Monday, November 1, 2010

We have a plague of flies, and it isn’t just us. Every year at this time as soon as the weather turns chilly and the mozzies disappear the house becomes inundated with flies and there is not all that much you can do about it. Maybe they come into the warm. Douglas put up a new flypaper in the breakfast room a couple of days ago and already it is black with them though there are plenty more still around. You can’t spray when they’re near food and they really are a nuisance. Fortunately I don’t think the plague will last very long as they die off.
Haven’t’ solved the rat problem either. Put down the glue pads most reluctantly only to find Mister Ratty tap dancing his way to the middle for the titbit and tap dancing his way off again. Keppel caught a monster one the other day so that’s one less to worry about. Wish he would do it more often. The other two cats seem to be totally useless as far as rats are concerned, but lizards and birds make easy prey. Rousell, the mother cat has been behaving most oddly for a few days, turning up her nose at everything we put down for her. We even tried fish, she nibbled a bit of that, and scrambled egg, she nibbled a bit of that, but most of it was left. So Douglas bought some expensive stuff which she has been walloping down. Obviously el cheapo is no longer good enough for her though the others eat it quite happily and seem to thrive on it.
Had an e-mail from our last but one visitor, Michael, with photographs of his visit, some really beautiful atmospheric shots of the Cretan countryside, and it got me to thinking that, with the advent of the digital camera, you would have to be a complete klutz not to be able to take good pictures. The camera will do it all and any amount of improvements can then be made on the computer. Gone are the days of film when you had to focus and worry about light, when you had to have a darkroom and all those chemicals and an enlarger to produce the final print I have two 35mm single reflex cameras, one a Pentax which was much sought after in its day, the other a Russian camera, and one Rolleicord 120 which used to take good pictures but they are now all museum pieces and will never be used again. All told photography in the old days was an expensive business.
Having never been asked to write anything for newspapers and not having, with the excepting of The Athens News, letters to the editor published, I rather enjoy these Blogs, But to-day’s finishes here as we are about to set off for Heraklion, a two hour drive, for my pacemaker check-up. More next time.

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