Habibi came up with three of his colleagues this morning and they set to work in the orchard, levelling and re-landscaping the “Somme” left behind by the tree planter. Amazingly how quickly it started to look decent again. They have built up reservoirs around each of the trees to help hold the water in the summer. Also they have planted the 5 torch bourgainvillea on the slope down to the orchard and buillt little brick reservoirs around them and planted out the other plants I bought at the nursery. It’s all looking so much better. I am delighted. By the spring, after a winter of light sun and rain, it will all be blooming. We have just had to face that heavy manual work is just beyond us now if it’s going to be more than just say an hour or so…..

Bob has been siliconing round the bathrooms. It doesn’t seem to last very long out here. Must be the climate. He’s also made the new arm for the adirondack chair. A clever chap is my chap!

Lovely day, like early summer in England, about 22C today and sunny.

Much fuss everywhere about the new South African variant. We are going to have to have a PCR test on return to the UK which is ok but a shame as we were planning a pre-Christmas day trip to France and that just becomes unworkable financially with the cost of tests.

The TRNC is also scrambling to tighten regs up in the face of the uncertainty over the variant. From Monday you will need either a PCR test or a Lateral flow test taken in the last 14 days to enter the inside of certain public spaces like restaurants. Luckily it is so easy and cheap to get tests here. Bob and I will run down and get ours tomorrow as we have quite a few dining and social things on before we leave on the 8th. As they last 14 days, it will see us till we are out of the country.

In the afternoon, Habibi and his chaps worked on. They made a little path around our gardening water tank so that it is easier to access the valves and one of them went up on our room with a broom and a hose pipe and cleaned out all the gutters and down pipes. Yikes. What a mess of pigeon poo, stones, fruit stones and bits of twig came down. Lovely. But at least the gutters should work well next time it rains. There is still a bit of guttering improvement to do and we hope to get it done next weekend.

So delighted with all the work today and the way the garden is looking. We settled down to dinner – a chicken one pot wonder – and caught up on Strictly from last night.