End of Spring and life in Cyprus in general

Our central heating hasn't come on for the past couple of days, so the indoor temperatures must be over 15C even first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Tim's abandoned the extra blanket he uses over his duvet during the winter, and I'm going to change from our 13.5 tog duvet to just the 9 tog version this evening. We haven't worn our winter jackets for weeks now, and are only using fleeces on top of sweathirts in the evening. Some of the plants, which I put out on the front porch during the winter to get plenty of rain were starting to fade and go brown with too much sun.

So, it looks as if Summer is on its way. I hope it stays as it is now for awhile, but you never can tell with April. The forecast is for daytime temperatures of around 20-22C for the next ten days, which is very pleasant.

This past week I've:

• Got our financial records up-to-date online, and helped with invoicing Richard's work for the expenses he put on our credit card
  
• Cleaned up the guest flat after the plumbing exercise, and made up beds for guests who arrived yesterday evening.
• Finished sorting books in the church library, and begun updating the computer records.
  
• Done some optimisation and minor updates to my home education site.
• Written a short article about home education for the Oscar site (the article will be live next week).
  
• Proof-read two essays Tim wrote for his theology course, which had to be sent in today.
  

In addition to the general family life, cleaning, helping at mothers-and-toddlers, collecting mail, and so on that happens every week. When people ask me what I do, I find it hard to answer; but I seem to be busy most of the time. I certainly don't sit around watching television. Well, we did watch one episode of Quantum Leap series 3 this week, something we do as a family about once a week, but I think that's the only time the TV was even switched on. Nor do I read much, other than half an hour or so before I go to sleep.

Of course my life is nowhere near as busy as Richard's. He doesn't start work till about 10am usually, and finishes around 7pm... but often works at home during the evening to sort out additional things, or just to catch up with email. Last night there was some major problem so he had to return to the office, and was working there with a young colleague, who's here for a month, until about 2am.

In a few moments I shall make the beds with clean sheets and finish cleaning, then cook something for our weekly house group. We always host the group which starts at 6.30pm with a meal together, sharing the cooking, and have our Bible study around 8pm. It works very well. Tomorrow Tim's involved in a youth service at St Helena's Church. On Sunday we're having some friends to lunch, and then in the evening Tim's playing for a special Palm Sunday service at St Helena's, which I shall probably go to.

And so the days whizz by...

A little plumbing job

When we moved into this house, last July, the front bedroom of the guest apartment downstairs had been used as a hairdressing salon. We had to knock a hole through to the living room and have a door fitted, and we hoped to have a plumber come and sort out some pipes which were still poking through the floor - as described in full in this post.

We didn't get the room ready for our first guests, a few weeks after we had moved in, so they slept in the other bedroom. For the rest of the summer, the front bedroom continued to look roughly like this (the plumbing pipes are near the lower left-hand corner of the picture):


When some friends asked if they could come and stay in October, we quickly tidied and organised the room, painted the walls, made and put up curtains, and turned it into a double bedroom. The only problem was those pipes, still waving around - in a similar place on this photo:


And there they remained, for the rest of the Autumn, and the winter, and were still there when our first guests of 2007 came in February. But we were determined to get them removed before our next visitors, due to arrive just before Easter.

Unfortunately, the plumber who said he might be able to do it never reappeared.

But then Richard decided it wasn't too hard a job, so he might as well do it himself.

Then we heard that some more people - who stayed here for ten days or so during November - want to come back for a few days this week. They'll leave a couple of days before our next visitors, but we thought it might be a good idea to sort out the pipes this last weekend.

So Richard dug up the tiles, exposed the pipework, and said that the plumbing job was indeed very simple. It was the tile-digging that took the time and effort. And when he'd got as far as he could on Saturday, it actually looked considerably worse than it had with the waving pipes:


Thankfully the previous owners left behind some unused tiles and after sorting through the various shapes and patterns we finally found the right shape and size to fit the hole. This morning Richard managed to buy the bit of pipe he needed, and also some small bags of ready-mixed cement to hold them in place. The only problem was getting one of the tiles cut, since the hole was actually one-and-a-half tiles in size. We have a tile cutter, but it's not big enough for 45cm tiles. He went to EOL, our local small DIY store, and they didn't have a big enough tile-cutter either. But they did know a place in Aradippou about ten minutes' drive away who could do it... and who, it turns out, didn't charge to do just one tile either. As is typical in Cyprus.

So it wasn't a quick job, but was finally finished shortly before lunch today:


Well, almost finished. We still need to put a little grouting at the edge of the tiles. But that's not urgent.

Saturday in Cyprus

Richard had hoped to go sailing this morning, but it's very windy. He was going to go with someone who had never sailed before, so they've put it off for another weekend.

