Paphos in Cyprus, full of construction work

On Saturday my mother returned to the UK. But for some reason, although her incoming flight two weeks previously came to Larnaka, the outgoing one flew only from Paphos.

So, as we hadn't been to Paphos for ages - at least three years in my case - we thought we'd all go there for the day. Perhaps look at the old fort, stroll a little along the sea-front, find a sandwich for lunch, wander in a few shops, and then get to the airport for around 4pm.

So much for the best-laid plans.

We left around 10.30am, and the roads were very clear. We were in Paphos by noon. So far so good. Unfortunately, we could not get to the place where Richard wanted to park. Several roads were blocked off. And although there wasn't a lot of traffic on the roads, there appeared to be a lot of it parked in Paphos town centre.

Eventually we found somewhere that seemed to be legal. It was about a ten minute walk to the sea-front. And when we got there, there were large orange boards meaning that we had no view of the beach at all. There were large diggers of varying sizes - idle, of course, since it's still the Christmas season - but nobody at all along the sea front.


Moreover, we weren't particularly close to the fort, either. We had to squeeze our way along some of the path by shops, which must have found it very irritating that their prime location by the sea front was blocked by unattractive orange. If I stood on tip-toes and peered over the top, in one direction, it was possible to get a view of what might have been:


But that's not much compensation for places hoping to sell drinks and snacks and a pleasant, relaxing view of the beach.

Eventually we found the café which Richard had been to before; it was upstairs, so we did manage to get a pleasant view over the sea while we ate, and sat around for a while afterwards.

We decided it would take too long to walk to the fort, since we still had a twenty-minute walk back to the car. So we looked at a few of the tourist shops along the way. Tim did find a key-ring, and a fleecy jacket, and Richard found a tee-shirt, and I found belts for both of them, so it wasn't a wasted day. It was nice to get some fresh air and sunshine in a different place, too, although by the time we got home it was clear that I had had too much sunshine for one day.

The promenade at Paphos certainly needed some work, and I suppose it's better to do it in winter when people aren't so likely to want to swim. I wonder if it will be completed by the time we go there again... which, at current rate of progress, could be around 2010.

Another year almost past in Cyprus

I know it's a cliché, but time does seem to fly past ever faster with the passing of the years. It seems so little time since we were wondering what would happen on 1st January 2000... suddenly I find it's eight years later. My sons are grown-up, and by this time next year will both have left home. The empty nest looms all too quickly.

Christmas went well, I think. We were more organised than usual, and it was enjoyable to have nine of us for lunch on Christmas Day, then seven of us for lunch on Boxing Day. We didn't even eat leftovers then, although we did in the evening, and yesterday lunch, and also today. Yesterday afternoon/evening we were invited to a party, so it's been a week of socialising. All very pleasant.

Tim was fairly tired after playing at several services including the Midnight Communion service, but he still insisted on cooking most of the Christmas lunch. We ran the dishwasher three times on Christmas Day and twice on Boxing Day... it does make life SO much easier. About five or six years ago we had guests on both days, and I seemed to spend half my time washing dishes. This is the first time we've entertained on both days since then, and it is definitely much more enjoyable when relying on a dishwasher for cleaning up afterwards!

These 'twelve days of Christmas' before Epiphany are a strange kind of time. Richard's still off work, Tim isn't doing any of his academic work either. Shops are now open again, and pretty busy; banks have lengthy queues as people try and exchange their Cyprus pounds for euros. I'm not sure why they're all doing it this week as they have until the end of January to use Cyprus pounds in shops, and can still deposit them in the banks until at least May or June.

Tomorrow evening my mother, who has been staying with us for nearly two weeks, returns to the UK. She's flying from Paphos airport rather than Larnaka, so we're all going to go to Paphos for the day. It's only an hour and a half's drive away, but on a small island that feels like a long way, and we haven't been there for years.

Family newsletter, Christmas 2007

Dear Family and Friends,

Hot off the press, yet another summary of a year in our life in Cyprus.

January


We spent much of January redecorating our guest flat, in preparation for visitors...







You can now read the full 2007 newsletter at our family site.

Decorating for Christmas in Cyprus

We don't make a huge deal of Christmas - for us, it's primarily a time to relax, to remember Jesus' birth in Bethlehem, and to spend time with family and friends. And to eat lots of special home-baked goodies that we don't eat the rest of the year.

