Two months into 2006

It seems as if we only just got over Christmas, and suddenly it's the end of February. What a lot has happened in those two little months: Dan left home to join the Doulos, (now sailing from Qatar to Bahrain) and we've bought a house.... two items quite high on the lists of stressful things to happen.

On Saturday I spent most of the day gardening. The 'lawn' was getting very long, and there were a lot of mosquitoes about. Cutting it is supposed to help, so I did. At least, I cut the parts I'd cut within the last month. Some sections have weeds about 50cm or more high, and the lawnmower can't deal with them, so I pulled lots of weeds - and more on Monday, and more today. Still loads more to go, but at least 80% of the 'lawn' looks reasonably tidy now, and it does seem as if there are fewer mosquitoes around.

This morning we had no Internet connection at all, as CYTA were doing a massive upgrade. So when I switched my computer on an hour before lunch, I did what I usually do at the end of each month: made a CD backup of all this month's documents, digital photos, and Quicken backup files. Then I ran Ad-Aware (which found two nasty cookies), deleted some of my temporary files, and defragmented the hard drive. Actually I hadn't done any of this since the end of December so it was well worth doing.

This afternoon I finished typing book reviews into Bibliophil, and entered another thirty or forty of our books to the database. I had kept hand-written reviews and ratings of every book I had read in the past seven years, so I just needed to type them in... which I've been doing off and on in the last couple of weeks. It was quite satisfying to finish. All I have left to enter now is another four or five hundred books on our shelves which I either haven't yet read at all, or haven't read since before 1999. A great feature of the site is that I can download all the information I've typed into an Excel file, for offline reference.

Tim is plodding through his NCSC course, which he would like to have finished by the summer if possible. But he has a busy life so doesn't have time every day for workbooks. He's helping to get a church computer working, trying to install an old windows hard drive on his and Dan's PC, in the hope of making an elderly scanner work with it, and also doing a lot of music.

He's signed up for three different music exams in May and June... not that any of them will be very difficult. He's been taking singing lessons since the Autumn, and his teacher wants him to take Grade 1 singing as he's working on some of the pieces. That should be an easy exam since he's done so much other music over the years. Cypriots seem to like exams, and music teachers here often get their students to take several; Tim won't do all the grades in singing, though. He'll wait till he's ready for at least Grade 5 before he does another.

Grade 5 seems to be a significant level in music, being roughly equivalent to a GCSE in 'points', and one of the other exams he's doing is Grade 5 music theory. This is necessary before he can take any higher level exams, and he would like to do a Grade 7 or 8 piano accompaniment exam (which Guildhall offers, and we hope will continue to offer when they combine with Trinity) in the next year or two. In the meantime he's decide to take a Grade 5 piano exam even though he's playing music at a much higher level. The NCSC allows Grade 5 or higher music exams to be taken instead of academic electives, and as Tim hasn't taken any music exams since he did piano Grade 1 at the age of 8, he thought he might as well take it this year.

We've bought a house!

Well, we've paid the deposit and signed the contracts. That's legally binding so we're committed to the house we found back in January. This is what it looks like:


Yup, the whole thing. Almost no land (nothing at the back, just the carport width at the sides and the porch at the front) which is why it's such good value. But we've had more than enough of a huge garden. The Salt Lake park isn't far away, if we need some space or a good walk. At the new house we can grow a few trees and flowers without having to worry about constant weeds and trying to maintain a 'lawn'.

Here's a view showing one of the sides. Yes, an electricity pylon is rather close, but no more so than one outside our house here. That spiral staircase will have to be removed to make it legal, but it doesn't look exactly very safe anyway. One of the carports will have to come down too, but we were intending to do that. With only one car, we don't need parking space for four...



We have until the end of June to pay the rest of the money, so assuming all goes well with the sale of our UK house, that won't be a problem. If we're ready to pay before the end of June, we'll let the sellers know as they need about a month's notice to move out. So it could be early April...

Confused trees?

I always thought that trees 'knew' what season it was, and so went through their cycles appropriately. In the UK, we generally get fruit blossom around March and April, fruit on trees from about June to September, orange/brown leaves in late September and October, which fall to the ground, leaving bare branches for mid-November until about mid-February, when the new buds start again. Other than the evergreens, of course. At least, this is what we learn in biology at around the age of 11, and the trees in the UK mostly behave as they're supposed to.

But in Cyprus, it's a bit more complicated. I already mentioned the almond blossom in our neighbour's garden; today it was looking even more stunning:


OK, so it's Spring. It was lovely and warm again today, about 21C [um, that's around 70F, for anyone on Fahrenheit] so we had all the windows open most of the morning and some of the afternoon.