Instead he did some work on the autocue* system he's been building for work in his 'spare time' (whatever that might be), and then wrote a long photo-guide to doing so on his equipment-notes blog. Which I didn't even know existed until today. And since it's only had sixteen readers so far (for the one previous post he wrote, in August 2005) I said I'd mention it here. Just in case anyone reading this has a burning desire to build an autocue unit and was wondering how to.

Here's the link: DIY Autocue

* Since Firefox's spell-checker doesn't recognise 'autocue', or didn't until I added it to the dictionary, I should perhaps mention - as Richard says in his post - that an autocue is apparently known as a 'teleprompter' in the USA.

Spring equinox

Today the daylight hours equal the night-time hours. All over the world. I find that mind-blowing when I think about it.

Here in Cyprus, it was fully light when I woke up just after six o'clock this morning, and as I type - quarter to six in the evening - dusk is falling. So I suppose 12 hours of daylight is exactly what we had here. We'll be putting the clocks forward at the weekend - as usual in Europe, at 1am on the last Sunday of March - so it'll stay light for longer in the evening, which is good. On the other hand, it won't be light so early in the morning, which isn't so pleasant.

I'm not entirely sure why putting clocks forward a couple of weeks early (as happened in the USA this year) is supposed to save fuel. Seems to me that we'll need an hour less of electric light in the evening, and an hour more in the morning. Same with central heating, on the cooler days. And since our main water heating is solar, and Tim and I both have showers in the morning, we'll have to start using the electric immersion as top-up heating again for at least a month or two as the sun won't have had long enough to warm it up. So the net effect is probably that we use more fuel, not less, when we put the clocks forward.

The weather today was muggy, with the sky rather grey. Not particularly hot - I don't suppose the temperature got much above 20C - but that's all to the good after a warmer-than-usual February. We don't want summer to start unusually early. The forecast is for more of the same, with possible rain in the next ten days or so, and night-time temperatures of around 10-12C. So, we'll keep the thick duvet on the bed for a while yet.

Larnaka Salt Lake Park

Even with the weather a little colder, it's been quite sunny the last couple of days. I don't go out in strong sun if I can avoid it, as I end up with a headache. But by 4pm yesterday the shadows were lengthening. So Richard and I decided to go for a walk to the Salt Lake Park. Tim was away for the day on an island-wide Christian youth event ('youth' meaning anyone single between the age of 12 and 40!)

I've been telling people we live about ten minutes' walk from the Salt Lake Park, but we hadn't actually tested that - somehow life has been so busy that we haven't been there since moving. So we timed it... and got there in just over eight minutes, walking at a steady pace. Not a bad estimate, then. We have several visitors coming in the next couple of months, and people often like somewhere reasonably close for a walk.

We were a bit surprised to find the park almost completely deserted. It's a lovely place, with benches every couple of hundred metres for those who want to rest, and even a play area for children. It was a nice afternoon - if a little chilly - and everywhere was lush and green after the winter rains.


This is the time of year when there are hundreds of migrating flamingoes in the lake, but they rarely get close to the shore. So the little dots in the centre of this photograph are really beautiful pink birds.


There's an official trail around the entire lake which has been built in the past couple of years - one day we might walk it, but it's quite a distance. Yesterday we contented ourselves with walking for about twenty minutes, then came home by a different and rather longer route.


This post is featured in the March 26th version of Carnival of the Cities - where you can read about different cities around the world.

Cats sleep anywhere...

At night-time, the cats tend to sleep on our beds, or on sofas and chairs.

In the daytime, they're more creative in their choice. Sophia particularly likes snoozing on the printer while I type:


Cleo is even more adventurous. During the summer she likes to nap outside perched precariously on the air-conditioner units. Yesterday, it being rather chilly to be outside, she tried the top of the inside part of Tim's air-conditioner:


Evidently they're from the same breed as Eleanor Farjeon's cats a hundred years ago. Except, of course, that humans had, selfishly, not yet produced either printers or air-conditioners for them to sleep on. But they did their best, as in this poem which we used to enjoy very much in a delightful picture book when the boys were small (when I read it, I always substituted 'socks' for 'frocks'):

Cats sleep anywhere, any table, any chair.
Top of piano, window-ledge, in the middle, on the edge.
Open drawer, empty shoe, anybody's lap will do.
Fitted in a cardboard box, in the cupboard with your frocks.
Anywhere! They don't care! Cats sleep anywhere.

(Eleanor Farjeon, 1881-1965)

Cold weather!

After a warmish end of February, and a warmer-than-usual March, we've finally had the cold spell that usually precedes the start of summer weather.

On Tuesday, it rained. Quite heavily around lunch-time, then more lightly in the afternoon and evening. Fairly warm rain, and it wasn't all that cold at night.