But still, we do make a few small festive efforts. My mother is staying for two weeks over Christmas, and at least four friends will be joining us for Christmas Day, when Tim will produce a full turkey roast lunch for us all.

Moreover, we're hosting a lunch on Thursday for Richard's colleagues and their families - I think it will be 19 of us in all. And I do like to air our small collection of Christmas decorations once a year..

This is what we have outside our front door. Not a huge and ornate wreath, just a simple one:


Here's our tree, which we bought about 19 years ago and brought out with us from the UK two years ago. The lights don't show up as I took it in daylight, but they're there. A few pieces of tinsel, a few baubles, and some bits and pieces that we've been given, or have bought, over the years. That cats want to take some of the baubles, of course, but so far they haven't succeeded. They haven't even knocked the tree over, which is good.


No presents around the tree yet, because they're sitting in a cupboard waiting to be wrapped.

Then there are candles. I don't like lots of glitzy chains or garlands, but I do like these tiny candle-holder wreaths, and festive coloured candles, some of which we'll burn at mealtimes, others of which will go back in the box at Epiphany, awaiting next year's outing.

This gold-coloured candle, is placed on our bookcase of Christian books. There's a matching one on our bookcase of non-fiction general books.


This red one, and others like it, are sitting on some of our bookcases of general fiction:


Ah, and Sophia wanted to get in on the photo-shoot, so here she is posing next to another of the red candles:


Oh, and there's this blue candle, too. Someone decorated it, and another like it, and gave them to us a few years back. Someone else gave us this china candle-holder about a year ago. It only occurred to me this year to put them together.


We've now burned the other blue candle, since they were beginning to get a little frayed around the edges. We may use this one on Christmas Day.

We usually get about forty or fifty Christmas cards, many of them sent from the UK. Those that arrive first get hung along the pelmets above our sliding doors and windows, like this:



(If you click on the image to enlarge it, and have a fairly sharp screen, you may spot something unusual about the clock above the row of cards!)

And finally... we were given these rather stylised Nativity characters when we first moved here. We haven't always put them out, as we couldn't find anywhere that looked right. But this year, we were given this beautiful (and huge) poinsettia, and it occurred to me that our little Nativity scene would look quite good right in front of it:



(This post was inspired by Boomama's festive tour of bloggy homes)

Christmas countown

Being in Cyprus, Christmas somehow seems more relaxed than it ever was in the UK. Perhaps it's the sunshine (most of the time, anyway). Perhaps it's the way that most people around seem to take life as it comes. Perhaps it's the lack of hype (on the whole) in the shops. Or maybe it's just that, not being tied up with a school, we don't rush around to concerts and assemblies and plays, so have time to relax and get other things done.

So, we put our tree and a few other decorations up on Friday. On Sunday, I went to a Christingle service at Tim's church in the evening. At the same time, Richard provided and ran the PA system for a big carol service in Ayia Napa. This morning I went to check our PO Box, and was pleased to remember that I posted our Christmas cards and newsletters a whole week ago. A couple of parcels had arrived, and some cards, and some photos that I ordered ten days ago. They may have been in the box for nearly a week, of course, since I only check it (usually) on Monday mornings.

This evening I made some dairy-free chocolate fudge, something I thought would be an impossibility. It has set well and tastes pretty fudgy and good. Tomorrow I shall probably make some veggie sausage rolls. On Thursday we have a lunchtime pre-Christmas gathering of all Richard's colleagues and his families - I think there will be 18 of us in all - so will make various buffet bits and pieces. But I don't feel stressed about it. At least, not yet...

Blog template changed

Apparently Blogger have made some changes to the ways images are used in headers.

Unfortunately, it did something very peculiar on the template I was using. Most of the picture vanished, and then when I tried to upload a new one for Christmas it just appeared as a narrow band in the middle of the default image. Most peculiar.

So I tried another template, and it was no better. It moved things around too much and looked far too wide on my screen - it would have been ridiculous on a widescreen monitor.

So I got rid of all images altogether and tried yet another template. I altered it until I liked the way it looked. Then I tried - just one more time - to import an image into the header. And it worked!

Thankfully, all the sidebar elements remained, so I didn't have to import those all over again.

