Proof reading is truly an art. You can read a manuscript a hundred times and still miss something. Hardly a book I’ve read in the last year but I’ve not found some mistake or mistakes. Dipping into “Dead On Target” I come across on page 207 ‘No, you don’t want to her that’ instead of ‘hear that.’ Easily missed and of course the spell check wouldn’t pick up on it. Would there be any point in sending it back to the printers to rectify this one mistake? My answer to that would be no but Douglas, reading it more thoroughly, has come across a huge mistake in layout where a page for some reason has been centred instead of to the left and looks terrible. Now it definitely will have to go back. As far as the cover is concerned, well! They arrived back from Xania day before yesterday with the most enormous teddy bear and, as we have been watching “Brideshead Revisited” after many a long year, they have naturally called him after Sebastian’s bear and I won’t try and write the name because although I can say it I simply wouldn’t know how to spell it. (Aloysios?)
Here I think I will explain that the cover consists of a forest in which a bear is pinned by an arrow to the trunk of a tree. The objection to the original is that, although the concept was okay, the bear wasn’t the right bear, hence the new acquisition. While in England, Douglas went into a toy shop looking for a bear that could be pinned by an arrow to a tree and the good lady serving was evidently so horrified at the idea she freaked out and he was virtually thrown out of the shop.
We were going to have a pizza night before last but when we arrived in Litsarda we found the pizzeria closed so moved on to Kalyves to the old family restaurant Chris and I used when we first came to Crete to move into our house here. The restaurant is run by Stelios and his family and I was looking forward to the greeting Douglas was going to get from Stelios when he saw him there. Evidently in the morning when they dropped in on the vet, Michaeli to get anti-flea stuff for Merrill, when Michael saw Douglas he dropped everything, there were others waiting, but he rushed across the surgery for hugs and kisses. Chris says he was holding back the tears. ‘I don’t want to hear what you’ve been through,’ he said, ‘you’re here and that’s all that matters.’ I think Stelios would have reacted the same way as it seems everyone has on seeing him back.
I don’t think there is any chance of us ever moving from Crete to live elsewhere. We have been so warmly accepted, become so much a part of the community and have made so many friends. If only, if only, I could be fluent in the language but it is so late.
We have four lemon trees giving us an abundance of fruit – so much that we keep giving it away but yesterday we found a plastic bag on the doorstep with about four dozen lemons in it, obviously from Agalayia across the way. What on earth are we going to do with them? Also Eleftheria sent over some beetroot (yum yum) and enough spinach to feed an army (yuk yuk) but I am supposed to eat my dark green vegetables so might as well get on with it.