Then again, it's still only February, and we may have another cold spell before it begins to get really hot. And sure enough, our mulberry tree looks much like a tree in the UK in winter:


On the other hand, our mespila (loquat) tree is past the blossom stage - so small it's hardly noticeable anyway - and has already produced tiny fruits. Evidently, it thinks it's already late spring:


Then again, the citrus trees are coming towards the end of their fruiting season - we still have lots of lemons:


And just to complete the cycle, the 'shade' tree (that's what the Cypriots call it) looks like a tree in Autumn:


Maybe the trees here never went to school to study the seasons.

House contracts

I've been rather distancing myself from the house situations (both here and in the UK) in the past few days, as it's all felt a bit overwhelming.

On Monday, Richard met an architect who was involved in the planning of the upper storeys of the house we hope to buy here. He said that he can draw up new plans which match what was actually done, get them inspected and registered, have a certificate of approval created, and ensure the deeds describe the building correctly. It won't be cheap, but he can do that, so long as it's within the next two or three months. He's even put it in writing for us (unusual here, but Richard insisted).

Why can he only guarantee this within the next couple of months? Ah, well.. this is Cyprus. He's one of the people who would be involved in the granting of permissions, at present.

Hmmm.

Difficult moral dilemma there, although Richard didn't enquire too specifically about what this would mean. Was he saying that the house can't be made legal but he can get us a certificate anyway by pulling the right strings, so long as we're prepared to pay? Or simply that he knows the system, he can do it all correctly, and he's sure there won't be a problem? If the latter, then that's fine, but somehow we suspect the former.

Still, another architect confirmed that there's nothing actually dangerous about the house, and the only real difficulty is that in a couple of places the buildings are within 3 metres of the boundary. This architect said that that's a new law; for houses 20 years old, it's not relevant.

Our solicitor seems to think this is all fine, and the vendor has apparently agreed to all the terms on the contract. So tomorrow we have to go to our bank when it opens at 8.30 to get a bank draft for the deposit, and the plan is to exchange contracts at 10am.

Gulp.

Oh, and we have to pay the stamp duty at the same time (about £250) although we don't have to pay the vast amount for registering the deeds until we actually get them - which could be as long as the end of June.

Nor do we have any idea when we'll be moving. It partly depends on when we finally get the money for our house in the UK, and on how long it takes for all the paperwork to be done by our solicitor here to ensure everything is legal. Also, I suppose, it depends on when the family want to move out.

As for our house in the UK, it seems as if all should go through within the next few days. The council in Birmingham has said in writing that we didn't need planning permission to turn the house back into one dwelling when we moved in. So that's good. Our solicitor there has pointed out that the area we live in has lots of little semi-public footpaths that aren't mentioned on deeds, and it's not a problem. We may have to take out an indemnity insurance policy, but he hopes not. If we do, it's apparently quite straightforward (and another £200).

Last night Richard spoke on the phone to the lady who's buying the house, and she said she's just waiting for the mortgage to come through. It should be any day now, apparently.

So we hope and pray that all goes smoothly. Once we have a moving date, I shall probably start to panic...

Doulos in the Gulf

We haven't heard a lot from Daniel this week, but assume that 'no news is good news'. From the brief messages he's sent, it sounds as if he's having a wonderful time on the Doulos, and keeping very busy. I've set up some Google alerts for myself to find out what the local press are saying about the Doulos and its book fairs - if anything - when it arrives at the various ports, and so far it's all very encouraging.

Before the ship left Abu Dhabi, where it was moored just before Dan joined, this enthusiastic report was made on the GulfNews.com site by the Indian Ambassador. It's just had a fortnight in Sharjah, where this report was written in the Khaleeh Times, including an interview with the Captain.

It's now at Doha, in Qatar. The Gulf Times gave this report about its tumultuous welcome, and today they gave this report on the first day of book sales.

Even living in Cyprus, where there are at least a few bookshops with English books (albeit hardly any English library books) I appreciate all the more how important it is for people in the Middle East to have a wide selection of books, both in their own languages and in English, at the excellent prices charged by the Doulos. After a couple more ports in the Middle East, they sail on to India, where poverty is high and books even more rare.

Relaxed lifestyle

I was thinking about the good points of living in Cyprus, recently. People might get angry quickly, but they make up their arguments too. They might ignore some of the laws when it suits them, but they're mostly quite humanitarian. Violence in the streets is almost unknown. Women and children are safe to walk around anywhere, any time. And despite the cold of winter and the heat of summer, the weather is mostly very pleasant. Today it was up to 21C in the morning, so I went out without a jacket on for the first time this year.