Apologies to anyone who happened to visit my blog during the glitches of the past half hour. I hope it is now stable... I think I actually like this template better than the old one.

Strange date labelling in Larnaka

On Wednesdays, I usually spend the morning in the kitchen. I bake bread, strip the chicken (or whatever we had for Sunday lunch) and put the meat in the freezer, and make stock out of the bones and any leftover veggies in the fridge. I also make lemonade, if we have some lemons [we did], and some soup (in the winter), and usually something else as well. Today, for instance, I made the first thirty mince pies of the season.

I also try and sort out the fridge a bit. Today I noticed that we had three bags of courgettes (aka zucchini in the USA). We don't eat that many, but evidently I had been buying a few each week and we hadn't been getting through them.

So I found a recipe for courgette and tomato soup. I decided to double it, as we usually have a colleague of Richard's to lunch on Wednesdays, and Tim likes to have leftover soup in the freezer to thaw for his Sunday evening supper. Also because we had so many courgettes and I wanted to use at least four of them!

In our supermarkets in Cyprus, fruit and veg are loose; we choose what we want and put them in bags, then take them to a counter to be weighed and priced before going to the checkout. So, trying to be intelligent and logical, I decided I'd check the labels on the three bags of courgettes, and use the oldest ones.

I looked at the first bag that came to hand. The label said 21/11/2007.


21st November - OK, I thought, that's probably the oldest bag. There were only two courgettes in it, and they looked fine. I would definitely use those.

I looked at another bag. It said 04/12/2007. 4th December was last Friday. So those must be the most recent. I put them back in the fridge.

I didn't need to check the label on the third bag - either it was even older than the first, or (most likely) it was the one I bought on 28th November. But I looked anyway, and this is what I saw:


Yes, the unit price has gone up, by 4c per kilo.

AND they're only showing the price in Cyprus pounds. That's probably OK, since the prices displayed above the fruit and veg displays show both Cyprus pounds and euros.

But do you see that date? Click the picture to see it enlarged, if this image is too small. It says: 06/24/2049

1) The date bears no relation to reality
2) There is no 24th month. Perhaps it switched to American formatting, and means 24th June. But courgettes certainly wouldn't last that long in the fridge.
3) As Tim pointed out, if these are priced for forty-two years in the future, then the price increase is really very reasonable.

I wonder if they were experimenting with their Cyprus pound/euro converters on the labels, and fed the date in rather than the price...

Cyprus distributing euro-calculators

We heard rumours it would happen...

On Saturday, we even saw one.

But we didn't quite believe it would happen to us.

Then today, amongst the Christmas cards, bills and junk mail in our PO Box, there was a medium-sized yellow envelope:


At first, I thought it was just more junk mail. But I opened it anyway. Inside, there were lengthy descriptions (in Greek) showing the pertinent parts of euro notes:


There were two cards showing 20 euros on one side, and 50 on the other. They were that strange kind of material where bits appear and disappear as you hold it in different ways towards the light.

I've no idea why there were two of these.

In fact, I'm not even sure why there was one of them. I have no idea what it's for. But this is what it looked like, as close as the scanner can get it:


Most exciting of all, was this blue box:


Yes! Finally we had one in our house. A special Cyprus pound/euro calculator:


There were some instructions to use it, too, just in case anyone couldn't figure it out. Basically, you select either euros (€) or Cyprus pounds (£), then key in an amount which appears in the lower window, while the conversion (in the other currency) appears in the top screen.

Clever, huh?

Well... kind of. I'm not actually sure why we need these, since we can always use regular calculators. You can't do anything useful (like add Cyprus pounds to euros), or what shopkeepers will need in January (such as calculating change in euros when paid in Cyprus pounds). And although I suppose it's quite fun to see instantly whether or not the dual labelling is correct, it seems a bit sad that they didn't produce these before all the shops went around working out the euro price and putting the stickers on.

I'm also not sure who paid for these gadgets, and ensuring that every household on the island receives one...

If you'd like to read all there is to know about Cyprus changing to the euro, and much that there isn't to know, I can do no better than to direct you to this excellent post about euros, on the Letter to Larnaka blog. I must say I hadn't thought about the scenario in clubs and pubs around the island, celebrating on New Year's Eve... suddenly, on the stroke of midnight, they will all have to start accepting euros as well as Cyprus pounds, and change will have to be given in euros.

