62 days ago
The lightening flashed. The thunder crashed and the rain bucketed it down. The cats scampered around the house terrified by the noise. I explained to Joshua, with schoolboy maths, that the lightening must be landing less than 1000 yards away. There could be no more gardening today so Joshua settled down to watch a Percy Jackson film, I drew the curtains and for both warmth and as a comfort I lit my first fire of the Autumn.
2455 days ago
Further evidence of my skills as a pyromaniac will come later but just a brief shot showing how I burned off more olive branches on the, by then, rain sodden, site of my first triumph at the Greek Hovel. Flames leapt into the sky, high enough for my neighbours to see, so further restoring my reputation as a real man.
2465 days ago
You know that I am a feminist. Child care, nappy changing, shopping, washing, cooking, I dxo more than my fair share. But there are some things that only women can do. Breast feeding for example. And there are some things we men do: snake killing, ouzo drinking and.. lighting fires. My repeated failure to burn off the olive branches and frigana I cut down last year at the Greek Hovel has thus been somewhat emasculating. And it got far worse yesterday before it got better.
3651 days ago
In my last days at the Greek Hovel this summer I showed unusual foresight in pondering how I would keep warm on my return for the Olive harvest. Hence I gathered firewood, stored it in the rat room and surrounded it with sulphur to ensure that no snakes viewed it as a des res winter home. And thus on my first night back I lit a fire.
Fire lighting is a macho sort of thing and I am pretty proud of my ability to get a good blaze going with just a couple of pieces of paper. Firelighters are for jessies. And so within minutes I had a roaring blaze going. And about two minutes later the room was filled with smoke. Perhaps there was some trick I had missed?
I fiddled with two bricks that cover little holes in the fireplace but to no avail. The smoke was by now overpowering and so I had to open all windows and the door. I am not so worried about the wildlife entering – why on earth would they rush into a smoke filled building. It was the cold. The Greek Hovel is in the foothills of the mountains and while it is shirt-sleeves hot in the morning and until about three it then start to get very cold indeed. I reckon that we are not that far above zero every night.
As such my first night was a cold one. As the fire died
