A digital piano

When we sold our UK house last year, and had some 'change' (so to speak) from buying the house here, one of the things we said we would buy was a decent piano of some kind for Tim. He's at around Grade 8 level now, and the piano he's been using for the past nine years is rather old and needs a lot of work. It can't be tuned to concert pitch, and it has to be treated somewhat gently; difficult when his teacher gives him music that is supposed to have very loud sections.

Moreover, the old piano is downstairs in our guest flat, in a location that suits it perfectly. But on a cold day Tim doesn't necessarily feel like going downstairs - via an outside staircase - into a room which isn't heated. (There is central heating available in the guest flat, I hasten to add, in case any potential visitors are reading this; but we don't switch it unless someone's staying). And when there are visitors staying, the flat might be warm and welcoming, but Tim likes some privacy when playing.

So... we did think about getting a nicer regular piano. But: (a) good ones are pretty expensive (b) getting one upstairs would NOT be easy (c) we couldn't figure out anywhere to put one in the main part of the house.

So we started looking at digital pianos, which look and sound nicer than keyboards, but are lighter and less tall (and less expensive) than regular pianos. Tim visited several shops in Larnaka and Nicosia and played a large number of keyboards and digital pianos last Autumn. At first he didn't think he would find anything he liked.

But we had heard that Behringer were bringing out a new and inexpensive digital piano that was supposed to have wonderful new technology and a sound like much pricier pianos. They were supposed to be available last summer.

They weren't.

They were supposed to be available in the Autumn.

They weren't.

Then we found the Kawai shop in Nicosia, and Richard took Tim there last October. Tim was pretty impressed with one of their digital pianos, but thought he would like to wait to try the Behringer before making any decisions.

In Singapore visiting Daniel in November, Richard and Tim visited several music centres, wondering if they would have the Behringer piano. Unfortunately, they only sold Yamaha, and Tim isn't keen on the 'bright' sound of Yamaha pianos.

So when we got back, Richard phoned the Behringer supplier in Nicosia, who said he hoped there would be a digital piano on the next shipment.

There wasn't.

We decided that if the Behringer piano hadn't come by the time our first visitors of the year arrive (half-term in February) we would go ahead and buy a Kawai. Richard phoned the Behringer supplier yesterday, and he said that no, there won't be a piano in the next shipment (due mid-February) though he hopes it might be on the one after that.

We were going to go and look at the Kawai centre yesterday afternoon, leaving Larnaka at 4.40pm... but fortunately I suggested Tim phone them to check their opening hours. Most places in Cyprus are open till at least 6pm, but it turned out to be a good thing he called as they apparently close at 5pm.

So we went today, instead, which was probably better as Richard was pretty tired yesterday after a long week of meetings and four air flights.

As it's this side of Nicosia, it took less than half an hour to get there. The shop was basically a warehouse full of pianos of all shapes and sizes. Most of them were real pianos, but there were some digital ones, including the one Tim was interested in. He played it for a while, and said that yes, it was really just what he was looking for. It sounded pretty good to my untrained ears. So we went and chatted with the owner, a very friendly guy, who said he would drive it to our house immediately at no extra charge.

However when we saw that they were going to tie it on the back of an open truck, with no packing - not even a cardboard box! - Richard thought it might be better to get it in our car. It was a bit difficult, but we succeeded. Then Tim and Richard had to lift it up our stairs, which wasn't easy either, but they made it. And here it is:


Apparently Tim's piano teacher doesn't really approve of digital pianos, but this doesn't particularly worry him!

The reason we couldn't have a real piano is that it would block the light from the window (behind the curtains in the picture), and also a piano really needs to face a wall for the sound to be right. Tim prefers to face into the room.

Painted living room in guest apartment

Just in case anyone wonders whether we ever finished painting the living room in our guest flat - yes, we did! Richard put the second coat on the patchiest places on Saturday a week ago, on Sunday evening I organised the books we have down there, and on Wednesday this week I tidied and cleaned it. Then today I took some photos for the record.

This one shows what it looks like from the front door (the sliding door goes into the kitchen/dining room, which is now full of clutter from painting)


This is what the living room looks like facing the other way. Tim's old piano is there in the corner, and the door to the main guest room is on the left of the photo:


.. and since I never actually took a picture of the main guest room after we'd painted that (months ago now) and put up curtains, here it is. All that needs to be done is the removal of those strange-looking pipes in the floor!