It's almost worth staying up late and going out to see if it happens.

Christmas envelopes for dustmen in Cyprus

When we first moved here, ten years ago, one of Richard's colleagues told us something very important. Every year, in December, the dustmen (garbage collectors) in Cyprus call at everyone's door, proffer a sort of business card with Christmas greetings, and expect to be given a Christmas bonus, or tip. Tipping isn't normal in Cyprus (one never tips taxis, and rarely in restaurants or hairdressers) but this is expected. She said we should put a pound or two in a small envelope, and hand it to them.

Some years, we were out when the card was pushed through the door. Once or twice one of the boys was in, and didn't know what to do since most of the dustmen speak no English. Other years, I scrabbled around for an envelope and the relevant cash, always feeling a bit awkward.

This year, attempting to be more organised, I sorted it out at the end of November. I put two pound notes in a small envelope, sealed it, and labelled it clearly 'For the Dustmen'. Then I put it on the table by the door where we keep general bits and pieces - Tim dumps books there, Richard puts things he wants to take to the office, and we keep a pot of small change for anyone to grab for small purchases.

Several times in the last few weeks I've glanced at the table, impressed by my own efficiency as I saw the little envelope. Whoever was in when the dustmen called, they could simply hand it over.

This morning, there was a buzz at the door. Outside was a man I had never seen before who started talking in Greek. I looked at him blankly. He stopped talking, and (I think) asked me if I was English. 'Anglika?' he asked. 'Anglika', I agreed, nodding. He looked around, helplessly. Perhaps one of his colleagues could speak English.

I saw the pile of cards he was carrying. I guessed it was the dustman. I asked, 'Dustman?' thinking he might know that word. Apparently he did. He smiled and nodded.

So I looked down at the table.

And there was no little envelope visible!

I lifted the pot of change, I shuffled through Richard's papers, I moved several of the books in Tim's pile, I peered under the table in case it had fallen off ... and still, no envelope.

So I rushed into my study, scrabbled around for an envelope, grabbed a couple of pound notes from my purse, sealed them in the envelope, and handed it to the man. He looked a bit suspicious, held it up to the light, saw that there was cash inside, smiled, and handed me one of the cards:


Which, roughly translated, which is all I can manage, means something like:

The Dustmen
of Larnaka town
wish you:
Happy Christmas and
Happy
New Year

When he had gone, I had another look. I found the envelope - of course - right at the bottom of Tim's pile of books.

Ah well.

I put it in the drawer with my cards and envelopes. Now I am organised a WHOLE YEAR IN ADVANCE for the dustmen, for Christmas 2008.

Beginning to think about Christmas

Unlike many folk in the USA, many Europeans don't put up trees and decorations until at least the middle of December, sometimes not until Christmas Eve. When the boys were at school in the UK, we used to put our tree up on the last day of term, or perhaps the day later - usually around Dec 20th. This year we'll aim for Dec 14th, since we're having our house group end-of-year gathering that evening.

The good thing about this is that we're not fed up of seeing the decorations by Boxing Day, so can enjoy them for the full twelve days of Christmas, taking them down, as is traditional, on January 5th or 6th. The not-so-good thing is that it's somehow hard to remember that Christmas is coming. Particularly since there aren't many decorations around the town either, or in shops. We sang a couple of carols at church on Sunday, and it came as quite a shock to realise that it was Advent Sunday.

Still, I think I'm more organised than usual by this time of year. On Wednesdays I usually spend the morning in the kitchen: making stock, and soup, and perhaps some lemonade, as well as the usual bread. I also clean out the fridge somewhat.

So for the last few Wednesdays I've also done a bit of Christmas cooking - I made our Christmas cake three weeks ago, and have been 'feeding' it with brandy once a week since then. Last week I made a large batch of mincemeat and yesterday I made our Christmas puddings. I don't do a lot of sweet, high-fat cookery at this time of year, but these three are essential. Next week perhaps I'll make our first mince pies.

I also seem to be doing quite well for present ordering. I make good use of Amazon UK and wishlists for various relatives - and today, I made the last necessary orders. Richard also ordered something that Tim wants; a good thing he did it this early, as it's currently out of stock, though should be available within three days.

