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Reading about the fires near Athens, I hope RiS and any other of our friends in Greece have not been caught up in any of that. It looks very bad.

There were dramatic 'Daily Mail' type pictures and reports of unpleasant conditions on the 'Tube' in London. Most of it is pretty bloody awful at the best of times, I shudder to think what it must be like in mid-summer heatwave conditions, stinking to high heaven for a start. Great overuse of the word 'literally', as always, I heard a woman interviewed saying : "We were literally roasted alive."

I understand the Ex-A's didn't turn the stove off before they left. Mrs Ex-A was quite insistent that they should go back and check, but Mr Ex- A in his raki fuelled blur said "No she'll be right".

In Japan they issued body spray to subway users.

In our village more 59 days without rain. I was wondering when the farmers would start bleating and 'lo, it was all in the News last night. My uncle in Brisbane often ran out of water and oxen all skin and bones.

Our farmers saying poor yields, skinny cattle etc. Don't see their problem. They will get the same subsidies. They will put up their prices and get the same income.

Twasn't us Alison. We even always turn the gas bottle off when not using the cooker. Had a spectacular fire on Amorgos many years ago. A Canadian company based in Athens came with a chopper and bombed us. No one official seemed to be prepared to send thanks so I sent an e-mail to the boss with a photo of his aircraft in action. He sent a photo back of a chopper of his fighting a fire in a forest in Canada. It basically said that was not a fire THIS IS A FIRE. Unbelievable, flames 100' high or more with the chopper down amongst it all

RiS is not in the area of the fires. They are well out of town to the West. The only thing likely to burn in Athens is the piles of rubbish.

Amendment to my last. There are now more outbreaks to the south and to the north east of Athens. Perhaps up to 50 dead. Looks pretty bad.

The big troublemaker was the fire just at the north of Athens Airport. A lot of people have build illegally in the forest taking obviously no fire-protection measures and accepting narrow streets in exchange of larger plot of lands. The images of the burnt cars is so similar with the Ilia fires back in 2007 -where people burnt while trying to escape in an unorganized way. Some people never learn. And it is safe to assume that most people did not bother with fire insurance.

The death toll is at 76 and more worrying about 100 missing.

I am more sad that this is part 2 and there is an unknown number of parts in other words we are going to see a repeat in the future.

Some pretty bad fires in California right now also. A "firenaado" was caught on camera in Redding, (where I am based), that pretty much ran the fire into town.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/29/us/carr- ... index.html

I have been on R&R but head back to this one tomorrow. I have some of my staff lost their homes and a few more evacuated.

Here is what it looked like: