The one little blight on our views over the last 13 years has been the position of an electrical pole just beyond the end of our pool terrace. It’s stood there harmlessly enough and we can almost…..almost…. pretend it’s not there. We have wished it wasn’t. Last year we had the opportunity to get rid of it because we were in midst of splitting our land with our neighbour, when that process revealed that his pole was too near his pool. It would have to be moved. This meant our pole had to be moved too! Good news.

This being Cyprus, there were of course, more complications. Although we were told the poles officially had to be moved, the official electricity supplier, Kibtek, do not take responsibility (ie pay) for the removal/movement of such poles. The unlucky person whose land they adjoin does. So, we had to fork out about £1200 per household to move the 2 poles, even though Kibtek gave us no choice but to move the poles because they had put them in the wrong place!!!! It was a bit of a gulp but we decided to look on the bright side.

Months passed. Messages from Kibtek came promising action. Dates for action passed. Earlier this year they came up and put up two new poles but they were in the wrong place….. (yes, again!) months passed. Then last week, the Big Boss came up from Kibtek and looked at the poles, agreed they were in the wrong place and said it would be fixed this week.

So, despite this assurance, we were quite surprised this morning to wake up and find a gang of men with a cherry picker and a bulldozer at the bottom of our garden!!! Just as we discovered their presence, the power went off and they set to work.

After checking that this time the poles seemed to be going to the right spots we left them to it and set off down to Marshalls to buy paint for the middle bedroom. We’re not doing that one. The painter who painted the outside for us is coming back over the next couple of nights to do it. I have picked a very, very pale lavender to go with the new blinds. It will really freshen it up.
We did what odd jobs we could without any power and watched as men climbed poles all around us and slung wire. I got the tune “Wichita Lineman” in my head and sang it off and on all day. Bob mended a misaligned window catch in the downstairs loo and replaced bulbs around the pool patio lights. We removed all the masking tape from the yellow bedroom. It looks great.
It was a bit tedious really because without power there were lots of things we couldn’t do. On the other hand we couldn’t really go out and laze by the pool because the men were out there playing with high voltage lines and it didn’t feel the right thing to do, quite apart from the modesty viewpoint.
We are hoping to get all our jobs finished by tomorrow night so that we have Wednesday completely free to just enjoy the house. Thursday we have to pack things away ready to fly to Turkey on Friday morning and for guests to arrive here on Friday afternoon. Then when we come back in June, hopefully there won’t be any jobs at all for our last two weeks.
Our painter chap came up at 5 and got all the prep work done for his painting tomorrow. Plastering was brilliant. Always in awe of people who can do that! We were starving but felt we couldn’t eat dinner till he was gone because of Ramadan!!!!! The smell of it must have been torture to the poor chap though.

Have also spent all day dodging spoilers on the last episode of GOT which we watched tonight!  Still processing what to make of it.

A very good day. Jobs nearly all done. I really shouldn’t have written that!