I arrive a little earlier than arranged and spy John slipping into a pair of latex gloves...ooh er missus?

It turns out to be nothing more scandalous than he is about to grout tiles.  He’s learnt the hard way that the abrasive effect of grouting wears down the skin on the fingertips.  This is great if you want to outwit a biometrics crime team but not so great, if you have a house to finish because the painfully wafer-thin skin cracks open at the mere thought of any DIY work.

As you can see from the photographs, John has been ever busy.  The house externally is now painted a cool lemon colour with the plaster frames around the windows and doors picked out in white and the balconies are tiled.  Internally the house looks much nearer completion but it’s not quite there yet.  There is 100 sq. metres of tiling left to do though John has just this minute laid the very last tile in the bathroom.  It’s an impressive job for someone who had only ever tiled a miniscule shower compartment.  John took a one-month crash course in tiling before leaving England and invested in some top-notch equipment with the prime intention of tiling the whole house himself.  He has put into practice everything he learnt and it shows.

Can this be said of the electricians?  They have been busy fitting switches and socket covers – everywhere.  It is often noted in Greece that sockets are scarce, and they are regularly sited half way up a wall, certainly easier to use but unsightly.  It’s best to walk through the house with your sparkie and specify exactly where you want your sockets – John has specified.

In between tiling, he has been smoothing down the walls and is hand-sanding the stair wall.  He has fashioned a type of scaffold spanning the staircase to reach the unreachable parts above the stairs.  To be honest I doubt Houdini would have the nerve to walk along it though John is keen to dispel my cynicism as he deftly trip-the-light-fantastic along the plank!

However, in the garden, there is less of a song and dance; John concedes his attention is concentrated on the house, as his move-in date has moved!  Most of the vegetables are on their last legs.  This could be true of the hens, though brought upon themselves – if they do not start laying!  In this corner of Zakynthos, it seems that eggs are scarcer than electric sockets!