When I was in the bank, it occurred to me how relaxed it is, even there. Sure, there's a security camera which, I guess, records everyone who comes in and what they do. But there are no partitions keeping the bank clerks from the customers. Just ordinary desks. People can peer over and see their account details on the computers, and some customers wander behind the desks, if invited by one of the bank staff. The people on duty get to know the customers too: today I was paying something in for Dan, and the girl serving me mentioned that there was a cheque-book waiting for us. She looked through a hand-written list, found our names, crossed them out, and went to find the cheque-book. No formal system, no signature required: just a friendly place where we've become known, along with most of the other regulars.

Just after lunch there was a jumble sale at St Helena's church, the one Tim attends, which is about five minutes' walk from our house. I love jumble sales. I popped down and bought about 12 books, two mugs that looked new and which match our plates, and an unopened pack of coffee filters. All for the grand total of £4 (which is around $8 US). I said hello to various friends - these quarterly jumble sales are social events as well as money-raisers - and Tim found an ancient scanner which he thought might work with their old computer. It's huge, and he paid about £1 for it... he hasn't got it to work yet, but is still hopeful.

When we got home, we realised that we'd left one of the bedroom windows open. Since our house is a bungalow, all the windows are easily reachable from the ground, and they're quite big enough for anyone to climb through. Had something like that happened in the UK, I'd have rushed around checking nothing had been stolen. As it was, my biggest concern was that a local tom cat might have got in and left his 'calling card'. Many people don't shut their windows or lock their doors when they go out.

Last Summer I mentioned how we were amused to see the trees in a street near ours having a 'beard-trim'. Since then, they've grown shaggier and more untidy, looking like this:


But today, the local council must have decided some more drastic action was needed. From about 8am there was the noise of some kind of chain-saw, and when I was on my way to the jumble sale I saw what they were doing:


Only one side of the street so far. I've no idea if they'll do the other side too, or whether they'll leave them to get even longer and then trim the 'beards' in the summer.

Spring is coming

It wasn't so cold today. It probably got as high as about 18C outside, and this morning the sun shone for several hours. We enjoyed opening the windows and letting in some warmth and fresh air.

One of the first signs of spring is seeing almond blossom. It seems to arrive overnight, and although we don't have an almond tree, one of our neighbours does:


It's not so bitterly cold at night any more, either. 10C rather than 5C, but we still light the kerosene heater in the evenings and are still using a hot water bottle at night! The house temperature is about 12C when we get up, and that can feel distinctly chilly...

The best-laid plans....

I was going to get a lot done today. The sun was shining, I felt reasonably energetic. And, indeed, I did start fairly well with cleaning out the fridge, sorting out some fruit, making some more raw applesauce to freeze, doing two loads of laundry, and trying out a new recipe for our breadmaker using sun-dried tomatoes - and it was very good when we ate it warm at lunch-time!

However it was COLD out. I kept dropping pegs as I hung out wet washing, and suddenly realised my fingers were almost numb. So I abandoned my intention to cut the rest of the grass and do some weeding. That will have to wait for slightly warmer weather (predicted for next week). Instead I came inside and turned on the kerosene heater, something we usually only do in the evenings. However mid-February is often surprisingly chilly in Cyprus.

I wasn't going to switch the computer on till mid-afternoon. But shortly before lunch Richard phoned to say we'd had an email with yet more questions from our buyer's solicitor in the UK (via our solicitor) about our house there, which we're selling. In particular, he wanted to have a list of all the alterations and renovations we did, and whether we had permission for any of them. Apparently these days solicitors have to ask lots of detailed questions, and get all kinds of assurances or indemnities, because of the tiny risk of being sued in the future for not discovering something vital. Things have changed a lot in the UK in the past 20 years, it seems...

Last October when we sorted out the last of our stuff in the house, we came across a folder stuffed with documents dating back to the 1980s. My intuition made me keep it although I couldn't imagine what use it might be. It has turned out to be extremely useful: it contains the original survey we had on the house in 1982, the mortgage offer, all the quotations we had for the massive amounts of work we had done, plans we had drawn up, and other useful information. From that, plus a few photos I took of 'before-and-after' scenes from the house, we were able to draw up what we hope is a reasonably comprehensive list of repairs and alterations we made on the house. Since they were almost all internal, we didn't have permission for any of them. Perhaps these days we would need to, but we took advice and listened to experts, and did everything correctly as far as possible.

So that took up a couple of hours this afternoon, when I was planning to tidy the study a bit and sort out some of the recent paperwork. And by mid-afternoon I don't have much impetus to do anything much that requires physical or mental energy. So I simply read and wrote email and forum mail, and catalogued another 50 books at Bibliophil. I like the system: it allows for ratings, reviews and even Google-style 'labels' to be applied, but it's quite time-consuming. I think my estimate of entering 50 books per day is a little over-ambitious since it takes about an hour to enter 20-25 books, even when I have them already reviewed elsewhere and can simply copy-and-paste bits for short reviews at Bibliophil. Perhaps I should aim for 25 per day, although in that case it'll be at least June before I've entered them all.

