Friday 25 April 2008

What a week

Begins with beating the Mackums - watched the drubbing of the great unwashed with Geordie Tait - a Mackum from Shiney Row, called Geordie cos nobody in the army can tell the difference in accents - and are dead original in their nicknames - anybody from North of Hull is called Geordie, he's embarassed to be called Geordie _ I won't call him it !!!! Well not to his face anyway.
Ends drinking cider with Drum - (Capn Drummond) see told you the military are good at nicknames.
In between times, I plant out cukes, some toms and peppers - suspend two of my staff for gross misconduct and deriliction of duty, acquit two others of similar charges but take minor disciplinary action against them (neither of which was a unilateral decision I must add), take part in a tennis tournament, don't win but do OK, thrash Drum at tennis twice (how did he get to the final ???)and tomorrow man the bar for the Dive Club while they run "try dives" for the new batallion.
Drum has been posted - he goes (probably) to Milan in August - one of the things I've found living with the military is that you make friends, and then they go - the soldiers are used to it, it's kind of how they live, but to a civilian it's strange.

Still no rain - although some is forecast tomorrow - I'm not holding my breathe though and so far using grey water has kept most things in the garden alive. As an aside - if you eat beetroot soup, be prepared for the colour it leaves your toilet !!!!!

Monday 21 April 2008

Blimey - doesn't time fly

It can't be March 2nd since I last posted, somebody must have nicked them !!!

Let's think, what's happened since the beginning of March ??? Right I've harvested some aubergines, they are sitting pretty in the fridge while I decide what exactly to do with them, I've harvested some beetroot which is sitting pretty in apn having been boiled and pureed and turned into soup. Borsch it's called apparently, but I can't bring myself to eat cold soup so warmed up borsch with coriander it'll be. Delia reckons you either love it or hate. Whatever it tastes like it's a fantastic colour.
The water situation is getting out of hand really - there's no more rain coming - the Republic has started cutting water to only 8 hours in every 48, but by the time they get round to turning it back on it's about 5 hours in every 48, well apart from Paphos and Aya Napa councils who are busy sticking their fingers up at the rest of the Republic and saying we aren't doing it. On the base we aren't at the situation yet - but it could happen. I've built a gravity fed watering system involving a dustbin, a hosepipe, all the grey water I can collect and the laws of physics - hopefully I'll be able to keep the garden from completely frazzling with that. I'm just wondering how long it'll be before the hosepipe police come around and see what I've been doing.

I managed to get out diving with Jeff hopefully here's a couple of photo's to prove it
Purple nudibranch Jeff silhouette


Fireworm