March is 'yellow month' in Cyprus

Of course, it's still February. For a few more hours. But it's that unusual date, February 29th, which only happens every four years. We could hardly expect the plants to understand the theory of leap years.

So this morning, walking to one of the local shops, I noticed that phenomenon that strikes in March each year - a profusion of yellow.

Not being a plant expert, I have no idea what most of them are. But this one is pretty - it seems to grow wild as well as being in some people's front gardens (if you click the images, you can see bigger versions) :


Then of course there are lemon trees all over Cyprus, about to produce some new blossom for this year, and also still producing lemons from last year's blossom:


Here's some waste ground, covered in yellow weeds which look familiar, since the huge garden in our previous house frequently had these (whatever they are) during the spring:


This is another rather pretty one which seems to be cultivated rather than wild, as it tends to be in people's gardens rather than on waste ground:


But this one is wild, and grows prolifically despite the distinct lack of rain this winter:


And finally, something that is a bit like a British dandelion, though not exactly:

Tummy bugs and sleeping bags

It's rare for Richard to be ill. He gets the occasional cold or headache, but not seriously. Not bad enough to make him stop work, anyway.

But just occasionally something strikes him badly.

There's a gastro-enteritis kind of bug that's been going around Cyprus for a month or two. I know of some families who had it badly, back in January. It's not the kind of thing that generally strikes us, so I thought nothing of it...

.. until yesterday morning, when Richard said he'd had a terrible night, felt weak and bloated, and had been up several times with other symptoms, which I won't mention in detail in case anyone is eating while reading this.

So he stayed in bed for most of the day, sipping water and eating nothing but some toast and marmite mid-afternoon.

In the evening he did get up for about an hour, but felt cold. So I brought him a sleeping bag as a cover.

Then he decided to go back to bed. And the sleeping bag stayed on the sofa. I was going to put it away later, but when I went to fetch it, Sophia looked at me very balefully. She was extremely comfortable and did NOT want me to move it:



Today, Richard is slightly better, but not much. I gather a similar bug has been going around the UK so I'm not too worried - apparently it can last up to three or four days.

I just hope the rest of us don't get it...

(Incidentally, Sophia did let me put the sleeping bag away later in the evening)

Road tax in Cyprus, once again...

Last November, we paid our car/road tax.

It was not fun. Quite apart from the vast expense, it was a lengthy and convoluted process, as described in the relevant post (linked in the first paragraph).

But, we thought, it would be straightforward from now on. Road tax is valid up to the end of the calendar year, and the new one has to be paid by about March. At least, in theory - it never seems to matter much how late it is (which is just as well, considering how very late we were last year).

The department of road transport usually sends out letters at about the end of February, saying how much is due (it varies, depending on the type of car, and this year everything's in euros), with printed certificates that need to be stamped. So, we thought, we would wait until those arrived, then take them down to the co-op place as usual, and get it all sorted out.

But it seems that the system has changed this year.

Last week, two letters arrived in our PO Box, informing us that our car tax discs were about to expire. Fair enough, you might think. BUT... one of them was addressed to me, and the other - even more bizarrely - to Daniel. Neither of us drive. Both cars are registered in Richard's name. But no letter arrived for him.

Ah well, this is Cyprus.

The letters told us there were several ways of paying the road tax. It said we could phone, but we prefer to have printed records of transactions, so we didn't want to do that.

It included a form which we could fill in and fax to the bank. It told us to give the car registration and the last three digits of Richard's passport. The only problem was, it didn't tell us the amount payable.

It said we could go into the bank, which would have been our last resort (they usually charge for paying bills over the counter)... so we decided to opt for paying online at the Bank of Cyprus site.

Clicking the link there took us to the JCC link site. We typed in the car registration details, and the last three digits of Richard's passport... and were told that they didn't match. Same for the other car.

So he found his alien card, and tried the last three digits of that.

It worked!

I then used my debit card - and that worked too!

On screen appeared a picture of our new tax disc. With correct descriptions of the cars. There was a minor problem when the 'print' button produced something much too small, but a regular 'File-print' from the browser produced what we wanted.

All we need now is some of those round clear plastic things so as to affix the tax discs to the car windscreen.

I can't believe how easy it was, in the end.

Cyprus has a new president

I wrote a week ago about the first round of the Cyprus presidential elections.

Today was part two. Not that anyone would necessarily notice - there were no vans driving around with loudspeakers reminding people to vote, no posters, no flags... really, it was all very civilised.

According to the BBC news site, the left-wing candidate, Mr Demetris Christofias has won.