Yesterday, it was grey and rainy most of the day, and chillier. Last week when I changed our duvet cover I wondered whether it was time to move from 13 togs to 9togs, but decided against it. I'm thankful I did, because last night was distinctly cold. Sophia got in bed with me and curled up for some time, purring as she got warmer.

This morning dawned with blue skies and sun, but it seems to have got colder, not warmer. At 9.30am when I walked to the church hall to continue sorting out the library, it felt fresh but not cold. I was wearing jeans with a polo-neck sweater and a fleece. The sun was half-out and felt pleasant.

On my way back, I felt extremely chilly, and wished I'd taken a warm jacket and gloves! There was a biting wind.... and within half an hour it had started raining again. The weather site tells me it's 10C outside [that's 50F] and feels like 7C... I can believe it! The house was so cold when Richard got home for lunch he even switched the central heating on for an extra hour.

Road works in Limassol

Some friends - whom we hadn't seen for years - are on a Mediterranean cruise, following the footsteps of St Paul. Yesterday they came to Cyprus, and - not really wanting a lengthy coach tour via Paphos and elsewhere - came to see our new house, and took us out to lunch. Which was very pleasant.

In the afternoon Richard drove them back to their ship. We think of Limassol as a long way away, but it's only an hour (if the roads are clear) from our house to the port, which isn't really a long way although it seems it, living on such a small island.

I hadn't been to Limassol for at least a year. I knew there were plans to build a huge bypass to go over (or, in one case, under) the six or seven roundabouts that can get very slow in peak traffic hours ('rush' hour seems like an odd phrase when all the cars are crawling along). But I was still a bit shocked to see all the roundabouts churned up - no nice grass and flowers any more, just dry earth, concrete, and blocks.

The first roundabout approaching Limassol is the Germasogia one (pronounced something like 'yerma-soya') which doesn't yet have a flyover built. I don't think I've ever seen so many trucks and diggers, and various constructions in one location.

This is what it looked like from the back seat as we approached the roundabout:


I caught this one as we went around it:


Then on the way back, as it was starting to get dark, I took this one as we approached the same roundabout from Limassol:


One section of the flyover was open, but another longer section was closed for the day, and some parts, such as this bit, are not yet built.

Poinsettia

We're not good with house plants. We're not actually all that good with any plants, other than a few that seem to bloom profusely anyway, but we have a particularly bad record with indoor plants.

So when Richard brought a poinsettia home from the office on Christmas Eve, we thought it would be a nice extra decoration for the Christmas season, and that by mid-January (at the latest) it would have passed on to the great greenhouse in the sky.

Not so.

Two-and-a-half months in our house, and it's still thriving:


Possibly the secret is that I neglect it almost completely. About once a fortnight I see that the leaves are looking a little droopy, so I then pour some water in. And that's it - other than washing most of the glitter off when we took down the decorations on January 5th. It's sitting on a small table by a window where we put it at first (not having anywhere else appropriate) and apparently hit on the ideal position.

First strawberries of the year

I did spot some a couple of weeks ago, but they looked rather small and were very expensive.

However I couldn't resist these in Metro this morning:


Very tasty they are, too...

Monday miscellaneous

On Friday we went to Metro as usual, and found that some of the missing items were back on the shelves: cat litter (though not our usual brand), blackcurrant-and-green tea, and almond milk. Still no Linda McCartney sausages or cannelloni, but we can do without those. Really, we ought to be thankful that we can get such a variety of 'English' foods in the supermarkets as well as the excellent local produce. Living in Cyprus is a lot easier than it would be in many countries from that perspective.

On Sunday evening, I was in the kitchen, heating up some frozen soup to have with bread rolls. Sophia was making a loud noise, clearly demanding something, but I wasn't intelligent enough to understand. She didn't want to go out, she didn't want cat food, or fresh water, or yogurt. She didn't even want the leftover gravy from the roast chicken Tim made at lunch-time. But she clearly wanted something. Her mews were getting louder and louder, which was rather irritating, until suddenly I realised what the problem was...

Usually on a Sunday night, Richard makes us some salad-and-cheese-filled bread rolls to eat. While filling these rolls, he gives Sophia a piece of cheese. Despite Richard not being in the kitchen, and despite no cheese having left the fridge, she knew it was Sunday and expected her treat.

So I opened the fridge, cut her a piece of cheese, and sure enough that was what she wanted.

This morning I walked to the Post Office as I usually do on a Monday, and was pleased to find that the replacement for the two theology books Tim needed, which hadn't arrived (as described here) were awaiting me. Along with the book which I didn't need to replace... oh well. I shall have to send that one back. Tim was pleased and spent the morning reading one of them (by John Stott) which he said was lighter than he expected and very interesting.

