Here in Messolonghi, winter life trundles along. I know that you all think that we are on permanent holiday and party day and night, well, in between all the parties, life here is busy and quite 'normal' -- dominated by school and work. We are up early (the alarm goes off at 06:45 to get the children to school by bike by 08:00) and we eat supper relatively early to get B&B in bed at a decent time to get up early… you know the routine. They still seem to be enjoying school, and have brought home friends to play and the odd cold. School was shut for a week as so many children were off with colds and ‘flu. We are keeping an eye on the global swine ‘flu situation – Greece doesn't seem to be too badly affected at the moment.

I am busy with writing projects, David is working on boat jobs. He got the split fuel tank out (it took 4 blokes to wiggle it out of the hole) and managed to get it welded, saving us about 1000 Euros on a new one custom made to fit through the hole and into the available space.

How many blokes do you think we can fit into CAPE’s engine room?

However, it isn’t all sun and games and some bits of boatie life here are not so pleasant. [Look away now Jenny, I’m going to talk toilets.] Unfortunately the marina facilities haven’t progressed at all, and the limited facilities that we have are not being maintained – getting a hot shower is a bit of a lottery because the marina owner won’t leave the hot water heater on, and the toilets back up onto the loo floor and into the showers (apparently this is not a problem). The sewerage is being pumped somewhere out of sight and out of mind but not out of scent range, and all complaints are met with verbal abuse – it is so nice to be a valued customer! Luckily, most of the liveaboards are pulling together in spite of the poo, and we are having a great time; the town is brilliant and the locals really friendly, making up for the other stuff – at the moment anyway. Watch this space.

In the weather department, we had a couple of weeks of constant thunderstorms, wind and rain – a whole winter’s worth of rain apparently (which added to the backflow problems in the marina). The weather has now settled again, with (mostly) sunny days, and although the wasps have finally given up and died, the mozzies are still pretty persistent. It sometimes drops to about 5°C overnight – the Greek ski resorts (Greece’s best-kept secret) opened about a month ago, and we can see snow on the mountains of the Peloponnese, across the Gulf of Patras to the south east.

Snow on the mountains of the Peleponnese.

On the food front

The BBQs continue. We finally managed to eat all of that fish. The first week we had BBQ'd mullet, then mullet fishcakes, followed by mullet and lemon pate, with some frozen for next time. What we didn’t cook the first week was frozen and it reappeared at the next BBQ, followed by more mullet and lemon pate...

We have themed food evenings in the clubhouse – we have had a Curry Night and French Cuisine so far, with an Oriental Food Evening lined up for this week. We did chicken with 40 garlic cloves (poulet a quarante gousses d'ail) for the French night – you could probably smell us from the UK the next day!

Curry Night after the locusts had passed through.

French Cuisine.

Music, Greek and games

We have the option to do Greek lessons on Wednesdays and Fridays, French conversation, Tai Chi-type stuff, aerobics and circuits every week, Stitch and Bitch sessions (sorry, never been, don’t know), Scottish country dancing, a games night (board and card games) and the odd Karaoke here and there if there is a spare evening. No we don’t go to everything – there just aren’t enough hours in a day!

Gettin’ into the groove.

Bethany and Bryn getting their first taste of Karaoke.

The Karaoke went down well, even if we sang some numbers a little too enthusiastically.

The music group is going from strength to strength, with Paul and Hilary (PAX NOSTRUM) doing a great job keeping us all in line, in tune and equipped with words, chords and inspiration. We have half a dozen guitars, a banjo and a banjolele (a four-stringed instrument with a small banjo-type body and a fretted ukulele neck, so Wikipedia says), an accordion and a squeeze box, harmonicas, bongo drums, a clarinet and penny whistles. We get together for a workshop on Saturday afternoons and a jam session on Wednesday evenings. Bryn and David are working on their guitars, Beth is working on her penny whistle, and I've dusted off my vocal cords and dug out all the old folk stuff that I sang at school and then at uni. Our repertoire is growing, so we’ll be able to busk if things ever get really bad -- Sailing, Knockin on Heaven's Door, Blowing in the Wind, Scarborough Fair, Streets of London, The Blackleg Miner, The Twa Corbies, The Irish Rover... The Smith Family Von Trapp do a special turn with the Welsh Counting the Goats song.

Tuning up in the clubhouse.

Visitors

We’ve caught up with a few friends. We did the usual routine of talking junk and drinking wine with Karen and Richard (PYXIS) when they came out for a week, and Rosie and Otwin (ENYA) popped in to see us while they were out exploring from Levkas. Julia (WILD OATS) came to stay on her way from Cagliari to Kalamata to see her mum. We showed her around the bright lights of Messolonghi, played bar games and finished off with a gyros (the Greek version of a doner kebab) for supper. It was lovely to see her and catch up on all the news from Cagliari.

Catching up with Julia.

We had a Praying Mantis on board – she was amazing! She was quite happy to walk up gently up your arm and look around. Apparently they make good pets and eat mozzies, cockroaches, flies etc. (anything smaller than themselves). However, she didn’t cope well with the varnished surfaces inside the boat, so we let her go to tackle the Messolonghi mozzies in general rather than the ones that keep sneaking on board.

Our praying mantis (about 10 cm long).

Christmas is coming

Decorations are starting to go up for Christmas in the town and on some of the boats, and even more parties and festive food opportunities are being planned. We have to dismantle Bryn’s bed to dig out our decorations and hope that they haven’t gone mouldy...