We’ve been enjoying our first few days here, enjoying the end of spring here. It’s been long sunny spells but not the heat that will come with summer arriving shortly.

Yesterday we drove over to Ozenkoy with our new Amazon Fire Cube to have the new tv system loaded onto it. It’s a brilliant addition to tv viewing here and replaces the increasingly useless Digiturk satellite service that we have used previously and will be so much better for us and for our guests. Basically the tv company here has a bank of 10 computer servers that deploy a huge number of English language tv stations including Netflix, Sky Channels including the Sports and F1 channels, all the BBC, ITV channels and many more. They then deploy those stations from their servers to our tvs via the internet. This means that we can firstly watch all these channels live with a fast rate, no buffering. Also they hold the last 2 weeks of all the programmes on these channels which can be accessed as “catch up” and they also have over 8000 movies and very many of the series deployed on the channels available. So foor example, every series and episode of Yellowstone, 1883, 1923……

Bob came back and attached it to the tv and we’ve been experimenting with the system so that we can write instructions to leave for guests. It’s definitely lived up to the publicity so far. Bob has been watching the snooker live and the F1 from Baku this afternoon. We are very delighted. Because the system is deployed on a Fire Cube, any guests who have Amazon Prime can also access Prime Video by logging into their account, and their own Netflix accounts if there is something they want that isn’t on the tv Netflix programming.

I went to consult the olive tree expert yesterday and he came up to inspect the tree this morning. Sad news. Apparently because the tree became weak and distressed last summer due to the water shortage it has become infested with a burrowing insect that has burrowed into the trunk and branches to lay eggs. This is wht is killing it and he says it is past remedy and too late to spray it now….. It will die eventually he is sure. When it does, we will still have the lovely knarly tree and he suggests we grow something over it, some form of climber…… of course we are very sad about this poor tree but apparently these burrowing pests are common.

The rest of the garden is thriving and today I picked a massive lemon from the tree near the bbq. It is covered in blossom and with small lemons growing for a later crop. I also picked a small orange from one of our orange trees, again the others are covered in blossom, looking hopeful for a crop later in the year. Picked some loquats and had them with my yoghurt for breakfast. I’ve made crumble with them in the past. I might try them in jam……

Had a lovely dinner at Pamela and Eddie’s house last night and a great catch up after a winter of travels. They toured the Far East: Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam on an absolutely mega trip. Very interesting to hear all. Lovely dinner cooked by Eddie too. Great company.

The electrician came up today to check out the pool control room and he is coming back on Thursday to remove the old electrics board and fit a new one. I deployed some mirrored garden hangings I bought in India. They catch the sun hanging from our trees and make nice light patterns.

I brought out a lot of new bedding and kitchen linens this time. New fitted sheets, pillow protectors for the all new pillows, bathmats, t towels and an oven glove. Wilma had undertaken a thorough audit of the linen cupboard over the winter and got rid of any bedding that was beginning to wear – it went, like the old pillows – to the animal shelter in Alsancak. We have to have 3 sets of bedding for each bed as a minimum – 1 on, 1 in the laundry and 1 for emergency use, so there has to be a big stock really. 16 pillows for the beds means 48 pillow cases, 16 protectors…..

I took 2 new bookings for the villa in the last couple of days. This year is looking to be back to where we were before the pandemic which is great news. We rely on our rentals for keeping the villa constantly updated. And we are very lucky to have a number of repeater guests who choose to come here nearly every year. That’s a lovely thing.

This evening there was a tremendous thunder storm probably heralding the start of hotter weather, much like the ones in November signal the end of truly hot weather. We continued binging Happy Valley series 1.