Yet another week

Isn't it odd how January usually vanishes so rapidly? It seems like Christmas was only a few days ago, yet we're nearly in February already.

It's been a quiet week, with Richard away. Not that he's had a quiet time - he 's had a steady round of meetings, first in Malta and now in the UK. He usually tries to pack about a month's worth of work into a week away - maybe that's where my January went. He gets back early Monday morning, and will then probably try to catch up with the week he's missed here...

Daniel has also been very busy - there's a new post on his blog giving an outline of three days which explain why he's so often tired. And Tim has been working hard on his degree course, preparing for three more assignments that are due in a fortnight. He mostly works in the mornings, though he does extra reading too.

But I'm not entirely sure what I've been doing. Oh, the usual housework stuff, going to the PO Box, emailing, various other things online, sorting paperwork, doing laundry, cooking, helping and mothers-and-toddlers a couple of mornings, hosting house group one evening.... It doesn't seem like enough to fill up a week, yet I rarely seem to have much free time. Tim and I haven't switched on the television at all this week, and I've only read two books (in evenings only). I have some knitting which I've started, and a tapestry picture I began work on about three years ago, but haven't picked either of those up this week, either.

It hasn't helped that I've been fighting the flu, I suppose. It's been going around, and I thought I was starting it on Tuesday, but Vitamin C in megadoses and some paracetamol seemed to ward it off, and I was fine by the evening. On Friday I woke up with a streaming cold, which again I fought off with even more megadoses of Vitamin C, but forgot to take any at lunchtime and by the evening I felt achey and brain-foggy and even a little shivery. By the time I realised I wasn't well, it was only half an hour before the house group arrived, and since we have a meal together before the discussion part, it was too late to cancel. I didn't breathe over anyone, and didn't feel quite 'with it' - they prayed for my health among other things, and I went to bed about 9.45 with some hot lemon and honey (the real thing, of course, not the horrible powders).

I woke this morning feeling blocked up and headachey again, so had yet more Vitamin C, and sprinkled a few drops of Olbas Oil on a tissue. Smells awful, but works wonderfully and eased the congestion. Oh, and I took some echinacea and goldenseal, which is vile but remarkably effective. By mid-morning I felt fine again. So I don't know if I really have fought off the flu, or whether it will fight back overnight, or whether I was just imagining it...

View from our front door

I don't usually take part in these things, but this is relevant to life in Cyprus, so here it is - the view from our front door on a sunny winter's afternoon:


Thanks to Vicki for the idea. And if anyone wants to see out of other people's front doors around the world, this is the post listing all the participants.

Christian Unity Sunday

Last night we were all at the same church service - an unusual event these days! It was Christian Unity Sunday, and there was an invitation to all the churches in Larnaka to attend a service, based this time on Caribbean liturgy, at St Helena's Anglican church, where Tim is the organist. Tim was in charge of the music - he actually took his nice keyboard, and formed a temporary inter-church band - with someone from the Community Church playing bass guitar, and someone from Grace Church playing the trumpet. Plus one of the youth group leaders singing - she hasn't yet decided which church to attend as she's only been here a few months. They didn't get a chance to rehearse together, other than about twenty minutes warming up beforehand, but it sounded good. I particularly liked a slightly jazzed-up version of 'Amazing Grace'.

Richard was doing the PA - something that looks so simple at the time, but of course takes half an hour to load and unload, an hour to set up, and then another hour-and-a-half to pack up and bring home again. Quite a task even though his PA system is much smaller and more portable than they used to be.

So although we were all at the service, we weren't sitting together. I sat with some friends near the front, and thought it a very pleasant service. There were representatives from 10 different churches present, more than ever before: St Helena's, Grace Fellowship, Larnaka Community Church, and Trinity Reformed Presbyterian Church are the four biggest English-speaking Protestant churches in Larnaka, and did most of the organising. The Greek Evangelical Church was also represented, as usually happens. Then there were two newer non-English fellowships: the Filipino Church and the Chinese Church; the latter has only been formed in the past few months and mainly attracts students. In addition there were representatives from the two Roman Catholic Churches in Larnaka, and one priest from one of the Greek Orthodox Churches, who gave an excellent short message from his bishop (who was unable to be present).

It was all very friendly, and ended - as ever, with Christian gatherings! - with excellent refreshments. The only sad thing is that so few of the Greek Orthodox churches were represented, and that there were at least three other Protestant churches who weren't there either.

