"Two of us riding nowhere........

…..Spending someone's Hard earned pay….”
And now the end is near and we face the long drive home.
It’s been weeks since our last confession, and its not that we had nothing to say it’s just that we were so busy doing stuff with our visitors. Then when everyone went home we just stopped! And did nothing for several days in a daze!

Anyway here is a brief summary and pics of the last 7 weeks

In one crazy week we had 17 family members staying in San Stefanos, some with us (Gemma etc.), others, mainly Helen & Martins family, in apartments just up the road from us, it was a bit like a re- run of the wedding holiday. We managed to fit in a Greek night with dancing, at Manthos Taverna,

some dangerous ball games in the Athina pool and as we had little kids with us, so lots of digging in the sand. Adults only though!! Kids are only there to watch and learn!

We also dragged numerous family members to Keith’s gigs so the bar owners were very happy. It was Adams birthday during that week so a drunken night out in Sidari took place ending in a boozy gig at Napoleons bar

where Keith was playing, then some late night dancing in the Condor till the small hours.. Some of the gang went to Aqualand one day and had an amazing day out (see Caitlyns blog) it was a crazy action packed week.
Helen & Martin & family left and we had a couple more weeks with Gemma & the kids and Adam, who was joined in the second week by Amanda, who missed him so much she came back for another week after she’d gone home.

One of the highlights of the week was hiring a high powered boat for the day; we all piled into the boat and spent lots of time jumping in and out of coves snorkelling (and caught a couple of starfish)

and generally acting like big kids whilst the little kids watched on, although Finley did have a swim in the sea and Arwen threw up in the boat.
We carried on business as usual at night with the gigs, but during the day we walked miles with pushchairs and stuff up and down the hills and across the beaches, Liz has now got ‘buns of steel’ and is in danger of becoming muscle-bound (maybe)

Finally the day came, and on the Monday we said a fond farewell to everybody with 2 trips to the airport and we came home at about 2 in the morning to a very calm peaceful house aaah! and relax!!! As our house quietened down so has the resort and we have had some relaxing days on the beach and chilled out evenings sat on the balcony with a G&T and watching the world go very slowly by.

All summer we have continued to gig constantly 4,5 sometimes 6 gigs a week, even in August, when traditionally Greek bar owners expect their bars to be full without paying out for entertainment, if a gig has been dropped there always seemed to be 2 others who wanted Keith to play at their bar. Also people who saw Keith last year have come back and said hello again, so slowly we are building a reputation just as some of the established artists on the island have.
Keith has been invited to play in jamming sessions with other muso’s on Monday nights in Roda and a couple of weeks ago he was asked to do a gig in Ipsos with a Greek band who we met last year.
Some friends from Preston Julie, Claire & Sarah (all muso’s)

came to Corfu for a week, Clare was keen to do some singing and ended up doing a spot at 3 of Keith ‘s gigs, and got offers of work for next year if she wants it. (That’s how Keith got started). Its been a lot of fun and we have made some great friends and got to know a lot more people through the music this year.

“……You and I have memories

Longer than the road that stretches out ahead…..”

Byeeeeeeeeeee.....x

Schools out for Summer.....(Caitlyn's Blog)

Out for summer.....Out till fall.....We might not go back at all....

Introducing Caitlyn 8yrs old (Keith's Grandaughter) Our first guest writer....

15th July Me, Mum Finley and Arwen got to Grandad and Lizzy’s house ready for our 6 weeks holiday.

Every day we have been going to the Athina pool or on the beach with a packed lunch. Every day is really sunny and we are all going brown.

On the third week the Cockerills arrived at night, then the next day we all met up at the Athena pool. Then at night we went out for a meal and we went Greek dancing.

The next day we went to the beach, and we got some floats for the sea, after we played bat and ball in the sea and we built sand castles.

One day we hired a canoe

At night we had a barbeque at Grandads house and some of us played on the Nintedo Ds. The next day Adam and Amanda arrived and we went out for a meal then after we went to the Acabar I got a cocktail. The next day Adam and Amanda came to are apartment on their bike to say hi

We went to the water park and we went on loads of free falls. We went in the three brothers restaurant for tea.