To sign or not to sign....?

Tomorrow morning, we meet with the estate agent and the vendor to discuss the draft contract which our solicitor has drawn up (in English, thankfully). It's apparently likely that the vendor will want some changes, and I suspect we may too. The vendor and agent want it signed as soon as possible, and a significant deposit paid. We have some money we can pay at this stage, but until our house in the UK is sold, and all money transferred, we can't pay much. That may be a stumbling-block.

As far as the UK house sale goes, we still have no idea of the timescale. The lady buying it has kept in touch via email: the surveys have been acceptable, the mortgage valuation was as expected, and her mortgage has been approved in principle. The other people involved (helping with the deposit) should have their bank loan approved next week. We signed the necessary documents a week ago and they're safely lodged with our UK solicitor, to be produced as soon as necessary.

But it seems like one step forward, one step back (not to mention swing your partner, do-si-do...). At the same time as encouraging emails from the person buying the house, we've had less encouraging emails from our UK solicitor. He says that the buyer's solicitor is asking for written proof that we didn't need planning permission to change the house back into one private property. He also wants some kind of indemnity insurance since the deeds apparently don't show that there is public access to the rear of the house, and a shared side pathway with one of our neighbours.

I don't know why they aren't on the deeds, or why the solicitor we used 23 years ago didn't mention all these things. Nor do we really know what an indemnity insurance policy is, whether it can be obtained, what it might cost, and (perhaps most significantly) how long it might take to come through. Since we only had the last email from our solicitor this afternoon, it seems unlikely that we'll know anything more before tomorrow morning.

Still, it did make Richard wonder if we should insist on some kind of indemnity insurance policy here, as there are similar legal irregularities with the deeds. Assuming, of course, that Cyprus has such things.

We would still like to go ahead with buying the house we like so much. But even if we can manage to agree the terms of the contract tomorrow, we have no idea when our UK house will actually be sold, and when we'll be able to access the money we'll receive from it. Yet a completion date and final payment date will have to be written into the contract, which is legally binding.

If we decide to pull out at this stage (which might lead to loss of the original deposit we paid) is it common sense and prudence, or lack of faith? If we go ahead with the purchase, is it a step of faith or stupidity?

I wish we had some answers, one way or the other.

Cataloguing books

I keep a list of all our books in Word, so I can print it when we're in the UK, to refer to in second-hand bookshops and charity shops. With the number of books in our household, I often can't remember (for instance) exactly which Agatha Christies we have already. 

I've always liked the idea of making booklists available online, with short reviews. I've written longish reviews on Ciao and Dooyoo, and the occasional shorter one on Amazon UK. 

A few years ago I built a Geocities site for reviews of all the books I read, and then when I began blogging, started a book reviews list there - which I backdated to include everything from the start of 2005. That was a great deal easier than trying to maintain a site. But I also felt I wanted somewhere to list ALL my books. 

Two or three different bloggers mentioned Library Thing, which seemed like a good idea: a place to catalogue and share lists of books. The only problem is, it charges a fee for any collections over 100, and I'm always rather reluctant to pay fees for something like that. Yes, I know it costs to maintain sites and I have no problem with optional donations - but in general the Internet is free, with paying options only for enhanced use. 100 books is almost nothing so it felt like only a 'demo' edition available free. 

Next I discovered AllConsuming, a site where I can enter in the titles of books I'm reading (or have read) or movies I've watched, or even food I've eaten.. with possibilities for rating, reviews, and so on. It has a link to attach to the side of blogs, which was a good feature - my current reading should be displayed somewhere in my side-bar on both this and my book reviews blog. But it doesn't have useful ways of sorting the lists or easy way of comparing with other people's lists. 

Then I saw a link to Bibliophil on one of the blogs run by a long-standing email friend Steve, aka Methodius. I followed the link, and there it was - exactly what I was looking for. Cataloguing of books using information from Amazon, no limit to library size (though optional donations are welcome), and several interesting features. Moreover the site author is clearly active and updates it as he thinks of new features. Of course, even with broadband it's quite time-consuming entering books - and so far I haven't done any reviews. I haven't even rated most of them. But if I do about 50 per day, I might have our entire collection entered by about the middle of March....

2022 update, since this post is apparently being viewed a fair amount: I got rid of the links that are broken - which is most of them, 14 years after writing. Ciao and Dooyoo are long gone, as are Bibliophil, AllConsuming and Geocities.  However my book reviews blog continues, as linked above and my catalogues are also on GoodReads, and LibraryThing (which no longer charges for collections over 100). I like them both, but having seen other cataloguing systems vanish, I not only export the collections periodically, but like to keep everything in two separate places. I would recommend them both. 