Painting the guest flat living room

Yesterday evening we painted the guest flat living room. Alas, it wasn't quite as quick as the kitchen. The paint is a rather nice light brown, much more interesting than the grubby off-white that was there previously:


Unfortunately it looked patchy even when it was drying, and this morning it still didn't look great. So another coat is definitely needed. Oh well. At least the colour looks good.

Richard and Tim have hardly any paint on their clothes. And their hands kept pretty clean too. Whereas I always seem to get in an amazing mess when painting...

I have to thank Tim for taking one of the least flattering photos of me that I've ever seen. I did ask him to take a picture of my paint-covered trousers, but didn't expect the angle to be quite so strange:

Dressing up for an evening downstairs...

After supper yesterday evening, we were all upstairs, and the conversation went something like this:

'I'm not sure what to wear.'
'No, it's difficult. We have suitable clothes for summer, but not when it's chilly.'
'I wonder if this shirt would be OK?'
'Or how about this one?'
'Not sure...'
'Ah, here are some trousers, do you think they'd be appropriate?'
'Oh, here's a sweatshirt I've never really worn but it's not particularly comfortable. Maybe I could wear that...'

A casual listener might have thought we were going out to a posh theatre, perhaps. Or a party.

The casual listener would have been wrong.

We were trying to find clothes to paint the guest flat kitchen/dining room. A job we've put off for a long time.

We bought paint on Saturday, but that was enough effort for one day. We simply couldn't decide what colour to have. There's only one window so it's not a particularly light room, so we knew it had to be something pale. It's right next to the living room, which has some blue-ish sofas, so we didn't want anything that would clash. But... there were still about a thousand shades we could have chosen. In the end I looked at the paint names and thought 'Snowdrop' sounded nice. Richard thought the colour would be all right, if a bit boring, so that's what we chose. It's a pleasant shade of white (what used to be called 'hint of a tint').

On Sundays, we don't tend to do work around the house anyway. On Monday evening, Richard didn't get home till nearly 7.30pm, thinking it was an hour earlier. By the time we'd eaten we were all too tired to do any painting, so we watched an episode of Quantum Leap instead.

On Tuesday we were just thinking that maybe we ought to get started... then we remembered that we hadn't yet filled in our UK tax form for the last year, and the deadline is January 31st. Richard's going to be away next week, and he's the only one that really understands the figures (I just do the regular bookkeeping so all our finances are on the computer) - so we did that instead. Probably the first time in history that we've been relieved to remember that we have taxes to do! With the online system, it only took about an hour in all - that included printing out full reports of the relevant figures, finding last year's forms to check dates, and doing all the input online.

Then, having filed the taxes, we did go downstairs to move the furniture from the kitchen to the living room, in preparation for painting. That was definitely enough for Tuesday evening.

So yesterday was the day. Tim said he would help, which meant we needed to find three sets of clothes for painting. We had several ancient tee-shirts and shorts, used when last painting in the summer. But although we put the heating on downstairs for an hour, it's not really the weather for shorts and tee-shirts.

Eventually Tim found a pair of jeans that's slightly too short and has a scorch mark on them, and a sweatshirt he doesn't like and never wears, Richard found a pair of trousers that are wearing thin and a thick shirt that is getting scruffy, and I found my ancient painting trousers (more paint than trousers) and an old fleece that has a non-working zip.

So we could procrastinate no longer.

And, of course, it turned out to be not too long a job after all. Richard did the highest parts, Tim did the medium bits, and I did the lowest bits and around the doors and electrical sockets. I think we were finished in a little over an hour. It looked very patchy while we were painting...


But thankfully it's dried evenly, and looks much cleaner than it used to, even if the colour is a bit boring.

So at lunchtime today we moved the furniture back, then we moved everything from the living room into the kitchen, including hundreds of books. Tonight we plan to paint the living room.

In January in Cyprus...

... whenever I go out, I ensure I have with me a sunhat, sunglasses AND an umbrella. I"m almost certain to need at least one of them.

... whenever I go out around lunchtime, I take OFF my fleece and hang it up in the house, as it's surprisingly warm out in the sun. Then when I get home, after about half an hour I'm chilly once more, so I put the fleece on again. It's taken nine years to get used to this feature of life here. In the UK we put jackets or fleeces on to go out, and keep the houses warm enough in winter that we can take them off when we get in.

