Saturday, October 28, 2006

Wet οχι day

It must seem as if I talk about the weather a lot. 'Typical Brit', you might think. But actually, people in Cyprus discuss the weather with more interest and enthusiasm than most Brits (who mainly complain about it being too wet, too cold, or too hot. Not that Britain has extreme weather at all compared to most of the world).

Anyway, this blog gets several hits from people searching for information about weather in Cyprus, so here's today's bulletin:

It feels as if winter is starting, a couple of weeks earlier than usual. Last night, for the first time since about April, I felt chilly enough in the evening to go around the house shutting all the windows and closing the curtains. The cool night air was not as pleasantly refreshing as it had been. According to the weather site we were down to about 12C overnight.

What's more, I put on a sweatshirt around lunch-time yesterday, and didn't feel over-warm at all. This morning, I put one on when I got up. It's rained off and on all day so far. Very welcome, since Cyprus is distinctly short of water in reservoirs at present, but I doubt if it was very popular since today is οχι day. No, that's not supposed to read as oxi day; 'οχι', transliterated as ' ochi' is the Greek word for 'no' which is pronounced with something like the Scots/German soft 'ch' in the middle, as in loch or Bach (ie not lock or bark!). You can read about Οχι day here - it's the anniversary of the day when Greece wisely said 'no' to an invasion by Italy.

It's a public holiday, and is also a day when the town band, the schools, and the uniformed organisations such as Scouts march through the town. We didn't go to see them, so we don't know if they went ahead with the march or decided to say 'οχι' once again, in view of the rain.

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