I had a really lovely breakfast this morning.  Yoghurt with honey and baby peaches.  At the moment, you can buy massive punnets of tiny, tiny peaches so cheaply.  They are completely ripe and sweet, delicious.  I put the stones out on the garden in a place that gets watered.  You never know.  I’d love a peach tree!

A much better day today in terms of successful diy!!!  Our garden lights are now cabled and just await the final step of taking the cable through the wall to the power box.  They look really great and will give a lot of extra light around the upper entranceway and the bbq/wood oven area.

We also managed to fit both of the new kitchen roller blinds this afternoon.  So -so -so pleased with them.  Zebra Blinds, they are also called night and day blinds.  A standard roller blind just has one roll of fabric that you raise or lower.  These have two rolls of banded opaque and semi see-through fabric and you can adjust the line-up of the two rolls so that you can have a fully opaque blind for total privacy or a blind with semi sheer bands to allow light in and a view outside.  It’s a genius design.  Ours are shades of blue and we think they are the perfect blind for windows that look out to the pool as ours do.  My photos – taken against the light – make them look darker than they actually are…. sigh…. must get better at photography!

The Turkish lira continues to be really good news for overseas visitors.  When we bought the villa 12 years ago there were roughly 2.5 YTL to 1 pound.  Then for ages it was about 3 or 4.  Last year, the pound strengthened again against the YTL and it was 5 to the pound all year and now it is over 6.  This makes our part of Cyprus even cheaper than ever.  A great help when you are refurbishing, as we are.

I did a bit of gardening: deadheading the many, huge geraniums we have growing all around the garden.  Forget the small things we have in pots or hanging baskets in the UK. Here, geraniums grow into enormous shrub sized bushes, covered in flowers.  But you do have to deadhead them to keep the flowering going, just like the smaller UK plants.  Habibi, the gardener, was supposed to come today but his car broke down and he was stranded at home.  We have some new plants to go in, and a bit of tree surgery to do when he is next up at the house.

I also did some washing.  Well…. clothes need washing if you stay a while…..  We have a lovely new washing machine here which we got last year.  The old one lasted 14 years!  I wonder if this one will….  I dry the clothes either on a clothes airer on the dining terrace or on the line which is down in the car port.  You can’t hang things out in the sun here, they would rot, it is too strong.  They dry so quickly though.  At home I have a tumble drier and a rotary line but I’d never bother with a machine here.   And I must confess that anything that needs much ironing, like duvet covers or flat sheets goes to one of the laundries of which there are a few.  They do a great job and everything comes back pristine.