... whenever I'm out anywhere, dressed in jeans and a warm sweatshirt (though probably not a fleece) I am still astounded at tourists from Western Europe who go around in tee-shirt, shorts and sandals. Even if the sun is out, and it's relatively warm when walking any distance, it's still only about 15-20 degrees Celsius at best.

General mid-week update

So, life is now back to normal. Chilly, but that's usual for January. We had some rain last week - much needed, as it was a very dry December. Unfortunately our roof leaked again, over the stairs. But it was very heavy rain!

Tim took a two-week break from his theology course, but started back again this week with more online discussions and studying, which takes up most of his mornings. He postponed his Monday singing lesson till Friday as he still had a bad cold, but hosted a church sub-committee here in the evening. He enjoyed a challenging piano lesson yesterday lunchtime, and played guitar as usual at the Lighthouse group for international students yesterday evening. This afternoon he spent about an hour helping some friends re-establish a lost broadband connection and update their Avast! anti-virus software, and is now working with someone from Antidote Theatre, recording some speech in our studio downstairs.

We bought some varnish last weekend - some satin pine so that Richard could finish Daniel's bed and desk, and some glossy pine so that he could sand down and re-varnish the downstairs kitchen table, which was looking extremely tatty.

We're hoping to paint the guest flat downstairs this month, before our various visitors start arriving - the first ones mid-February. It shouldn't take too long - we hope! We've already painted the main guest bedroom, which needed the most work to make it usable. So there's just the second bedroom, the living room and the kitchen/dining room. We haven't decided on colours yet but will probably choose something warm and light, as we have upstairs.

Christmas has offiicially ended

Yesterday was the feast of Epiphany. We didn't go and watch the young Greek Orthodox men diving for the cross, or the parades at the sea-front. It was too chilly, and having done that once - a few years ago - we didn't feel it was a necessary experience to repeat.

We didn't sing any Epiphany songs at church this morning, either, though it was nice to see three people from our house group, returned from the UK. Others will return in the next fortnight.

But I did take the Christmas tree and other decorations down on Friday, and even packed them all away rather than leaving them lying around in boxes for the next few weeks. I can't believe how efficient we're getting in middle age!

Schools start again tomorrow after the break, and I suppose Tim's music lessons will start again too. Not that he wants to do much singing at present as he has quite a bad cold. On Friday night he went to bed at 8.30, was asleep by 9pm, and didn't wake up until 11am Saturday morning! Well, other than at 3.30am when apparently he felt a migraine starting so came down to have some ginger stirred into pineapple juice, a sure-fire migraine preventative for both of us, so long as it's caught in time.

So, it's been a quiet Christmas, and an even quieter first week of the new year.

Larnaka beach: grey and deserted in winter

On Wednesday I walked to the Post Office to check our mailbox, and to post a parcel. Then I wandered down to the sea-front, which is very close, and took these pictures, showing how grey and empty the beach looks out of season - and how busy the town is, even in a holiday week. Click any of them to see bigger versions:

Winter in Cyprus

Yes, it does get cold in Cyprus.

Not as cold as Colorado Springs, where we lived in the early '90s, but then again houses in Colorado Springs had excellent heating and insulation. They had to, when temperatures sometimes even got into minus fahrenheit. I didn't know such cold was possible other than in Arctic climates. We thought the UK was cold until we lived in Colorado for a couple of years.

But then, in the UK we consider it cold when the temperatures hit zero Celcius. Chaos ensures in England when we get a couple of inches of snow, as happens - maybe - once or twice a year. Schools close, traffic jams pile up, and the radio issues warnings not to go on inessential journeys. In Colorado, the schools didn't close until we had a raging blizzard and two FEET of snow. Even then the traffic was mostly fine, since the trucks with snowshovels and grit were out constantly during the winter.

We saw enough snow in our two years in Colorado to last a lifetime, and assumed that the climate in Cyprus would mostly be warm. I knew the summer would be too hot for my liking, but thought that the winter would be quite pleasant.

All right, so we've acclimatised. Just before Christmas when we were bundled up in warm sweaters and fleeces, there were tourists wandering around in tee-shirts and shorts. We think it's chilly when the temperature gets below 15C [which is 59F] during the daytime, and extremely cold when it drops to 5C [41F] overnight. Part of the problem is that houses are really designed for the summer, with high ceilings, marble or tiled floors, and good ventilation. In the house we were renting until July, none of the windows fit properly and the ceilings were 4 metres high (yes, that's 13 feet). The only form of heating was a kerosene heater in the central room, which took the worst of the chill off the house if we closed all the shutters (not that any of them fit properly) and the curtains.

