to take issue with those who generalise about the Greeks and say that they're all lazy, or that they never come when they say they will. We were well impressed by the  prompt service and by the quality of the repair too. A result!

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Moving swiftly on, I've been at it again recently with the old iPad and the digital camera. So, once again folks, if you'd like to see how things are looking in December in this part of Rhodes, your luck's in. Here, in no particular order, are some recent shots...

Lardos beach, Friday December 12th, late morning

A Lindos corner, quite a few more follow below too. All Lindos village shots taken Saturday morning December 13th. Temperature around 19ºC

Lardos Beach, same time as the other Lardos one above. Told you they were in no particular order! Seeing the sea like this is great, but it makes it hard to imagine how different the beach looks during the season, with rows of umbrella strewn all along it.

Seashore between Lardos Beach and Glystra Beach, near what's locally known as Lardos Limani [port].

A Mediterranean Toad, we used to see a lot of them, then they kind of disappeared. So we've been excited to see this one on our doorstep after dark on several evenings of late. They're great 'cos they eat the creepy crawlies!!

When we first moved out here we were bemused to see oil lamps on sale in all the supermarkets. Can you imagine that in the UK? Now we know why they're there, ...and we have three in the house!!

This one of Lindos Acropolis is about a month old. Just didn't have the appropriate occasion to post it.

OK, so this is the first a a bunch more of the Lindos photos from Saturday morning, December 13th. So I won't necessarily caption them all.

Know where this is? Looks a lot different now from during the season. In fact it's the terrace of the "Rainbird" Bar, which features in The View From Kleoboulos, which just so happens to be on offer as a Kindle download from Amazon from Monday 15th December for 7 days - only 99p inc VAT folks!!

I love the greenery at this time of the year. The rains are truly a blessing. Plus the wild anemones are all coming out again now and they're everywhere along the roadsides. I'll try and snap a few shots of them soon.

You want "relaxed"? I'll show you "relaxed"!

[I'm sure you don't need telling by now, but clicking on any of the images will give you a larger view. Then (in most browsers) right-clicking (maybe ctrl-click on some Macs) will give you an even larger view than that]