And I no longer keep a printed list of books. I have a LibraryThing app on my phone, so if necessary can check that.  

Unprofessional?

Our solicitor in the UK emailed to say that he's been in touch with the council about our house. They say that because we did the alterations before 1988 (and, presumably, because they were all internal) they don't require planning permission.

On the other hand, our buyer's solicitor might insist that we go through the process of drawing up plans and getting permission granted, which would be expensive and also very time-consuming. Even if they insist on a certificate that says we don't need permssion, that could apparently take six weeks.

So if either of those scenarios occur, we'll have to withdraw on the house sale here. At least it would force the decision.

Meanwhile, the lawyer here has been doing the legal searches on the house we hope to buy. He had some questions for one of the architects, and on Monday is meeting with the vendor (who is acting as his own lawyer rather than employing one) to check a few more details. The solicitor doesn't think they're going to cause problems, but wants to ensure he has all the pertinent information.

Which is fine, as far as we're concerned. This is what we pay lawyers to do, after all! If there is any problem beyond what we already know, we'd like to be aware of it. And the solicitor will be drawing up the contract, so he wants to be certain he knows all the facts before going ahead.

However, the estate agent is not happy. She rang Richard yesterday, shortly after he spoke to the lawyer, and said it was ridiculous how slowly things are going. She wants the contracts signed on Monday, she says that her lawyers could have pushed it through without all this fuss. She says the lawyer is too young (?!) - and 'unprofessional'.

Richard told her that he's doing what we want, and that in the UK we expect lawyers to be careful, rather than rushing things. They're supposed to protect the interests of the client, and that's what he seems to be doing. The agent said that's not what happens here. Richard reminded her that Cyprus is now in Europe, and that increasingly they're going to find that lawyers expect to follow European principles, and that buyers will want them too. She insisted, again, that it's 'unprofessional'.

Then we remembered that we've heard this strange usage of the word before - someone we know wanted to employ a musician for various events. The musician said she wanted to set her fees and hours in advance, and also let him know that she would not be available for a possible event six months ahead. The person wanting to employ her got angry, and insisted that she was ' unprofessional'... which seemed very odd, since she was in fact behaving as one would expect a professional musician to do, even though it's not usual here. Or hasn't been. More normal in Cyprus would be to agree to everything happily, then have a shouting match over the fees at some point in the future, and call in sick at the last moment for the event she knew she could not attend.

We thought it was just a mis-use of English by this particular person, but after the estate agent used it in the same incorrect way, we realised that they don't mean 'unprofessional' at all. They mean 'un-Cypriot'. If 'professional' means 'the way it's always been done in Cyprus, which works well most of the time' then naturally anything like a careful lawyer, or forward-thinking musician, will seem 'unprofessional'.

Vanishing dustbins

For eight years, we've had two black plastic dustbins. They're old - one of them had quite a crack in the bottom - and fairly grubby, but they did their job. Every couple of days I emptied our inside bins into a black sack and put it outside in a dustbin. The dustmen come early in the mornings on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays (excellent service!) and empty them.

They were definitely here a week ago when I took a load of quick photos around the house and outside to put on a CD for Daniel.


See... right by the front of the car, in this little piece of one of the pictures of our front garden. (Uh, full of weeds... but the geranium is doing well). In fact, they were there Wednesday night when I put a sack of rubbish out.

But this morning, when we were getting in the car to do our weekly supermarket visit, Richard noticed that they had vanished.

It was quite a windy night, so we thought perhaps they had blown out into the street. But no, we couldn't see them anywhere. So maybe the dustmen had put them in our neighbour's front yard? Nope - no sign. Could they have been stolen?? Um... Theft is pretty rare in Cyprus anyway, but who on EARTH would steal two rather ancient, extremely tatty, partly broken dustbins?

So maybe they were so bad that the dustmen decided to throw them away along with the rubbish. I don't suppose we'll ever know.

Since we hope to be moving soon, we'll just put out the black sacks for now, rather than going to the trouble of buying a new dustbin. I don't even know where they can be bought from.

But it's very odd.

Good news, and another possible worry

The good news is, I had an email from Daniel. Yes, they're safely on the Doulos, doing yet more training. His phone is flat, and he hasn't yet had a chance to get the charger checked for safety, hence why he hasn't replied to text messages.

But the house situation seems to grow ever more complicated. This time it's about our house in the UK. We signed the contract and deed transfer document on Monday and they're now safely at our solicitor's office back in Birmingham. So far so good.