Today I wrote the first draft of our family newsletter, and also created a photo calendar at the Big Huge Labs site. Since we'll be printing them ourselves, at Richard's office, I didn't register - just created the individual pages, having selected relevant photos of the cats, and saved them on my hard drive.

I'd quite like to get the newsletters printed and cards written by the end of the weekend, and everything posted next Monday when I'll be going to the PO Box as usual. I did initially think of last Monday, but wasn't THAT organised...!

Officially praying for rain in Cyprus

After a fairly dry spring, and a long summer, and not much rain in October or November, a lot of people have been praying for rain in Cyprus. We really need it - one of the main reservoirs would run out of water by the end of the year if there was no rain during December.

So the chief Archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church in Cyprus apparently ordered all his priests to do some official praying for rain last Sunday. I gather it's part of an optional liturgy, which hasn't been used since the last serious drought in 1998. I would have thought that prayer for rain was fairly common, but apparently not in the Orthodox Church; so much so, that it made headlines not just in Cyprus - here's the Cyprus Weekly article about praying for rain - even the BBC took an interest. Here's their article about Cyprus praying for rain.

So, presumably, all the Orthodox churches around the island had official prayers for rain on Sunday, along with (I hope) much private praying. And God seems to have heard, since the sky turned grey on Monday, it rained Tuesday night, and today we had half an hour of very heavy rain around lunch-time - heavy enough that our roof leaked over the stairs, accumulating at least an inch of water in the hastily-positioned bucket.


Moreoever, the weather site, which has been showing almost unbroken sunshine for weeks, is showing a very different picture today - here's the ten-day forecast for Larnaka (of course, if someone comes across this post in the future it will probably look very different and be totally confusing. However today, 5th December 2007, it's showing rain almost every day)

Towards the end of the rain storm, it eased off a bit and the sun poked through the clouds. I grabbed my camera and headed for a balcony: sure enough, there was a terrific rainbow, even a hint of a second one above:

Banking is both simple and complicated in Cyprus...

As I have mentioned previously, Euros will become the currency for Cyprus on January 1st. That's four weeks from today.

In preparation for this, our bank statements have, rather confusingly, showed both Cyprus pounds and euros for some time now. At least six months.

At the end of July, our bank - the Bank of Cyprus - sent us, free of charge, two new euro cheque books. One was for our current account, and the other for a 'B' account which we used to use for Richard's work, until he managed (after many complications) to set up a proper business account. So the 'B' account was closed by the time the cheque book arrived. But possibly only a week or two earlier.

There were letters with these cheque books, telling us we needed to validate them. There was a form to fill in our passport numbers, bank account number, first cheque number in the book, and a signature. I have no idea why they needed this information, since they have it already - but it wasn't a big deal. It also seemed rather unnecessary in July since we can't use the cheque books until January. So I put them aside for a few months, along with the letters.

Last week, Richard was in the bank (drawing out a large sum of money so he could pay cash for our car tax) and the very efficient girl at the desk said that we would need euro cheque books. Well, she's usually efficient.... She told him that we needed one for his new work account, and one for our personal account. She assured him that we didn't have any yet, and we would need them by the beginning of January. So he ordered one of each, and they charged us £6 for each of them.

We only get through about half a cheque book in a year, so having two new ones seems a bit excessive, but I just shrugged when he told me. Too late to cancel the order, and it means we won't have to order another one for three or four years, probably. Perhaps the girl didn't know we already had a euro cheque book because I hadn't validated it.

So I got out the paperwork, filled in the information, and took it into the bank today. Along with the 'B' account cheque book which is useless, as the account is closed. As I stood in the queue, the usually-efficient girl glanced up and saw me. 'Ah, Mrs Susan!' she called (while serving another customer). 'I have a cheque book for you!' - and she held out to me a new euro-cheque book, past the customer she was dealing with. I didn't have to sign for it, or authorise it, or validate it at all.

That's the friendly, personal side of Cyprus banking.

When it was finally my turn (at a different checker), clutching one new euro-cheque book, I handed in the paperwork to validate the other one. Then I also passed over the euro-cheque book for the 'B' account, and said that it was no good because the account was closed. The guy behind the desk typed in the number on his computer, agreed that the account was closed, and shrugged. I asked what we could do with the cheque book, and he mimed tearing it up, then said they would throw it away.