Mr Christofias is head of the Communist party. That doesn't mean that Cyprus will be a Communist country - certainly not Marxist, as much of Eastern Europe used to be. But there will be a Communist influence, as there was when we first arrived. Albeit fairly capitalist in philosophy, and strongly Greek Orthodox Christian in belief. Cyprus politics are very complicated...

The new President is eager to continue negotiations towards reuniting the island. But then, so was the right-wing candidate who was standing against him today.

Ropes

Daniel has been helping Richard with various maintenance and other work on his Wayfarer dinghy.

One of Daniel's talents is doing clever things with rope. I don't even know what most of them are called, but he seems to produce neat looking knots and endings - all part of being a sailor, I suppose.

A couple of days ago, Richard bought some more rope for yet more work on the dinghy (which is sitting under one of our carports at present). Daniel was going to do something useful with it... but Sophia, who barely lets him out of her sight during the daytime, was convinced he had bought her a new toy:

It's Lent not Advent, but...

It's strange, really, how we associate certain foods with particular seasons of the year. It differs from country to country, too, of course. I don't think of myself as much of a traditionalist, yet we eat turkey on Christmas Day, and I make my Christmas cake, Christmas pudding and mince pies during November and December. We eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, and hot cross buns on Good Friday, and extra chocolate at Easter...

Most years, I make too much mincemeat. Or, more to the point, as my supply gets low I eke it out by adding extra dried fruit, or grated apple. I don't want to run out before Christmas... so I end up with a couple of hundred grams of mincemeat left over, which sits in the fridge for the next ten or eleven months.

Worse still, by the time the following December rolls around, the leftover mincemeat has usually got rather dried up and crystalline, and looks so sad next to my newly-made batch that I quietly throw it away.

As usual, I had leftover mincemeat from Christmas 2007. It sat in the fridge. Then Daniel came home for his furlough, and mentioned that he had only eaten ONE mince pie in the past few months. They're not generally made on the Doulos. To make even one per person, there would have to be 350 of them, and who can manage just one mince pie? (Well, apparently Daniel can. But that's because he popped into a British evening in December for a few minutes before being on duty. And they happened to be serving mince pies).

So I decided to overcome my strange reluctance to make mince pies when it isn't Advent. I used up all the mincemeat. I eked it out a little with extra dried fruit... but that's because I had made too much pastry. Then I had to roll the pastry thinner and thinner to accommodate the last of the mincemeat.

But.. I used it all up. And made 35 mince pies on Wednesday.


There aren't 35 left now, but there are still quite a few. More than I had expected. Perhaps because, bizarrely, they just don't taste the same when it's Lent rather than Advent.

Presidential elections in Cyprus

The whole world seems to know - already - that there will be Presidential elections in the USA later in this year. I wonder how many are aware that yesterday was the first round of Presidential elections for Cyprus. Of course, Cyprus is just a tiny country at the far end of the Mediterranean, but it's well-placed, near the borders of Europe, Asia and Africa, and is sometimes considered to be significant in world affairs.

These elections have not affected us in the slightest, at least so far. I think I saw one poster for one of the candidates (I've no idea which) but that's about all. It doesn't seem to be a main topic of conversation for most people. Since the voting was on Sunday, they didn't even have to close the schools for polling stations. I didn't even know that election day was yesterday until I saw an article on the BBC news site.

Politics in Cyprus is rather complex. To say the least. For one thing, it's tied in strongly with the Greek Orthodox Church (around 95% of people claim allegiance to it, although there is inevitably a lot of nominalism). Some priests tell their congregations how they should vote. They have significant influence over the politics of the island in general. For a clear (though lengthy) understanding of the influences in Cyprus politics in the past fifty years or so, see 'Postwar Nationalism in Cyprus'.

For yesterday's elections, there were several candidates, but it was predicted that only three of them would have significant percentages of the vote. That's exactly what happened. The BBC has a summary of the results. They really were remarkably close - each of the three, including the current President (Mr Papodopoulos) getting around a third of the vote.

So there will be another election next Sunday, which will be just between the top two - not including Mr Papodopoulos, who was slightly behind the others. If any of them had received at least 51% of the vote, he would have been the President outright with no need for a second election - but nobody thought that would happen.

The two remaining candidates appear to be extreme opposites, as far as party politics goes. Mr Kasoulides is a member of the right-wing DISY party, while Mr Christofias is the head of the Communist party. Not that Cyprus Communism bears much resemblance to the Marxism of some of the Eastern European countries a few years ago. What's odd is that both these men are keen to reunite Cyprus - and seem to have similar ideas of how to go about it. I've no idea what their other policies are - I don't suppose most of the population do, either. Reunification seems to be the one issue on their minds. The Europe Herald Tribune gives a little more information about the three men who were the main rivals yesterday.