But a query has come up from the buyer's solicitor, for which we have to delve into history.

When we bought the house in Birmingham, way back in 1982, it had been used as a rental property and was converted to two separate apartments. A downstairs flat, with access via the back door only, and an upstairs two-storey one, with access via the main staircase near the front door. Rather like the place we're hoping to buy here, but with the staircase inside rather than outside.

The house was also in need of considerable repairs - new roof, damp-proof course, plaster renovation, rewiring, and various other things. So when we received our mortgage offer, it was on condition that we did the necessary renovation and conversion. We even managed to find the initial paperwork. The initial mortgage valuation includes the sentences:

"We have assumed, for the purpose of our Valuation, that the property will be converted back to a single dwellinghouse."

and:

"An entrance doorway requires forming between the ground and first floor flats, and the sink unit should be removed from the rear bedroom."

Since we wanted it as one house, this was no problem. When we received the actual mortgage offer, it said that it was subject to various legal things, and:

"Subject to the property to be reconverted to a single dwelling."

On the original document from the estate agent (yes, we even still have that!) there's the phrase:

"if required, relatively minor works of adaptation could be carried out to reconvert the property to a spacious private residence."

And yes, it was relatively minor. We did it ourselves on the day we moved in - knocked through an old doorway, and removed some of the blocking-in of the staircase. It took us several years to complete the renovations - we did a lot more than was required by the mortgage, and of course redecorated throughout - but the actual reconversion back to one house was the work of about an hour.

Well.

The solicitor of the lady buying the house has been doing the standard searches, and has uncovered something which we did not know: some years before we bought the house, the previous owner applied for planning permission to convert it into two flats. Perhaps because he wanted to rent it out, and rules for rental properties are quite strict.

However since the modifications were all internal, it never occurred to us that planning permission would be relevant. It didn't come up in the searches our solicitor did, as far as we know, and was never mentioned by the mortgage company, the estate agent, or indeed anyone else.

We HOPE that since it was so long ago, and didn't involve any changes to the look or structure of the house, that there will not be any problems. But we heard from our UK solicitor today (not the one we used 23 years ago) that he's been asked to check with the local planning office, to confirm that planning permission and/or building regs would not have been required.

Ironical, really. Our concerns about the house we want to buy here are that it may be difficult to sell again, since it doesn't have full planning permission for everything on the site. And now we find that our house in the UK is in a similar state.

Sigh.

Surreal....

I know this is Cyprus, and things sometimes happen in an almost Discworldian style, but even so...

Yesterday, Richard asked the lawyer to proceed with searches on the house we want to buy.

Today he received an email from the lawyer, quoting his fees, and saying what he would be doing - drafting and negotiating the contract, stamping the contract, filing with the land registry. So far so good. Then it went on to say:

5. Look after the payments on your behalf (payments are done in stages according to work progress by the developers).

6. Apply to the Council of Ministers for the necessary permission to register the property on your name and of course Mr B.......'s.

Uh... but the house is already built so it's not in progress. And we have NO idea who the Mr B mentioned might be. Moreover, the subject-line in the email referred to 'property at L.......... Street' whereas we had understood the address to be 4, C........... Street.

Richard wrote back, asking if we had been sent an incorrect message.

The lawyer replied that the email was indeed intended for someone else, and apologised.

But then he went on to say that he referred to L.......... Street because the title sent from the estate agent concerns a propery at 4, L.................. Street!

I looked at the photocopy of the title deeds we were given. The map showing the plot is clearly marked (in English) as C........... Street. The text (in Greek) appears to have two addresses: one is the Greek equivalent (K................ Street) but there's also an address at L................. Street mentioned on the document.

Then I looked at the copy of planning permission for the upper two storeys, which we also had a copy of. It's not easy to read handwritten Greek, and the photocopy isn't very clear, but it does indeed look as though the address given is L............... Street.

Strange.

Richard phoned the agent. She said that streets in Larnaka are being renamed, so perhaps this was formerly C.............. Street, now L............... Street.

Hmmmm.

Well that might make sense - who knows what they might do? - except that the plans are dated 20 years ago, and the deed was most recently altered in 2005. Or so we think. Not being fluent in Greek (or in Cypriot culture, despite over 8 years living here) we're not quite sure what it means. And we certainly don't want to sign a contract for the wrong property!!

The agent will apparently phone tomorrow morning and confirm either way.

Sigh.

Still no news from Daniel, either. But we hope that 'no news is good news'. He's probably very busy. Or perhaps the email system isn't working properly, and messages are taking several days to arrive (as happened last summer). If the port is also out of range for mobile phones (unlikely, but I suppose possible) then he might not even have received our text messages.

Stress....

