Birthday bunting proudly flapping in the light summer breeze from both balconies, announcing to all and sundry our ‘non-birthday’ birthdays, Pearl went for a walk at 7am, Dianne went and purchased a pair of flip-flops as something had happened to her sandals and Maice and I went to do battle with the wasps at the pool bar. We wondered how long it would be before we got fed up of the same breakfast, day in day out, delivered to us on a tray by Irini. As much as we like yoghurt, boiled egg, pork luncheon meat, cheese, bread, honey, jam and water melon there’s only so much we can take but quelle surprise, today, in place of the usual watermelon were two nectarines. Shame I don’t eat them but Maice does, so she had mine......what a birthday treat that was!
As annoying as the wasps were this morning, I have to say the Greek cats are the most un-annoying and polite cats we’ve encountered on any Greek holiday. Usually they’re hovering round everyone’s table, lots of them, pawing at you, giving you ‘the look’ but these cats are so well behaved, they’ve obviously been well brought up. Of course there’s always the exception and that exception was when we were at Greek night. There we were, sat at our table when all of a sudden these little black claws appeared, clinging desperately to the table cloth and this little black kittens face appeared. Thing is, he was stuck in mid-air as his little legs had nothing to hang onto so Pearl to the rescue, unclung him from the table cloth and set him back down. Bless! Hopefully he’ll learn from this experience. The local cat sitting around the pool-bar this morning was heavily pregnant so instead of giving our meat to the wasps we gave it to our ‘mummy’ cat. After all her need is greater than those wasps. Autumn’s on its way, the season will soon be at an end and she’ll have hungry mouths to feed so she needs all the nourishment she can get.
Not only is today birthday day it’s also beach day. The sun is out, it’s baking hot and we set off to do nothing at the beach. Sun-beds selected, frappe ordered and a swim in the beautiful Mediterranean sea was what ‘nothing’ consisted of. What a great start to our beach day. Ah, it was lovely. We cooked ourselves to a lovely golden tan and decided by 1.45pm we’d done enough of doing nothing and needed to be doing something so we set off up the 35 steep steps to the Malibu Taverna for a birthday lunch which consisted of Greek salad, giant beans in tomato sauce, horta (greens) and a feta cheese parcel all washed down with some very cold Mythos beers. As birthdays go, we were really enjoying ours so far.
The wind had got up after lunch which made it ideal for sunbathing, making it more bearable and we stuck it out until 4pm then headed off back to base to do some lengths of the pool which is all part of our ‘keep fit on holiday’ regime. Lengths done, it was soon cocktail hour! Okay it was only five o’clock but as it was our birthdays we thought we’d treat ourselves to cocktails around the pool. Of course we weren’t allowed to just go up and order them from the bar like any other person would do, oh no, not us. Maice came up with the idea to play ‘cocktail charades’ through the cocktail menu. So there we were acting out, in our bikinis some very difficult cocktails.....how we got them right I’ll never know but we did, as did the couple at the bar who were watching and joining in from a distance. We drank our well earned cocktails on our sun-beds and then went back for a mini lie-down before getting ourselves glammed up for the evening.
Apparently none of us had a lie-down, instead we all became very industrious wrapping up our gifts for our presents game. Considering we didn’t have wrapping paper, sellotape or string etc. we were all very creative with our wrapping. Admittedly a number of bars and restaurants are now devoid of napkins and straws and the local trees are minus some leaves and flowers, but under the circumstances we all did a great job. We set off down the empty high street, it was a bit like high-noon, there was virtually no-one around even though it was now 8.30pm (tourism is definitely down in this area) and found a lovely restaurant where we enjoyed good food and good service. After we’d eaten we placed all our decorated presents in the middle of the table and began to play the ‘dice game’. I must say we didn’t make quite as much noise as we did at Jill’s 60th down at Sculpture by the Lakes where we all got told off for making too much noise and continued to play in silence.....if nine ladies can be silent that is, with much silent sniggering going on! No, our table this evening was, let’s say, not as loud or boisterous, but still very entertaining. We all came away with a nice selection of gifts and concluded it was a very good way to end our non-birthday day.
As it goes we’ve all enjoyed doing something today, it’s been great fun and even though we didn’t have another of Pearl’s ex-reps to entertain or celebrate our non-birthdays with, I think we all did a great job of entertaining ourselves.
It’s been quite exhausting doing something so tomorrow we’ve decided we’re going to be doing absolutely nothing. Well, we are on holiday!
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