With Good Grace

With immeasurable thanks to Grace, I have adopted a new holistic approach to our neighbours. There is no way that our local post office is accessible to A. A will not let B out of his sight and so B cannot get to the post office either. This is a given and I have always collected their mail and Post Office George knows and understands this. So when I was in the Post office on Friday being ecstatically happy about having a parcel returned unopened from Japan, George told me that there was a recorded delivery item for B. I would not be able to collect it for him without providing his ID card. So I collected B's ID card and took it to the post office this morning to sign for his letter. It looked very official and very Greek. I took it to the mansion and in a moment of brilliance, offered to take it home to copy-type the whole thing in Greek and then run it trough Google Translate.

Aside. A&B have a lawyer here (not my colourful one) whom they trust completely with all their official Greek business. The language barrier means that she speaks to them in English. Only B speaks English but he is very deaf. Greek and French accents differ to such a degree that I have often been called upon to translate between English-in-a-Greek-accent and English-in-a-French-accent. If my neighbours were to be presented with bad news in English-in-a-Greek-accent they may become flustered and fail to understand completely. So it seemed to me to be proactive to make sure that they understood the contents of the letter before taking it to their lawyer for help.

Naturally, my command of either Greek or French is way below par, and I know that Google Translate has its limitations. So I translated the Greek into English, the Greek into French, and the French into English to make absolutely sure we were speaking the same language (pun intended). Printed off the French and delivered it to the mansion.

I was rewarded with a small but beautifully presented bottle of Chanel perfume. This is actually such a habitual token of gratitude that I have gallons of perfume and it was bottle-tops from Dior 'J'Adore' that we used to make dalek's eyes on 4th October.

Meanwhile in Larisa, Spouseman is undergoing a course of radiotherapy which means that he stays there from Monday to Friday, and we have rented him a bachelor pad (in Greek, Garsoniera, presumably for seasonal table-waiting staff). The radiotherapy machine breaks down with alarming regularity which increases the costs of rent and travel for all the down-time. Today, miraculously, his landlady offered him two-weeks free of charge since he has left the room unused for such a large proportion of the rental period. I suggested that we thank her with a small but beautifully presented bottle of Chanel perfume & he agreed it was a good idea.

After his therapy today, Spouseman took the little camera to the Sony service shop. For whatever reason he had expected it to be a shop selling electronics. I had already envisaged it as a guy with a bench and a screwdriver. I was right. He looked at the camera, could see it was not as it should be, checked the date of purchase, logged it and said he would call us back in four or five days. He did not find any flimsy excuse to declare it out of warranty. We have a receipt. 
Things are looking up :-)