Sorry, Your Call Cannot Be Taken

Mobile phones, love them or hate them, are part of our daily lives nowadays. Despite being almost the last of my friends to get one, mine is always with me, religiously charged up every night and I feel totally lost without it. Very occasionally I will forget it in the car or lose it under the seat but generally speaking, although I say it myself, I am pretty good at picking up and returning calls.

Yesterday I went for a walk around loved-one's villas while the visitors were out, to dead-head a few flowers and check that everything was looking the way it should. Dog on lead, I had no pockets in my trousers and handed my mobile to said loved-one to keep in his shirt pocket.

I was happily inspecting the geraniums when a few choice swear words came from the other side of the garden. Hearing the pump in the cesspit working, and knowing that there was nobody in the house to cause it to do so, he had opened up the lid, leant over and my phone fell from his pocket into the stinky depths. My new, super-dooper phone with functions which I don't even understand was at the bottom of the cesspit.

Later on Susan phoned Vodaphone for me to ask them to put a divert from my phone to hers until I could get into town and organise another one. They weren't able to do this without the actual phone inf ront of them, but were most insistent that they should put a block on outgoing calls incase anybody found it. This was even after they had been informed of its whereabouts!

Let's just say that loved-one was well and truly in the sh**.
Sarah

Treasure Hunt?

Sometimes looking at houses for sale is more like following a trail of clues. Yesterday we were in the village of Pelekas where we had an appointment to view a house for sale in the old part of the village. At the last minute its owner phoned to say he was strimming his fields and couldn't meet us in the village - "But never mind I will tell you how to find my house". Well, what with his rather indistinct pronunciation and the quality of the mobile phone signal, we were left with less that precise instructions as to the whereabouts of his house.

Parking on the side of the road we set off up a narrow alleyway to find his two storey house, "It's open, you won't need a key". According to the instructions the house was situated about 70 metres from the main road opposite ..."mumble, mumble, mumble". OK, we said to Diana, who had been on one end of the mobile - opposite what? "I couldn't really understand his Greek", came the reply - "Something like fournaro, but I'm not sure".

So off we set, up an alleyway looking for a two storey house that didn't need a key and was opposite ... something! After about 100m we were ready to give up when all of a sudden a huge stone chimney loomed splendidly ahead of us seemingly growing out of the ivy. Could that be our "something"? Must be "fourno" (oven) we reckoned and since there was a two storey house opposite, we chanced our luck and took photos and wrote a description.

As usual in a Corfiot village, the presence of strangers attracted some attention and a face appeared at a neighbouring window - looking at us! Sarah took the opportunity of acquiring some local knowledge and sought information about the vast chimney. "What is that, what does it do?" We were then treated to a concise description of a chimney - starting with "There is a lot of heat at the bottom and the smoke rises and comes out the top!" We had thought it must be some giant smoke-house (think herrings, sausages, etc) and the local gentleman obviously amused his mates over an ouzo later that day with the tale of the foreign women who didn't know what a fireplace was! Incidentally, the unknown "something" word was "fougaro" an old Italian word for chimney. And our photos were of the right house!
Susan

Mountainside Meeting

Today we went looking at land and houses for sale in various parts of the island and took this photo of a chance meeting with walkers following the Corfu Trail (the footpath that runs from the south to the north of the island).

The picture shows the walkers, a local land-owner and a shepherd exchanging news and views.
Susan

Safe to Cross - Or is it?

With the arrival of the summer season comes a new indication of 'tourist friendly' innovations - the pedestrian crossing.

I am not sure about other regions of the island, but in my southern area I have counted at least six bright yellow pedestrian crossings under construction at suitable points all along the main road, giving access to the beach, to supermarkets and restaurants.

There is only one problem with this. Unlike places such as the USA where drivers seem to anticipate when you are about to step on a crossing and wait for you to do so, Corfiot drivers have no appreciation of the finer points of allowing pedestrians to take precedence in crossing the roads in front of them.

I have a feeling that far from making the roads safer, we will be encouraging visitors to step out on the crossing, safe in the knowledge that drivers will stop - but they probably won't. Of course a sign prior to the crossing to warn drivers to stop for pedestrians might help - but that is probably another government department and as we well know, no two government departments work together.

So fingers crossed that most visitors have a knowledge of the local style of driving and think very carefully before they step out on those smart new crossings.
Diana

Musical Triumph

On Friday 9th May the final of the competition Eurovision Young Musicians 2008 took place in front of an audience of tens of thousands in the City Hall Square in Vienna. There were seven finalists, short-listed from sixteen European contestants aged 19 and under, and the winner was Dionysios Grammenos from Corfu!

Dionysios was born in Corfu in 1989. He took his first clarinet lessons at the age of eight at the Corfu Philharmonic. He is currently studying at the Athens Conservatory with professor Spyros Mourikis and will graduate next year.

What a wonderful achievement for our small island. Many congratulations to him.
Susan

Currency Exchange

Earlier this week we received the following email from one of the currency exchange companies we regularly deal with. It may be of interest to those planning to buy property in the near future.

As you are probably aware Sterling has been in somewhat of a freefall over the past 8 months and with the UK economy still suffering from the well publicised credit crisis this unfortunately looks set to continue.

Yesterday the Bank of England released their quarterly inflation report and the news from the central bank did not show any positive signs for the UK in fact quite the opposite. Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, stated that the outlook for the UK economy has "deteriorated markedly" and "the weakening in sterling's value could be prolonged". To combat the slowdown in the UK economy the central bank are preparing to cut rates again, possibly as soon as next month, so King's prediction of a weaker pound looks likely to occur sooner rather than later.

Therefore, if you or anyone you know have any upcoming currency requirements then please do not hesitate to contact me as I would be happy to discuss the options open to you including securing your exchange rate now up to an agreed date in the future with only an 11% deposit to protect yourself from any further drops in the market.

In the meantime I hope you are well and I look forward to speaking with you soon.

Kind regards,
Colm Gilhooly Desk Manager Foreign Currency Direct plc www.currencies.co.uk
0800 328 5884 / +44 1494 725353