04:40 came abruptly when my alarm sounded. I lay motionless for a few moments to work out who I was, where I was and what I should be doing. Skinny putting his paws on the edge of my bed and stuffing his nose in my ear reminded me. He’d taken himself for an extra walk yesterday evening. Most of the dogs were in the van and I had the half gate closed but that is a mere trifle to a dog like Skinny. He clambered over and scaled the 1.8m outer fence with ease. I was watching the final episode of The Night Manager so was in no mood to go after him so left him to it. He comes back eventually anyway. Georgia’s dogs were barking so I knew he was somewhere in the camping. It was when he went into the adjacent field and barked loudly and consistently that enough was enough. He barked, Georgia’s dogs barked and Luis was dying to join the doggy chorus. With my head torch on, I went out into the field and followed the barking. As expected, Skinny was there about 30m from the gate between the compound and the field. I know not to approach him as he loves to play hard to get and will instantly bugger off out of reach. I had a lead hidden in my pocket just in case. He wandered around having stopped barking and slowly approached. I became disinterested and slowly wandered back towards the gate noticing that Skinny was pretending not to follow me. He came back into the compound and I opened the inner gate to let him in. He then went straight over to the fence leading into the camping and jumped over it. The sound of an empty food tin scraping on the concrete floor of the storeroom gave him away. I found him licking out the last traces, put him on the lead and then put him back in the van with most of the others. This time I shut the main door just in case he decided to leave once more. When I came back a while later, he was curled up fast asleep so we didn’t hear a sound until the following morning.
The moonless Early Walk was pleasant and reasonably efficient. We came back at half time and then I set out again but with only Skinny and Isabella. Our walk was fun and energetic. The birds were singing cheerfully as we strode back across the field towards the compound. The final fragment of moon eventually appeared and hung in the sky above Paleochora. No morning moon tomorrow.
I fed the cats and rode my bike to Krios. It was almost calm, not cold and a clear day. The bike battery was pretty low so I needed to do most of the work. Definitely not a day for a trip up the mountain and back.
I made breakfast having let the dogs out. The Inter Sport servers needed a restart so I did that and some other IT tasks. Breakfast was finished so I ate, as usual, watching an interesting YouTube video.
It was soon time for my weekly call home.
The morning and afternoon were warm and sunny and I removed everything down to my vest! The dogs spent most of the time asleep despite some of the guys working on Georgia’s boat outside the workshop. Maybe she plans to go out for a cruise as the summer is likely to be quiet.
I did a little tidying up. I did say ‘a little’ so don’t get any ideas. I folded up the various waterproof and lined jackets and compressed them in a vacuum bag as I doubt I’ll be needing them much more now and I have a light, elderly windproof jacket anyway.
I showered and took the dogs out for the evening walk. There was a surprising number of people enjoying Alonáki Beach and some others wandering Grammeno Beach. There were fishermen/boys on the rocks fishing so plenty of distractions for the dogs. They were mostly calm and the return was sensible and orderly.
It’s getting cooler now so I plan to go inside and have my supper. I need to decide what entertainment I shall watch this evening.
Just recently, I’ve been chatting and communicating with a number of people including Terry this afternoon. I think I could not choose a better place to be marooned for the next however long it is.
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