Monday 11th June 2012

 Another hot day with beautiful sunshine and lovely clear blue skies.  The rising temperatures now are making sleeping at night difficult with the need for bursts of the air conditioning at long wakeful times.  Good job you can catch up un a sun lounger during the day!  

Consequently up at the earlier time of 0730 to settle at the computer for ‘work’ and three hours passes by with a blink with the printing of documents and writing comments on a new school design for Doha, Qatar.  The fact that its the first day of my new role as WCL Corporate Project Director then three hours is not too bad a stint.  I go to Doha on Tuesday night for one week.

Having ‘worked’ through departure time for Bowls we decided a walk to the beach to continue our collection of small red and green stones which are being placed in front of the  canna lilies.  They complement the red and green of the stalks.  With beach shoes on it was easy to wade up to knees to look through the water for the brightest stones.  The water felt warm, at least as warm as the pool which is currently reading 28C.  So with warm water and sun Lillian and I swam around for a lovely 30 minutes.  Not really swimming as the beach shoes work as buoyancy aids and make progress difficult.  They are very much needed for the first ten feet as there is a stone barrier to the shore but then soft sand. The water shelves from the shore, passing through one deeper section  to a sand bank so you appear to be a long way from the shore yet in water not much deeper than your waist.  It was great fun with fairly gentle waves.

Back in the garden Lillian clipped the bougainvillea hedge quite severely at the bottom of the hedging and generally tidying.  It has a white grub that seems to be surviving despite spraying with the deadly spray.  With my role of labourer completed (four trips to the bins) it was time for swimming the pool lengths.

With the afternoon passing on it was a walk into the village to eat and watch the England Euro Championship game v France.   Even an hour before kick off the pub was packed so we walked further into the village to eat at our favourite restaurant Pyrgos (Tower) where they too had a television showing the match so we stayed.  The commentary was in greek but that didn't really matter.  1-1 draw was my prediction before the game and seemed a fair result.  After the match we were joined by another couple we know who had been in the pub.  It seems we had made a good choice to watch from the restaurant as the pub was what you would expect with any English football crowd - too loud with too much to drink.  It seems the majority were ‘holiday makers’ giving the locals back seats.

We wandered slowly home admiring the black star filled sky.