In the house we've bought, there's gas-fired central heating that's very effective, but of course we don't want to run it all day unless it gets REALLY cold. So it's on in the early morning, and from about 5pm through the evening. It means we only have to wear about two layers of clothes in the house, and no longer feel our fingers icing over as we type on the coldest of days.

Moreover it's not all that cold outside. People often say how odd it feels at first to put on a jacket when coming in, and take it off when going out. I still haven't quite got used to this. Indeed, when I go for a longish walk, I feel quite warm by the time I get home so I take off my fleece. Only to feel chilly again half an hour later...

Banner images in the new Blogger (previously known as Blogger Beta)

A brief and (for me) somewhat technical post that's nothing to do with Cyprus. Just for the record. Ignore, if you don't use Blogger yourself. And apologies to anyone who tried to read this blog last night, only to find missing images, or strangely ordered side-bar items.

(Oh, and if you've found this post because you want to know how to upload banner images to the new blogger, rather than reading my ramblings, scroll down quickly until you see the purple italic line of text, which explains the crux of my problem.)

I upgraded to 'Blogger beta' a few weeks ago. It's actually now out of beta, so it's just the new version of Blogger, and rather nice it is too. About a year ago I filled in a survey asking what people would like from the service, and I requested two things: 1) labels or tags 2) an easier method of editing the sidebar. Both have been implemented! So I started adding labels immediately to all my blogs - particularly useful for the recipes and book reviews - but decided not to update the layouts immediately.

Yesterday afternoon, I thought I'd experiment with the new layout system. I have five blogs, so I began with the most straightforward. Rather than a lengthy page of scripted html, which I find a bit daunting, there was a simple diagram enabling me to add page elements wherever I wished. It was remarkably easy, and within about fifteen minutes I had the first blog fully updated, looking just as it did previously. Phew!

The next three were equally straightforward, if a little more long-winded due to having more elements in the side-bars. But I opened the page-source of each one before upgrading, and then simply pasted in the relevant links or java, and it all seemed to work.

So, finally, to this blog which has more in the sidebar than all the others put together. I nearly put it off, but thought it best to get it done while I was in the swing of updating, before I forgot how it all worked. It took longer, but just about everything worked, and I juggled the positioning around until it looked much as it did before.

Except that I didn't have the image behind my title any more. My blog was back to having the blue background that goes with the default tictac blue template. I wanted a new picture anyway, now the Christmas season is just about finished, so I made myself a new banner showing the beach in winter. 768 pixels wide, with 40 pixels of border each side in the same colour as the blog background.

But there was nowhere in the new layout interface that dealt with background image for the title. I could edit the title, or insert a sub-title, or change the colour or font of the title. I could insert pictures anywhere else in the blog... but not behind the title.

However, since it's possible to access the html of the blog template as well as the graphical interface, I thought I'd do it as I used to, just subsituting my banner for the image picture.

So I uploaded the banner to blogger, as usual, and saved as draft.

I looked at the html of the draft post, highlighted and copied the URL of the photo, so I could use it in the banner.

Then I went to the html view of the blog template. Rather different from how it used to look, but I searched for the bit labelled 'header' and checked a couple of the .gif images until I found the one that matched the default blog header image.

(I know, I know, it would all be obvious, so far, to someone technically aware. But there must be other bloggers like me who have to take it a step at a time, surely...?)

I confidently pasted my new banner image into the place where the default image was, and clicked 'preview'.

No change.

I refreshed the screen, hopefully... but it made no difference.

Sigh.

So then I started searching with Google. Surely I couldn't be the only person to have this problem. Indeed, I was sure I had found a page explaining how to do this, for someone else asking the same question only a couple of weeks ago.

Sure enough, there were LOTS of pages - blog posts, forum posts, etc - explaining what to do.

Unfortunately, they all seemed to offer different advice.

Some of them simply described what I had done - which worked fine on the old blogger - so I rejected those.

Some of them gave complex pieces of 'script' which I was supposed to subsitute for another part of the script in the html. Too scary. And I couldn't figure out where it should go.

Some of them said confidently that it could be done using the new graphical interface, after making a couple of minor edits to the html, which allowed the current title to be deleted and further elements added.

I managed that bit.

Then advice varied: some suggested adding a picture element, so I tried that. It didn't work.

