I enjoyed another episode of Foyle’s War which took me nicely to bedtime. I ‘invite’ Messrs Luis, Fido and Oskar into the van in the evening as otherwise they can be relied upon to find something/one/noise to bark at. Any other participants are welcome so long as they follow the rules which are quite simple where the dogs are concerned: no sitting in my place; no eating my food; no rowdy behaviour; no licking me and bothering me generally.
Skinny, who is pretty well-behaved, showed interest in coming into the van too. In the end, only Obi was left outside. As one might imagine, it was crowded but survivable. I started to eat my supper and then Isabella began fooling around with Skinny in a minor sort of way. Then things were getting out of hand so I told her to stop. Her next ploy was to try to snuggle up to me which was unwelcome as it was quite warm and I was trying to eat. Eventually, I threw her outside where she remained for the rest of the night. She gets too hot inside at the best of times, let alone the summer.
I was in bed by 22:00 but had to leave the outer door of the van closed but not shut otherwise Skinny simply jumps over the half gate when he decides he’d like to go walkabout. Now that I have my mosquito tent, I’m not shy at leaving the two cab side windows open as this provides a pleasant through current of air. The alarm went off at the usual time and I was about to get out of bed when a streak passed before my eyes in the form of Skinny jumping out of the open cab window onto the decking outside. His next move would be to climb the fence and disappear off to wherever he goes on his jaunts. I got dressed and gathered together the remaining dogs ready for the first walk.
There is no denying that life is a lot easier with six dogs. That’s not so much a reflection on Skinny although he is quite large, but just the physical number to navigate to and around the Promontory. There was only one vehicle on the Promontory and that was the 4×4 belonging to Kostas the Salt Man. He was invisible despite the fact that his car was parked in its usual location. We achieved the first walk goal and returned to base for the second.
Obi and Oskar were amusing Isabella and I would say that Obi did most of that as Oskar seemed more interested in pursuing his own activities. Obi kept with us most of the time except for the occasional foray into the bushes and to wind up some other dogs at the Plakaki Hotel. He reappeared shortly after allowing himself to be reacquired for the final leg along Alonáki Beach.
Back at the camping, I left Charlie in an adjacent house to Luis and put the remainder into the van. As far as I’m aware, they were quiet whilst I was swimming. I had to check one of Inter Sport’s server backups before leaving as I needed to restart the server once the backup had completed. The sea was almost flat calm. As I approached the water’s edge, Skinny came bounding up and splashed about in the shallow water. I continued on into the water but he wasn’t up for joining me. Instead, he wandered around the beach and went into the camping bar and restaurant areas. I completed my swim then walked up to where I’d seen him last. He was entertaining two of the women who work at the camping when I arrived. I hooked him to the lead I just happened to have with me for such an occasion and we walked back to the van. Isabella made a fuss of him as I put him on his long line to prevent further elopements.
I made breakfast as I wanted to go into Paleochora, and then looked at the server I wanted to restart. I set it to update and restart which I knew was going to take a while. Naturally, I wanted it to complete before I left for Paleochora as the shop would soon open and they would want their emails. As expected, the server installed and rebooted. It then decided there was an error with the updates so was going to revert to its former state. This was going to take an age so I knew it would not be complete before I left. After breakfast, I hurriedly sent a message to Richard explaining the situation before jumping on my bike to leave for Paleochora. In my haste, I forgot the elastic rope to attach the bag of dog food to the bike rack as well as the bag itself.
My plan had been to buy 20kg dog food from Heike for Isabella. Isabella should still have a better quality, lower-fat food then the others to avoid any pancreatic unpleasantness. I’d arranged to arrive at the pet shop at 10:30 but it was 10:45 when I walked through the door. Without the bungee cord and the bag, I decided to purchase 50kg, take 10kg and ask Antonis to collect the other in the car.
Heike was having problems with her card machine so I took a quick look at that too before heading back to the camping to see if the server had finally rebooted and was working. As I was passing Petrakis, I had a quick visit there as I was a little light on food for the Doggy Dinners as well as for myself.
The trip back to the camping was as rapid as it could be. Fortunately, the server had sorted out its life and was working. I still need to find its fundamental problem.
What remained of the day was taken up with another support call for the printer at the Seaford store, a database connection problem for LBS and making the van more Skinny resistant. Having the door mostly closed at night time is not so convenient when it’s hot and now we know Skinny can jump out of the window onto the decking.
I had a spare piece of wire mesh left over from defending the van gate against Luis shredding the insect screen. I discovered that this would cover the open window nicely. I’d considered using the other part of the stair gate to double the height of the van gate to stop Skinny from jumping over whenever the mood took him.
The window is now Skinny-resistant as well as the gate.
The flies are still numerous and bothersome which makes my bent fan shaft even more annoying. I have no idea when Antonis plans to go into Chania next.
The potato I put in the Pot has been exchanged for a corn on the cob so I will have Isabella’s eyes following my every move as I munch my cob in a few minutes. She and Skinny are playing happily on the outer decking.
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