Ah well. I could have done that. At least they didn't charge us for it.

Ordering photo prints from Cyprus

When we bought our first digital camera, I naively assumed that we would print our own photographs. I didn't realise that (a) we would need a rather higher quality printer than we had, and (b) the cost of photo paper is pretty high. Not to mention cartridge refills. Moreoever, one tends to waste a lot of paper and ink just testing it out.

At the time, we were unimpressed with Cyprus photo printing. There are plenty of photo shops, some of them offering very quick services, but they were expensive - much more so than the UK - and, more significantly, not very good quality. We heard rumours that they rarely changed their chemicals.

So I was pleased when I found a place online, based in the UK, where I could upload digital photos, and then order prints. It was called Ofoto. I made quite a few orders from them, up until about 2005. The quality wasn't perfect - but then our first digital camera wasn't that great - and the uploading process was rather painful, but the prices weren't bad. And we didn't want that many prints from our digital camera anyway.

At the time, we still used a camera that took film, as well. I sent my rolls of film off to another company in the UK, called DirectFoto. They were prompt, they didn't charge any extra to deliver to Cyprus, the prices were good, and the prints were excellent.

Then in 2005 we bought a new digital camera, and around the same time I discovered that DirectFoto had a similar system to Ofoto. I could upload my digital prints at full quality to an online album, and order prints online. They would keep the photo albums online, I could 'share' them with relatives who wanted to see what we'd been doing, and there was no cost for doing so. They sent me occasional emails with special offers, and codes for 15 free photos.

The uploading process was a bit complicated and extremely slow, but I didn't mind. It was better than the one at Ofoto. I used DirectFoto several times, usually uploading a few months' worth of photos at a time, and making a big order two or three times per year. The prices were very good, the quality superb.

The last time I ordered at the DirectFoto site was around the end of June.

Last week, I wanted to order some more, mainly of our time in Hong Kong and Malaysia with Daniel. So I sorted through Picasa, exported all the pictures I wanted to print in a separate folder, and went to DirectFoto.

The site had been updated - it looked much more modern and easier to use than it had previously. Except that... I couldn't log in. It didn't recognise my email address at all.

I emailed the support people, and had no reply. Eventually I registered again. Then I hit a new problem. When I wanted to use the online album system - where I previously had hundreds of photos stored - I had to register yet again. And this time it wouldn't allow me to enter Cyprus for my delivery address.

So I emailed their support team again.

Today I had an email back. They said they were sorry, but they could no longer deliver outside the UK.

Oh no!

However...

Although I had not been using Ofoto, every so often I received an email from them. I learned that they changed their name to Kodak Gallery. So I went to the site today. They also had changed their design radically. They also looked modern and efficient. More importantly, I had no problem logging in, despite not having visited them for over two years. To my surprise, they still had the online albums I uploaded way back in 2003 and 2004.

And, although their prices look a little higher than Directfoto, their uploading system is wonderful! It's amazingly quick. It's efficient. It doesn't require Java or special downloads. Best of all, they have no problems delivering to Cyprus.

So I shall be making my orders from Kodak Gallery for the foreseeable future.

Jemima is still missing - in Larnaka?

It's now a week since we realised that Jemima, the third of our four cats, was missing. I know I saw her on Saturday night, last week. She sat outside the guest flat on a windowsill while I made up a bed there. She was in good health, as far as we know, and being friendly, curious to see what I was doing.

I don't remember if she came in that night. Of all the cats, she's the one who was most likely to stay out at night. I would find her outside my study door in the morning, and she would then come in, have a bite to eat, and sleep on one of the comfortable chairs for most of the morning. However she would sometimes sleep in Tim's room overnight, or on a sofa. Sunday mornings tend to be rushed, and I simply can't recall whether or not I saw her in the morning last week.

We noticed her absence at lunch-time last Sunday, but didn't think much of it. It wasn't until the evening that I became anxious, realising that I hadn't seen her all afternoon. We went outside and called for her, opened all cupboards and balconies and other places she might have got shut in, wandered around the neighbourhood to see if we could hear her calling to be let out of some shed... but nothing.