Others suggested copying the html and adding that to an html element. I tried that, but it either did nothing, or added part of my picture while keeping part of the original.

I was going around in circles.

Another suggestion was to have the text of the title on the banner itself, and delete the original title, so I even tried that.

Nope. And a bit worrying as I now had a blog with half a default banner and no title. Thankfully I managed to retrieve the title code again. I don't think it's a good idea to delete it, even for people who do have the title as part of their banner, as the blog would then lose its name from the point of view of people searching for it.

Almost tearing my hair out, I asked Tim if he could help. He understands html and scripting reasonably well, so he fiddled around a bit with my code, but he couldn't get it to work either.

Then... about 10pm (and I've usually switched the computer off at least an hour earlier) we noticed something in this page, one of the many Google had found for me earlier: Blogger beta banner problems resolved.

Right in the middle of the post, was a comment which nobody else, as far as I can tell, had mentioned.

The new blogger cannot use images which it hosts itself for banners.

The problem was not with my stupidity or lack of technical awareness, or with the template I used. The problem was that the new blogger couldn't access my new banner because I had stored it on Blogger itself.

So, as a test, I uploaded it to Flickr, and tried what I did orginally: simply pasting the URL instead of the default image URL.

It worked!!!!

Only one problem remained. Flickr's terms and conditions state that any photo used elsewhere must have a direct link back to the Flickr site. But the code they gave to do that wouldn't work in the Blogger template. At least, I couldn't get it to work. No doubt more technically-minded people could figure that one out and use it. But I thought it best to put it somewhere else - and cheated somewhat, creating a new image directory on my home education site, at Tim's suggestion, as that's hosted on one of Richard's servers.

Thus endeth my brief foray into the technicalities of Blogger. Normal service will now be resumed.

New year in Cyprus

We didn't do anything for New Year's Eve. Well... we had some friends for lunch, so we took the opportunity of starting our second Christmas pudding. In the evening we then watched the DVD of Nanny McPhee, which we thought was fun, with an all-star cast and some interesting extras. But we didn't go out, or even stay up till midnight.

Everything was closed yesterday, of course. And much of it today, too, but the church mother-and-toddler group started again due to popular request, so I went along to help. Only three or four mothers turned up but I think they had a good time. Richard decided to go back to work after taking all last week off, and Monday, although his colleague is probably off for the rest of this week too. But Richard always has a lot to catch up with.

But on the whole it's a very quiet week, with almost everything (including schools) starting up again next Monday, after Epiphany. It's cold, too. Lovely out in the sun during the daytime, but most buildings feel a bit chilly, and overnight it's distinctly cold.

What of 2007?

Well, the two major stresses of last year won't be happening. Daniel can't leave again - indeed, he's nearly half-way through his stint on the Doulos - and we won't be moving house again, or going through the difficult stages of selling in another country.

So it's the first new year in our own house in Cyprus; it's also the first new year without Daniel here, and the first with no 'children' in the home, since Tim is now 18. It may be the year when Tim learns to drive (a scary thought, but most parents seem to cope...). Perhaps most significantly for me, it's the first new year when we're not home educating any longer. Tim's done the first couple of months on his theology degree course, and is very much enjoying it - so far, anyway.

We're not really into 'resolutions' - they seem to be made only to be broken. But looking ahead, we have quite a lot of guests expected in the first six months of the year, so we hope to repaint the downstairs guest flat during January, in readiness for the first family who are coming for February half-term. We hope to have the outside of the house painted too - someone at one of the local churches is a British decorator who should be giving us a quote some time soon.

We'll have to think what to do about the carports too. We had planned to dig up some of the pavement to make a mini-garden one side, but are not sure entirely how to go about that - or whether we actually need both the carports, since we currently have two cars. We have some plants in pots which are doing quite well, but the citrus trees at least probably need to be planted in the earth as they get bigger.

I'm not entirely sure what I shall be doing long-term, so perhaps 2007 will reveal that. I'll be helping two mornings per week at the mother-and-toddler group now, and also hope to spend more time working on my home education site - the statistics show that most of the people who find it are looking for help with maths concepts of some kind, so there's a lot more I can write on that topic.

It would be nice to get to know some of our neighbours a bit better, and - connected with this - to make an effort to learn more Greek. Almost everyone has such good English that it's hard to be motivated to learn more than the basics, but now we've settled here it seems like a good idea to be able to communicate with the people who don't have English.

But beyond that, I've no idea...

Happy New Year to anyone who reads this!