We went to the gig at the Condor Bar and there was another girl called Caitlyn who stayed in apartments next to us. Every day we look for little old ladies to take pictures of to go on a calendar.
One night we went to a Greek festival there were loads of dancing.

We went to Corfu town to have a bimble and I had a Henna Tattoo done on my back! We went to Sidari to buy me a watch, a bag and a hat.

Then after 6 weeks we had to go home.

Byeeee love from Caitlyn....x

Nizlopi....Lizlopi...the JCB Song......

'..........And the engine rattles my bum like berserk
While we're singin' , 'Don't forget your shovel if you want to go to work!'

Up at the crack of dawn today……. and Liz was about to have an adventure!

Because of the shape and location of the beach at San Stefanos, a couple of times a week several tons of seaweed gets washed onto the shoreline. The local business owners need this moving, so they arrange for a man with a truck and a man with a JCB to come and shift it, early in the morning before the tourists arrive on the beach.

And where does it go? Into a land fill area up the hill behind our house, so at about 7/ 7.30 ish a truck full of seaweed goes past our house every 10 minutes or so for about 2 hours.

Finley loves trucks and tractors but especially JCB’s so he was in heaven when he spotted the activity going on all around where we live.

Liz being a morning person (now) decided that it would be a treat to take him down to the beach at 7am to get close up to the trucks. Gemma said she’d never seen Liz get dressed so fast at the prospect of hanging out with the truckers. And before Gemma could get Arwen and Caitlyn ready Liz was off with Finley to the beach.

As Gemma reached the beach 10 minutes or so later, the truck was coming down the hill past our house having tipped a load of seaweed and who should be in the cab waving to her?? …… Liz and Finley, she can be such a fast mover when she wants to be!
Apparently the two guys with the trucks were so taken with Finley that they let him sit in the JCB as well, he steered the machine and used the controls (on the drivers knee)

whilst it picked up the seaweed, then he suggested that Finley and Liz went in the truck up the hill whilst he unloaded his truck!!!

Liz thought it was a Shirley Valentine moment having misheard the line in the film about a boat and a truck? They all returned about an hour later very happy having had lots of photo opportunities and Liz had her ride in a truck!!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGkseGFQLh4&feature=related

Forever in my dreams my heart will be, hanging on to this sweet memory...

….Take me back to the place that I know....On the beach

Gemma and the kids!!!!!!

They arrived in fine spirits and ready for their 6 weeks! stay.

We had rearranged the spare bedroom to accommodate them all with a blow up bed and a travel cot for Arwen, we all had a good nights sleep and awoke at 7am!!!! ready for our first full day of kids on the beach, kids in the pool whilst still maintaining 6 gigs a week!, Unfortunately it was still very windy, too windy to go anywhere, we even had to eat in the kitchen it was so blustery, which was strange for us as we have always eaten out on the balcony here. We did manage the Athina pool later on that day as the winds died down.

On the beach…….

We took them all in the morning to the Athina pool, home for lunch then a quick siesta

...then we thought we’d take Finley & Arwen for their first taste of the beach; literally! as it turned out, both of them sampled eating sand

before they realised it was more fun splashing in the sea and watching their granddad dig in the sand!!! (Keith welcomed the excuse to finally be able to dig holes in the sand and make sandcastles)

The following day we went back for a longer spell, armed with parasols, buckets & spades, toy trucks and a borrowed Lilo from one of our friends who runs the local sun bed hire, we also had armbands for Finley so he could really go in the sea.
We’d picked the hottest day so far to do this (40 degrees) and although we kept the little ones smothered in lotions we all had to spend a lot of time in the sea and under the parasols to keep cool.

Finley never stopped running all day, until he finally fell asleep on the lilo under a parasol after a long play in the sea.