Richard has a bad cold (which is why he wasn't in the kitchen last night). He thinks he caught it from a colleague in Egypt who had a streaming flu-like cold, and spent a lot of time with him the week before last. Richard doesn't often get colds, and this is a particularly bad one. Not bad enough to keep him in bed, but he feels pretty rotten. It started properly on Friday; he felt bad enough by lunchtime that he took the afternoon off, which is quite unusual, and had a couple of hours sleep. He didn't do much on Saturday, stayed in all Sunday, and went to work today 'for a short time', some hours ago.

Tim and I hope we don't get it...

Fasting on fast food...?

It's Lent. Traditionally Christians, and particularly those of the Greek Orthodox faith, fast during the six weeks preceding Easter. It's a reminder of Jesus fasting in the wilderness, I suppose. Not that people fast completely; some give up coffee, or sweets. The Greek Orthodox people are supposed to give up meat and fish (although, shellfish and octopus are allowed, for some reason). Many of them don't in Cyprus, but there are some who do, and we try to respect this. We don't have barbecues during Lent, for instance.

The point of fasting, it seems to me, is to spend time in prayer when one would otherwise be eating, and perhaps to give away the money one would otherwise have spent on a luxury item. Fasting reminds us that others are less fortunate in many parts of the world, and that we can do without many items we take for granted. I don't do it myself, in general, but admire those who do.

So I was startled this week to receive a piece of junk-mail in our letter box (we get lots of junk mail, but I usually glance through it quickly before throwing it out) advertising a new range of vegetarian products at a local fast-food place. Yes, I can see that if people are taking fasting seriously then they might feel they have to grab a veggie-burger at McDonald's on the way to a meeting when they were running late, and in general - having one vegetarian son, and preferring veggie food myself on the whole - I'm glad that supermarkets, restaurants and fast-food places in Cyprus are beginning to notice the need for non-meat products.

But the bizarre thing about this is that the fast-food place in question is... KFC! Yes, Kentucky Fried Chicken, as it was known until a few years ago. Famous for its ultra-high-fat spicy coatings with, hopefully, a little chicken inside. KFC is not somewhere I would ever take a vegeterian, nor somewhere I would look for veggie food.

But, here's the advert:


The salad looks pretty good, but then what's the point of buying salad at a fast-food place?! We'll stick to our local 'Souvlaki Express' on the occasions (about once a month) when we eat fast food... and they already do a vegetarian option, with halloumi rather than meat. Which, I suppose, is just as bizarre as KFC doing veggie dishes, since souvlaki means 'little pieces of meat'.

Oh, and if you want a large quantity of fast food during your fast, you can even try the 'fasting bucket'...

Two years

Today this blog is officially two years old. I knew it was some time at the start of March 2005 when I began, and just went to check. It it hardly feels like two years ago. So much has changed in that time: the boys are both adults and have finished their home education (as such). Tim is doing a degree course by correspondence, Daniel has been abroad on the MV Doulos for over a year now. And we moved from a rather tatty rental house with an enormous garden to our own relatively new house with no garden, after selling our UK house.

We still have our four cats; Cleo will be nine in the summer, Sophia and Jemima had their eighth birthday a few days ago, and Tessie will be seven at the end of the year. All middle-aged, yet they've adjusted easily and well to the changes.

We have much to be thankful for.

March already

It rained last night. Quite a bit, although it wasn't heavy enough for our roof to leak. Nor were the local streets flooded, but there were puddles all over the place this morning. The sky was blue with just a hint of fluffy clouds, the sun shining, and the temperature a pleasant 18C - just right for a light sweater and a light fleece.

This is one of the streets I walked down; it struck me how different it looks in the early spring, with weeds thriving everywhere. Particularly in this plot which has a sign advertising luxury 1- and 2-bedroom flats. As it has been for the last eight months or more.


Here's what the weeds looked like a bit closer. March is sometimes known as 'yellow month' and this is a hint of why: lemons on the trees, fast-growing (and rather pretty) yellow flowers in any uncultivated piece of land.


I was going to the church hall to start sorting out the 'library' - a rather eclectic mixture of Christian books which live in a small room at the side of the hall. About a year ago (maybe more) someone sorted them into alphabetical order of title - I'm not sure why - but since then they've got progressively more muddled. Most people don't seem to know there is a library, and those that do borrow and return books at random, sometimes donating extras which nobody knows about.

So, armed with a printed list from six months ago, I made a start. Nobody else had offered and I quite like sorting books, but it was more complicated than I expected. In two hours (the duration of the mothers-and-toddlers group meeting in the hall at the time) I just about sorted authors A-H, ticking those on the list which I had found, and writing a new list of those which were on the shelves but not on the list (quite a number).

It's obviously not going to be a quick job, but I can do a bit each week.

To celebrate St David's Day and the spring-like weather, I've changed my blog banner to the one I used last March, showing almond blossom, at the house next-door to where we used to live.