Christmas is coming

Oh yes it is. I know this because this weekend is the annual Christmas Craft Fair. People from all over the island meet to exhibit their crafts whether Christmas based or not. Sally is there with her greetings cards and chutneys and it was a good first day yesterday with an excellent turnout. If you fancy going along to have a look it’s open today from 10.00 until 21.00 and tomorrow from 10.00 until 17.00 at Viros Community Centre, next to the primary school.

On other matters, our optimism about the new premises, while not completely dashed, is somewhat subdued. Unfortunately, our Greek is not fantastic, which is a black mark against us, but dealing with Spyros on the phone is really difficult. So, after todays conversation, we are none the wiser whether it’s good or bad. We will have to go visit on Monday morning to have a face to face and hopefully resolve the matter but, I have to admit, we are worried. Why is nothing ever straightforward?

Suppliers also seem to think that it’s far too early to be thinking about next year. Not so easy when we have an online ordering system to put together and not a lot of time to do it. We’ve known for a decade that everything gets done at the last minute but that cannot be the case this time. We hope.

Normally by this time of year we will have arrived in India or Thailand for our winter holiday (we do work all summer). We just missed the Mumbai bombings last year but would dearly love to be back there now. Too much to do this year so, sadly, no holiday. Never mind, we love rain.

Hopefully we can give you good news about the shop on Monday, if not, has anyone got a tent?

In the beginning.........

Our first job after getting agreement from our backers to go ahead was to sort out the websites for our new business. It’s only one company but we decided to split the websites for villas and yachts. More work and expense, but it allows us to offer specific services to each sector. After 450 meetings with Jon from Truetype Web Solutions (it only seems like it) we managed to get both sites up and running and although not the finished articles, we are very pleased with the results.

Finally able to get on with some other things we turned our attention to premises. We wanted to be in Kontokali and had identified a disused shop that would do the job. We had agreed the rent with the owner and when, on Wednesday last week, we went to view it for a final time before signing on the dotted lines, we were a bit surprised to be told “sorry, it’s been let to someone else”.

Great. Now, we are not the type of ex-pats constantly moaning about Greeks. We choose to live here and have to accept a few annoyances occasionally, it’s a small price to pay, but losing our chosen premises at such short notice was hard to stomach. We knew that someone had offered more money and when we suggested that this was the case we got the usual shrug.

‘Nuff said.

Annoyed but not downhearted we set off and immediately found alternative accommodation. In a better location and in better condition, it turned out for the best in the end. Sometimes these things are meant to be. Better owner too who is happy to tie up the details this week so we can get down to business.

We're off this afternoon for another meeting to dot the "T's" and cross the "I's". Let's hope there are no more shrugs in store.

Stay tuned.