We all arrived home exhausted after a full day on the sand.
Keith got involved with a bit of sand castle wars with the German family who parked themselves next to us on the beach. Keith & Caitlyn had gently built a Pyramid /sand castle with the basic plastic bucket & spade set we had bought at the local shop but Keith was a bit gob-smacked when the father of the family appeared with his folding, all metal shovel come pickaxe and proceeded to tunnel his way into the sand.

It was just like watching a military operation, we had to drag Keith away before this major earth works was completed or before he went and jumped on the turrets.

At the end of the first week the weather changed again and we had a couple more windy days, so we decided to go out and about looking for some sheltered bays to play out in. After a hearty breakfast we all piled into the car and set off for Paleokastritsa only 30 mins away. But 10 miles and 20 minutes later Finley woke up and promptly threw up everywhere, all over Gemma and the back seat of the car. And because he is 2 years old and at the ‘touch every button’ and ‘play with every switch’ stage, we had centrally locked the windows and the doors of the car, poor Gemma couldn’t even stick Finley’s head out of the window to avoid the deluge. We pulled over, hosed Gemma and Finley down, threw away some of the stuff in the back of the car (including a book that Keith had borrowed from his colleague Andrew at work) that had been hit by Finley’s tsunami, then we returned home without further incident, day out cancelled, another lesson learned, don’t fill a 2 year old with yoghurt before going on windy Greek roads!

Thursday was a really rainy day and having learnt the lesson of the previous day, we didn’t fill the kids with food as we set off for a day out in Corfu town. It poured down all the way into Corfu town and it appeared that everybody else with a car had decided to do the same thing, the traffic was chaos, and many of the traffic lights had stopped working, possibly due to the rain storm. We couldn’t get into any of the town centre car parks so we headed up the main road to the airport where the supermarkets and toy shops are, first stop the Corfu branch of “toys r os” where we purchased some toy trucks and diggers. Then to another store called Jumbo where Liz was in shopping heaven, aisle after aisle of toys, toiletries and general stuff that only Liz would want to buy! 1 hour later, armed with more toys and toiletries than you could shake a stick at, we emerged into sunshine and headed back into Corfu town. This time we parked and spent a couple of hours sightseeing, eating & Caitlyn shopped till we all dropped, we even managed to fit in a visit to a children’s playground near the old fortress before going back to the car at 5pm and then home.
What an eventful first week with only 5 more to go….and as the season gets busier, more requests for gigs keep coming in, Keith is now doing 6 gigs a week and with the change in our sleeping pattern (the kids wake up at 7am) we are now finally living a Greek lifestyle and taking essential siestas in the afternoons so we don’t burn out with the pace we are keeping. Ah well back to the pool !

“Oh how I wish you were here”....

....we're just two lost souls, living in a fish bowl, year after year.....

Be careful what you wish for …….

We had expected to have 3 weeks of recharging our batteries and detoxing, but as usual, things don’t always go as you plan them. As Helen and Martin left they were saying how much they were missing Emily their granddaughter, and we were saying the same about Gemma and the kids, and how we couldn’t wait to see them in 3 weeks time! Well we didn’t have to wait that long we got a phone call on the Sunday from Gemma, saying she was fed up and an hour later she’d booked a flight to arrive on the Tuesday, THIS Tuesday!!! Only 3 days of peace and tranquillity!!!!

There was a gale force wind blowing when we woke up on the Tuesday morning so we decided to have a day out in Corfu town seeing some of the things we’d meant to look at when the weather was not so hot, this seemed like an ideal day for it. We parked up at the old port

and walked along in the direction of the Liston and the old fortress. We passed old Venetian style buildings some with plaques telling of the famous and not so famous people who’d lived there including Edward Lear.

We walked through the archway

and into the grounds of the palace of SS Michael & George,

which houses the museum of Asian Art. It is a fascinating building, which started life in 1819 as a summer royal residence for British monarchy. We wandered around the grounds

which also contain throw backs to its time as a residency including a spiral staircase going down to a jetty from which private bathing could take place.

