Frustration, Folly, Fire and Fury as we hit the Forties (degrees C that is) !

We're having a heatwave! The yellow warnings for the island have kept coming for the past week, and everyone - locals included - is talking about it. Waiting staff, who are still required to wear masks when working, have been particularly frustrated!

 Last weekend for we non-workers was particularly worthy of note, starting with the frustration bit! We will be flying to Crete on Saturday and - with our shiny new EU vaccination certificates - there seemed no reason to wait in applying for our Passenger Location Forms (PLF) as required by Greece. We began on Thursday. We failed! Last year the technology had been new and the conditions different, but we had sailed through the application process and had no issues at either boarding in Madrid or landing in Athens. This time the site wanted passwords we hadn't got! We ran out of email addresses and had to open new ones, we cleared caches, turned ad-blockers and VPN on and off, restarted repeatedly and still by Saturday morning we had got nowhere and there was discord in the apartment! The bizarre way round this was to get Chloë to do it on her machine with an unused email address. We booked a time for WhatsApp and Bob took himself off to save his sanity with a beer and a read at the pub with the parrot that is a hot 15 minute walk away.

Ruth went for a swim and returned to sit in a wet swimsuit exchanging with Chloë. At one point she went from phone to laptop to look up a code and saw Bob's wallet sitting on the desk! Visions of him being forced to do the washing up prompted the still-wet Ruth to contact him and be persuaded to join him. The place was full of retired Brits - some of whom were complaining about other retired Brits! We had a great sandwich and some prosecco to celebrate that with the Greek bureaucracy now in action we could leave Cyprus!

We sat at a distance and it gave a full view - beyond the building sites - of the foothills of the mountains. There was a very large  and low cloud, which was slowly turning black from the earth upwards. The fire was the first and most serious of the week, and was attended by helicopters with dangling water tanks, Two houses were destroyed. 

That evening we went for an excellent Indian meal and then picked up a bus to take us to the harbour. It got stuck in an enormous tailback.  One factor was the re-routing of the bus station diversion and huge confusion over entrances and exits to the car park. Another seemed to be that the heat had brought out large numbers of locals for a super-volta.  Hordes of families straggled across the prom shouting at each other or on the phone, And not many masks about! We got into the backstreets as soon as possible avoiding illegally parked cars and headed for The Rose pub, where there was the promise of live music. "Whatever is it like in a normal summer?" was asked a few times!

Bliss and rapture! Greyrocks can't remember when we last saw rock being played by a band with drums! It might be eighteen months ago (Straight Ahead?) Here was The Real Thing and that is their name. Bulgarian and doing Clapton, B B King, Dire Straits and Pink Floyd. We sat at an airy table outside with a side view and good sound and loved it. Then around midnight they stopped playing mid-number! A Russian had marched in screaming about the noise, wanting an immediate end, and a heavy - but non-violent scene erupted. His partner sat on the other side of the road filming! The Bulgarians spoke some Russian and the fact that the music was due to finish in half an hour may have been conveyed! Somehow this was resolved and a few more numbers were played; but a nasty taste.... 

The rest of our time here has been less eventful, but there will be some sort of overview of the seven weeks here! This evening we start the summer in earnest as we fly to Chania! And the heatwave is forecast to abate!