Daniel should have joined the Doulos on Sunday. However we have not heard anything from him since Saturday night, and the Doulos site has just posted some 'news' dated today (7th Feb) saying that the new recruits 'are coming'... does that mean they aren't there yet, we wonder, or was this written a few days ago but only just published? Emails sent to the address he should have on the Doulos are bouncing straight back. Tim and Richard have both sent text messages on their mobile phones, but have had no response.

I'm sure if anything had gone wrong, or he was ill or anything, we'd have been told; but it's still a bit odd and beginning to worry me a little.

Added to that, we don't know what's happening with the house we hope to buy, or how soon our house in the UK will be sold. On Friday our solicitor in the UK told us he was sending a contract to sign via FedEx. Great, we thought. At least that means the sale is going through. However when the package arrived, it became clear that contract exchange isn't going to happen at once; all SHOULD be all right, and the solicitor needed our signatures on both the contract and the deed transfer document, so that when the time comes he'll have them ready. But he doesn't know if it will be by the end of February.

As for the house here... it still seems ideal in many ways. But the estate agent phoned on Saturday trying to persuade us to pull out, and look at some other properties. Which got us wondering why. We wondered if perhaps she had now seen the house, and realised it's probably worth more than the asking price. Or whether someone else has offered to buy it, who is willing to move more quickly.

Yesterday we instructed the solictor here to do the searches, and let the estate agent know that we do want to go ahead, assuming no further problems crop up.

Today she rang again, and said that the vendor now wants to make the house officially into two properties, with two sets of title deeds, and that his architect says it's perfectly possible (perhaps he'll draw boundaries where they don't exist, as on the plans for the upstairs two storeys!). Then he apparently wants to sell them separately, so he can get more money. The agent says she's told him he has to go ahead with the sale price as agreed while we're still interested... but who knows what will happen. We know from experience that the law is often ignored completely, and that as foreigners there's nothing we can do about it. We are also aware that some Cypriots are convinced that foreigners are wealthy, so perhaps the vendor thinks we would be prepared to pay more if he got the house somehow legalised.

So that all creates yet more stress. Relationships are all-important here, and we really don't want to antagonise the family selling the house, or get a bad reputation with the neighbours. If any more problems crop up, we probably will pull out. We certainly won't pay more for this house than the asking price, even though it's very good value and we might have paid more had a slightly higher price been given in the first place.

I do believe God's in control and that if we're not supposed to have this house, then something as good - or better - will come up. It's been suggested that we buy a plot and have a house built to our own specifications, ensuring it's fully legal and compliant. So we may consider that option if this one falls through. But in the meantime, it's hard to get anything much done as the whole process is so stressful...

Alongside the house saga....

... Life goes on. It's been chilly, grey and windy (though no rain) for a couple of days now. Rather miserable. I did a couple of loads of laundry this morning and hung them out, but will leave them overnight; that usually works best. I suppose a tumble drier would be a good idea for the rainier times of year (as suggested in a comment a while ago) but they're expensive to run, they use a lot of energy, and they're not particularly good for clothes. About half our clothes can't be tumble-dried anyway (they would either shrink or grow!) and of course if things get left in a drier for more than about ten minutes after it's finished, they crease and then need ironing.

So I much prefer hanging out in the fresh air where possible ... inside out, so they can just be folded and put straight away when they're dry. I iron about twice a year, and that's usually when Tim's playing in a concert needing a white cotton shirt, and it wasn't hung up properly so looks crumpled.

About ten o'clock this morning we went to the bank, to try to open a savings account. Since significant amounts of money will be transferred here while we're in process of buying a house, we thought we might as well get a bit of interest (current accounts don't give any here). There were lots of options but we chose one with instant access. Should have been easy, but there were computer problems at the bank, and it seemed to take ages before the printer produced the forms to sign (about six times each) to set up the account.

This afternoon Richard went with a friend who's in the building trade, and an architect, to look at the house we're still hoping to buy...details in the post below.

Shortly after they left a friend from Limassol arrived to collect some things his family left here when we last saw them, and we chatted a while. He mentioned that someone he knows, who's in Larnaka tonight, flying out tomorrow, will be visiting the Doulos at the weekend - and is going to make a point of saying hello to Daniel!

Tim took a look at our friend's laptop - he was asking some technical questions which I didn't understand - and then, after checking Dan's downloads and starting some more (thank goodness for Broadband!) he rushed off to his singing lesson. After that he had half an hour to eat before rushing out again to the 'Christianity Explored' course that his church is running. When he got back - with some doughnuts from the bakery - he started copying Dan's stuff onto CD.

