Naughty Girls

It was a quiet evening with only very brief visits from Georgia and the elder two of Bona’s boys. The mosquitoes were biting very well, some even during the day, so I eventually gave in and decided to go to bed. The plan was to read for a while. But this message asked if I wanted to upgrade to the latest IOS beta so I opted for that and went to sleep, perhaps a little too early. The phone took ages to update so I fell asleep more through boredom.

We were up marginally before the alarm and soon out of the gate once I’d wriggled into my barefoot shoes. I’m wearing them for the first part of the day to keep my feet used to walking over the rocks. I’m now quite quick at getting into them. Like most things, there’s a knack.

All was calm on the Promontory, only a single motorhome in the beach car park and a couple along the road. No FreeLoaders, which is surprising as it’s only 1 September so still the high season. Nevertheless, we made reasonable progress over the rocks: as the moon is long gone, it’s rather dark first thing.

It was equally dark as we marched up the shingle to Plakaki and back. It’s likely the numbers of loungers and umbrellas will slowly reduce as it will be busier only on a fine, sunny weekend until the end of September. As I walked, I was considering how calm the wind has been compared to the end of July and the beginning of August. We’ve had very little wind for what seems like weeks. Not that I’m complaining. There is a little more wind right now as well as some clouds.

Once we’d completed our second, uneventful, Promontory walk, we passed the motorhome which now had a man sitting outside of it. Only Isabella and Sasha showed any interest, the others were wandering across the beach. I called them to me and apologised for any disruption to his morning before shepherding the dogs into the field and back into the camping. I left soon after with the two girls for their additional walk. Other than me throwing Isabella’s ball from the Small Beach, there is little to report and we were back my 07:45.

I exercised my brain then rode up the mountain and around Paleochora stopping only for a black loaf. It was quite warm and perhaps a swim would have been good except that I’d agreed to run an Ethernet cable from the newly-installed router to Litsa’s bedroom. They were going to be out so I wanted to get it done whilst I had the chance. It took me around an hours or so to run the cable, drill a hole to thread it inside and check the TV was working. Litsa was suitably grateful and I should be assured of a continued supply of oranges and lemons during the approaching citrus season.

I finally released and fed the dogs who were becoming impatient especially as I’d been back to pick up tools and they heard me rattling around in the storeroom. They were quickly fed and I made some tea before sitting down for a rest. There may have been a slight gap in the morning…

I became more productive and installed a plugin to send my blog posts to subscribers. Previously, posts would automatically be sent as soon as they were published: this stopped after upgrading to the latest version of WordPress. The plug-in should hopefully send each blog post to all subscribers.

The DDs were a little late going into the Pot so are still slowly depressurising as I write and will require processing before being offered to the doggies later.

The girls raided my stash of toilet paper whilst I was having a shower and I watched the two of them chewing it all up into small pieces. Well done girls! So much more interesting collecting it up when it’s windy. Naughty Girls!

There appeared to be fewer customers as I walked through the upper part of the camping. Certainly fewer cars parked by the gate. There are not so many booking in the calendar after the middle of the month although I’m sure more will appear before too long.

Having been entrusted with two master keys, I’m considering ways of not losing them. Georgia gave me one of the brass Grammeno Camping key fobs but as the master keys are clearly marked as such I’m unsure whether it’s a good idea to advertise the connection between the keys and their location. The loss of these key would, technically, require changing all of the locks yet again! Assuming that the keys are found by someone willing to return them. I could simply put a key tag with only my phone number and no link to the camping. That doesn’t help much if I lose the keys whilst out walking with the dogs. In the past, I’ve always copied the keys given to me, kept the originals in a safe place and used the copies. It’s not easy to copy the masters for obvious reasons so this avenue is not available to me. I’ve been considering AirTag from Apple or alternatives from other suppliers. With these tags, it’s possible to track the item to which the tag is attached hopefully making it possible to find keys dropped out on The Promontory for example. The value of these Master Keys should not be underestimated considering I have been entrusted with both masters which give access to nearly every door in the entire camping.

The few raindrops turned to nothing. The dogs are waiting for their rice to depressurise as I’ve already processed the DDs which is sitting to my left on the table.

During the busy period, when punters were in the rental tents nearby, I kept most of the dogs in their collars during the day. This improves their obedience and deters them from making a racket as soon as I step out of the gate. Having only one remote to cart around makes it easy to administer retribution from anywhere in the camping at a moment’s notice. The collars are now removed once I come back from cycling/shopping/swimming and remain off all day. Unless one of the dogs unwisely decides to continue making a noise having been told to shut up. This has the additional benefit of deterring the others ”pour encourager les autres” as the French might say.

Earlier, I was watching a very interesting Nebula video on Tristan de Cunha (a bastardised version of the Portuguese Explorer’s name) which is a British Dependency of approximately 260 souls situated approximately 2,800km from CapeTown in South Africa in the South Atlantic. Apparently, they have four ship visits per year so one must plan ahead when ordering stuff. No Amazon Prime there! Their industry is mostly farming and fishing with a good international trade in wild lobster (as opposed to the farmed variety). The community works together and are very much interdependent. There is a socking great volcano in the middle of the island although there are some flat bits near to the sea. From 1961 until 1963 the islanders had a holiday in England whilst their volcano erupted. The main community survived so they were able to return. Read more here. I think I recall the volcano erupting at the time.

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