As mentioned in the opening page for 2013, this was the year my mother passed away. We visited my parents in June of 2013 with our friends Janet and Thomas, and although they were not in the best of health, both being in their eighties, they seemed OK generally. Little did I realise that I would be returning to England later that year to help my brother to complete the sale of my parent’s house and get my father settled in a new apartment in Exmouth, where he would be near my brother and would get the help and support he needed.
On a more positive note, our holiday in Greece opened up a whole new world for us. Neither of us had ever been to Greece before, but we immediately fell in love with the small seaside village of Psakoudia. It is not a major tourist destination, but gets its fair share of visitors in the summer, many of whom we know! We have also gotten to know many of the local residents and business people, and feel quite at home there.
It has to be said that if it hadn’t been for our friends Monika and Matthias we would probably never have known about this wonderful place. Sadly we have not had much contact with them over the intervening years, but we always be grateful to them for introducing us to Psakoudia in particular, and to Chalkidiki in general.
There were probably other things going on in 2013 but nothing else springs to mind at the time of writing. We were well aware that 2014 would be an interesting year, and perhaps one with more than its fair share of anxiety, because Gatti was scheduled to have bariatric surgery.