Not the best of times...

Our stay in Greece has not been that good this time, as one thing after another made it quite a stressful and not pleasant eight weeks. First of all, Ken got a nasty virus while we were still in the UK, had to travel with it, and then remained incarcerated in the apartment for a week. By then I had caught it off him, but I was not too bad so was able to do all the necessary tasks to settle us in.

Then, the disaster with my teeth: I got an abscess in one of my implants, the worst possible imaginable nightmare, and anyone who has dental implants will be able to understand this. Fortunately, my excellent Greek dentist identified this as an abscess in the gums, rather than the bone, so antibiotics were prescribed. This did not solve the problem however, as the infection continued to fester. Apparently, around that particular implant, I have the wrong sort of gum (even though I understand what is involved, the technical terms escape me) so he had to perform a gum graft which is still in the process of healing. We will have to come back to Greece in April when the new gum will have grown and matured so that he can complete the procedure. Hopefully, this will sort the problem out.

While this was going on, I got the Greek virus that's going round, which is quite a nasty one. I was poorly for quite some time, and three weeks later I still have low temperature, but I am ignoring it now, and I'm just getting on with things. To cap it all, Ken got the virus off me, but fortunately, he was able to recover after a few days.

The background to all of this has been the weather, which has been like nothing we have ever experienced here before. The pattern has been as follows: a week of storms, pouring rain, freezing cold, and strong winds, followed by 3-4 days of sunshine and warm temperatures, and then the whole cycle repeats itself, over and over.

The winds in the last two days have been horrendous. Yesterday afternoon I was sitting in our living room doing a sudoku when suddenly I heard a mighty crash, and saw a bright flash that looked like lightning which seemed to be coming from the balcony above. I went out to the terrace, looked up but could not see anything. What I did not do, was look down.

A few minutes later my brother-in-law came to tell us that one of the old pine trees across the road had been uprooted by the wind, crashing down. This pine has been standing there since I was a little girl and it will be sorely missed. This was the last straw in a two-month stay that has been plagued by one misfortune after another.





The tree lay across the road and into our neighbour's garden - needless to say her fence is damaged. What is worse is that it brought down the utility pole so that a few of the apartment buildings around us were plunged into darkness. We lit some candles and put some music on, but we could still hear the wind howling and thundering outside.

The emergency services were amazing: the police, fire brigade and electricity company came almost immediately,





and they all worked well into the night. By then, it was raining, the wind was stronger, and yet these dedicated workers continued with their work, the tree was cleared off the road, and then the repairs to the electricity wires commenced

which involved men climbing up the utility poles - not an easy job given the strong winds and the rain.

The electricity came back around 9:30 and we all (we were upstairs at my sister's by then, having a family meal) piled on to the balcony and clapped and thanked the workers.

This morning, the final clearing of all the debris was completed by the council workers: it took two truck-fulls to clear the remains of our tree.