While he was out, some more friends popped over for an hour to chat. Then Richard phoned the guy at the hotel who's going to see Daniel, and discovered that he has lots of luggage space! Wonderful... that means we can send the software CDs directly rather than having to put them in a package to Germany to be forwarded via air freight. We can also send out some more thin trousers and shorts, which he wanted (I've sent some but they probably won't arrive for several more weeks), and all the chocolate he had at Christmas but didn't have room for... and Richard's sending him a text message to ask if there's anything else he'd like while we have this opportunity. Apparently he'll actually join the Doulos on Sunday; we're not quite sure how the group will get there, but assume there won't be any more flights, so no more limits of luggage weight.

House update

Today, Richard went with a friend who's in the building trade locally, and his recommended architect, to look at the house we're thinking of buying. They were armed with the plans which - we're told - were used for constructing the top to storeys, and a tape measure.

The good news:

The house appears to be structurally sound. There's a support shown on the plans which doesn't exist in the house, but it wasn't load-bearing. There's no sign of sagging, or recent repainting, and the architect is pretty sure there's no problem as far as that goes.

The plan showed a balcony which is now part of the living room on the middle floor. However Cyprus rules seem to revolve around whether a balcony is 'covered' or not. Since the top storey would have been over the balcony, it would have been covered according to the plan; so that too isn't likely to be a problem.

The not-so-good news:

Unfortunately, the plans show a plot which is slightly larger than the actual plot, assuming the fences are in the correct places. There's a regulation which says that properties should be at least three metres away from the boundaries, other than where attached to other buildings. The original downstairs flat was built exactly to specificiations, but the plans show two alterations to it: the outside staircase which leads up to the other part of the house, and a porch extension outside the kitchen which is then built over upstairs. Both of these come to within two-and-a-half metres of the boundary. There's also a small front porch downstairs, which eats into the three metres away from the street: apparently even this isn't allowed, despite the porch making the house considerably more attractive.

Because of these things, the house cannot receive a certificate of approval. If pushed, the planning office would say it can only be done if the front porch is ripped out, the staircase is removed, and the side of the house over the kitchen porch is taken out. In other words, it's not possible to draw up legitimate plans for the house as it is at present, which is what we had hoped.

It's also not possible to put an inside staircase between the ground floor and the middle storey. Houses like this aren't constructed to take stairs, so it would be a major undertaking requiring signifiant reconstruction.

The slightly worrying news:

Apparently this is not at all unusual. Our friend estimated that at least 80% of homes in Larnaka (indeed, perhaps the whole island) are similarly not officially approved. It's not a crime to build a house which doesn't meet the regulations, and most Cypriots don't care. Brits who want totally legal houses with approval certificates find that the only way to do so is to buy land out in one of the villages, and be involved right from the start in every aspect. That's the only way of ensuring that the building matches the plans, and the boundaries are far enough away.

But even that isn't a guarantee of anything, since plans can unfortunately be forged. We know of two families who bought new houses, having checked - as they thought - every aspect, only to find months later that the planning permission was actually for somewhere else, and the land they're living on wasn't supposed to have houses at all. They're in the middle of horrible legal battles, since the developer has vanished.

In other words - if we decide not to go ahead with this house, we may well find that we simply can't find anywhere that's fully legitimate, in the area we want. And indeed, we don't think any of the houses we've seen so far fulful the requirement to be more than 3 metres away from all their boundaries. There are many, many houses locally which go right up to the street with no gap at all. I'm not even sure our current rental house could get a certificate...

The interesting rumour:

A friend has heard that the government may be announcing a temporary window of time in which any houses like this can be given certificates, simply because it's too big a problem to solve. If this is true, future houses will be more strictly monitored, but older ones that are basically sound (like this one) will be made legitimate.

The bottom line:

We don't want to sign a contract until contracts have been exchanged on our UK house, so having this one slow down isn't a bad thing from our point of view.

Deeds can be transferred without the final certificate of approval - they'll just have the slightly strange comment that there are buildings which aren't registered. It wouldn't be a problem so long as we live there.

Even if there isn't an official window for registering, the planning office will sometimes go ahead and approve houses like this which almost meet the regulations, simply to get them off their files. If they don't, we can just apply again a few years later.

It might be difficult to sell, but then again most Cypriots aren't worried by such things, and if the worst came to the worst, we'd still own the land, and that's the main cost of houses here. Buildings are basically very inexpensive. It's a nice area, and house/land price are set to rise in the next few years.

The conclusion:

This house meets all our needs and wishes, and more.

So, we'll ask our solicitor to do whatever searches are necessary, and draw up a contract - but not hurry about it. We'll also try to check the plans at the planning office, just to ensure that there really was permission given for the two extra storeys to be built.

So at present, I think we're going to go ahead unless some major new problem occurs...