Hampered

We went into town for the big Christmas supermarket shop, it's the one time of the year that we treat ourselves to imports, so there's spicy Cheddar and London Gin, there are bananas and Medjool dates. There's a lot of Greek treats in the hamper too; smoked ham and Metsovone cheese. Sadly there wasn't a sliver of smoked salmon to be found anywhere and come to think of it, we completely forgot to even look for Stilton. Without wishing to don a dusty halo, it is not simply our personal economy we consider when we go shopping throughout the rest of the year, we do our level best when purchasing products made of cow's milk to make sure that the cows live in Greece, and not Germany.

I don't really understand their problem, but it seems like a big psychological mess to me; we owe them money which we pay back as agreed, they want to sell us their manufacturing specialities such as cars and white goods, which we can't really afford actually, and can get cheaper ones from elsewhere. They have some lovely islands surrounded by beautiful sandy beaches yet they want us to sell them ours, they want to control our airports and they want to flood our supermarkets with butter and yoghurt made from milk from their cows. The same products made with milk from Greek cows is more expensive but those are our 'treats' for the rest of the year.

On our way in to town we noticed that all three modes of patient transport associated with the central health centre seem to have been put out to grass and there are no obvious replacements parked proudly in its forecourt

Whilst in town we received a telephone call to notify us that our telephone line at home had been fixed and was now working as it ought. When we reached home we discovered that this was not the case after all. It is nice to think that Greek Telecom wanted to make sure we could Skype over Christmas. It's the thought that counts.