In some parts of Cyprus, even of Larnaka, cats get poisoned. But in our street there are several cats and dogs. People here seem to like animals - it's one of the many things that drew us to this neighbourhood. We did wonder if Jemima had got run over - but she's always been very nervous of cars, and we haven't seen a run-over cat around here. Any of the neighbours would have told us if they'd found her. We stand out as the only Brits in the street, and our cats are all black or tortoiseshell, unlike the other local ones which are mostly ginger, tabby or white.

We wondered if she was accidentally shut in some building project that was closed on Sunday. We really thought she would appear on Monday - but she didn't.

On Wednesday, in a patch of waste ground not far away, I caught site of a black tail hiding beneath a large fig tree. It's owner hid right in the middle of a thicket as I approached. Perhaps, I thought, Jemima was hurt, or sick, and thus hiding from everyone, even us. But subsequent searching didn't reveal her. It was probably another cat.

We wondered if she had decided to visit our old home, and been shocked that it's now flattened. I'm not sure why she would do that eighteen months after moving, but we were grasping at straws. Cats can apparently find their way 'home' from long distances, and we're only about 2km from where we used to live. Tim went and looked around the site, but there was no sign. Besides, we have friends in that road who would let us know if she did appear.

Yesterday our neighbours over the street here, who have several cats, said that one of theirs went missing around the same time. They think it was stolen. Not for nefarious purposes - there are many stray cats around restaurants and beaches, after all, which could easily be bribed by food to be captured - but because they are 'nice' cats. It seems bizarre to me that a cat-lover would steal a much-loved cat from its home, but then again, cats here don't generally wear collars, and if they were out at night, potential cat-kidnappers might have assumed they were homeless strays. Or possibly abandoned family cats.

It seems unlikely, since Jemima is a private sort of cat who never goes to strangers. But it's the best of the possibilities I can think of. I just hope she isn't shut away somewhere, or suffering in any way. I miss her.

She's not even particularly photogenic, and I didn't take many photos of her this year, but here are a few - just in case anyone in Larnaka happens to catch sight of her.

Here she is on our bed in the early springtime, enjoying a snooze and wishing I would go away with that horrible flash on the camera:


Here she is in April, on the patio of our guest flat, looking at some new plants we had bought:


Here she is in the early summer, apparently writing some email at my computer:


Here she is, again in the summer, deciding that the cabinet with printer paper was a good place to sit:


And here's the most recent photo I took of her, just a month ago, on one of our comfortable sitting room chairs. Remarkably unflattering:

Plants and plant pots

Yesterday we went to look at plant shops. They were all a bit sad-looking, really. We should have gone a month ago, I suppose. That's the best time for bedding plants in Cyprus, so as to get some colour over the winter.

Still, we managed to find a few at Cosmea, our favourite plant shop. In the big pottery planter (which is looking a little the worse for wear) I put three geraniums, and a couple of pansies:


Geraniums usually do very well in Cyprus; at our old house we had some geraniums which grew enormous. But so far the ones we've had in pots on the patio haven't lasted more than a few months. Perhaps they really need open soil to do well.

I also bought a few petunias for a plastic planter, and put them with an antirrhinum which has sprung into life, presumably from a seed of a plant that withered away about six months ago:


The main reason we went to the plant shop, however, was to buy a couple of larger plant pots. Two of the plants were bursting out of their pots. This one, which was doing really well when I wrote this update on plants in August, had actually broken its pottery container. So we bought a large round plastic one instead, and it looks much happier:


Most of the plants are looking healthy, with one exception - the fig tree. We bought it in April, and in this plant update in May, it had already produced four or five tiny fruits. They grew almost to fig-sized, but remained rather hard so we didn't pick them; during our time away in September and October, they dropped off.

More worryingly, the fig leaves started to go brown, and several of them dropped off too. We wondered if the plant hadn't been watered sufficiently in our absence, but it wasn't THAT hot, and all the other plants looked fine.

Then a friend casually mentioned that fig trees are deciduous. Apparently we should expect the leaves to fall off! That had never occurred to us... good thing he mentioned it, or we might have given up on the plant when it turns into a bare stalk:


PS - December 1st already. Out of the 56 items that ended up on my list for the last two weeks, I did 29. I'll do a couple more today, too. At least that's half-way there. I also managed to post something every day of November on this blog, which means I am entitled to display this:


I shall attempt to keep it up, too, although I doubt if I'll quite manage every day in December.