We went from here to the old fortress, which dominates the east side of Corfu town, dating back to pre Byzantine times, and was made into an island by the Venetians in the 15th century when a channel was dug between the fort and the Town. We climbed to the highest point of the fort which gave us impressive views over Corfu town

...many photos later and very windswept we climbed down and returned into the heart of the old town. We had a nice meal in one of our favourite restaurants in the square near St Spiridon Cathedral then off to the airport to pick up our next visitors.

View of a massive cruise boat from the grounds of the palace

The wheels on the bus.....

......go round and round...

Do you know? Visitors are like buses….
(Apart from Helen and Martin who appear to be permanent residents!)
We didn’t get any visitors for the first 5 weeks then 4 lots come along one after the other!
First Becky, Piggy (Steve) & Hannah, (Keith’s friends from work) stayed in San Stefanos for a week,

then as they left on the Friday, Liz’s mum (Do) arrived

along with Paddy & Lorraine (Liz’s brother & his wife) on 2 separate flights, then as we took Do back to the airport this Friday, Paddy’s son Michael & his friend Kim arrived

and Liz picked them up on the same airport run. Friday really is transfer day here in Corfu. We have had some great adventures with our guests and visitors and of course some great meals out!

We took Becky & Co to view Paleokastrisa (from a distance as it is a tourist trap) then lunch at the Three Brothers on Astrakari beach. Keith & Pig drooled over the beautiful sea food on offer, while Liz & Becky drooled over the brothers serving us Hannah befriended a young Greek girl of a similar age, who lived at the restaurant in the summer, and by the time we’d finished eating, both girls were playing well together despite having no common language between them. Liz’s mum stayed with us for a week, Helen & Martin moved into an apartment with Paddy & Lorraine a short distance away, (as the crow flies, but up and down 2 big hills). Doreen managed to swim in the sea most days at the pool at the Athina and had a couple of days out in the car. First with us, then with Paddy & Lorraine, with a couple of lunches in mountain villages,

where we bought fresh oregano to hang up and dry and some local olive oil. Paddy and Lorraine also took Do out for a day in their hire car including up to the highest point on Corfu, where a monastery is situated, with the biggest and ugliest radio mast who’s four legs are strategically placed within the four corners of the monastery yard. We also had yet another BBQ at the house on the hill this time as well as the lamb chops we cooked fish & some prawns marinated in chilli & garlic sauce, and of course all washed down with beautiful Greek wine.

An almost compulsory element to visiting us is you have to sit through at least one of Keith’s gigs; Becky & Co managed to get a way with one, Doreen did the same, so far Paddy & Lorraine have done 3 gigs, and Paddy still hasn’t had a cigarette!!!
On the Tuesday afternoon the girls became ladies wot lunch (and shop!)

and the boys went to the Sea Monkey afternoon gig in Sidari, and despite all the tales of semi-nakedness on the beach Paddy was stilled amazed by the sight of a young couple, (in very skimpy swim wear) who had set up camp right in front of where Keith plays, and proceeded to kiss, cuddled and generally climb all over each other on one sun bed in full view of everyone in the bar, Maybe they couldn’t get a room anywhere! Luckily they decided to go for a swim to cool down; just before Keith started playing (his guitar that is and yes, on his own etc…) the boys definately needed a cold swim & shower after that gig.

There has been a real increase in the temperature here in the last 2 weeks, it is now an average 33 degrees during the day although some days it has been as hot as 38. And in the evening as high as 24 /25 degrees, we are soldiering on with 2 fans going at night and I think we have acclimatised to the heat. It helps being so close to the sea with a breeze to help to cool us down. The apartment the others are sharing has air con as they keep reminding us, but as the units extract onto their balcony, the heat from them makes it impossible to sit out! So when we go round to collect them all 4 are sat inside, air-con on, with the temperature at about 17 degrees (just like at home then!!)

Randomly saw this 'big bird' whilst driving around.....?

At the end of this week calm will descend as we have no guests or visitors for 3 weeks so we will ‘try to’ detox and cook at home and recharge our batteries ready for the next invasion of tourists.