Will life change if Cyprus gains either a Communist or a right-wing President? I doubt it. Most people here seem to be keen on Communism as a principle, capitalism as a practice, and Greek Orthodoxy as a tradition. Oddly enough, these three rather different ideologies seem to live reasonably comfortably alongside each other. But then, this IS Cyprus!

Rain in Cyprus. A little.

I was awoken in the night by a strange sound. One I hadn't heard in a long time. It took me a moment or two, while coming to consciousness, to work out what it was.

It was rain, against the window. Not heavy rain or wind or thunder, but the gentle pitter-patter of raindrops.

We badly need rain in Cyprus. And there's an example of the classic British understatement. The reservoirs are so low, they are liable to dry out completely this summer. There is a de-salination plant, but it can't cope with the increasing water demands of the growing population. Not to mention the tourists, who are not even supposed to know about the serious lack of water on the island.

Even our neighbours seem to be taking it seriously, at last. No longer do I see them out with hosepipes cleaning their patios or cars. I noticed someone washing his car recently using a bucket of water - I suppose it's too much to hope that they would cheerfully drive dirty cars, like people do in the UK when there's a water shortage. And like we do most of the time, anyway.

So it was good to hear rain, even if it was quite light. I dozed off but didn't really sleep, and when I finally got up I was pleased to see that the rain had evidently been heavier than I had thought. The neighbourhood - and our balconies - looked very wet.

About 8am there was an extremely heavy downpour, but it only lasted around ten minutes. Since then it's been sunny and very windy. So all the streets and rooftops have dried.. but I hope there was at least some slight effect.

Chip 'n' Pin has come to Cyprus

Located at the far Eastern end of the Mediterranean, Cyprus tends to be a little behind the rest of Europe in some ways. So it was no surprise to us that when the UK (and, I assume, most of the civilised world) started using 'Chip and Pin' technology on credit and debit cards, Cyprus continued asking for our signature on a credit or debit card slip. Even if using a British card endowed with the Chip'n'Pin system.

However, around the middle of last year we had a letter from the Bank of Cyprus, English one one side and Greek on the other. very efficient. The letter said that they will be adopting this technology here, although they call it 'Pin and Pay'. Signatures would still be fine, they told us, on current cards but all cards issued from January 1st 2008 would have the Chip, and we would be expected to know our PIN - the same one used at an ATM - and enter it when presenting the card for payment.

My debit card expired at the end of January, and a new one arrived in the PO Box a couple of weeks beforehand. I was pleased to see that it said it could be used outside Cyprus, which is also new. And, I was informed, it had a chip embedded in it. So I would need to remember my new PIN, which also arrived in the PO Box. Not as secure as the days (including last year) when the card went to the bank to be collectdd in person, and the PIN came in the post, but never mind. This is, I suppose, progress.

So on February 1st, after shopping at Metro, I presented my new card, having memorised the new number.

But they just asked for my signature on the slip, as they had done with my old card. I shrugged inwardly; I hadn't really expected the new technology...

Last week, however, I was surprised to be presented with the PIN-entering machine, and asked to type it in. Perhaps, I thought, different checkouts had different systems (this has happened before). Fortunately I still remembered the new number, and it all worked well.

Today, at a different checkout, there was no PIN-entering machine. So the checkout lady went to another till, and then called me over to enter the PIN.

Looks like Metro, at least, has caught on. I don't suppose the smaller shops have yet - I've been to at least one in Cyprus that still used the very old style translucent non-computer slips for paying by card - but it's good to know that it's working.

Not that the PIN is (in my view) any more secure than a signature. After all, it's actually easier to type someone else's PIN - if you know it - than to imitate their signature. But then in Cyprus, nobody ever looked at the signature on the back of the card anyway, so perhaps it is more secure here.

Sunshine in Cyprus

One of my Christmas presents was a beanbag. I keep it in my study, and often sit there to read.

Sophia likes it too, particularly when the sun is shining through the french windows:

Shrove Tuesday in Cyprus

Easter is a confusing season in Cyprus. Most years, there are two Easters here. This is because while the Western Protestant Church uses the Gregorian calendar, the Eastern Orthodox Church uses the Julian calendar. If you want to know what that means in terms of Easter dates, here's a page to calculate Easter dates which can tell you all you ever wanted to know, and a great deal more, about why Easter appears to be on a random Sunday - or two Sundays - each year.

This year, the Protestant/Western Easter falls very early, on March 23rd. That means that Lent - the forty days prior to Palm Sunday, which is the week before Easter - begins tomorrow. Thus today is Shrove Tuesday, when traditionally people used up their eggs and sugar and so on, prior to fasting - or at least cutting out several foods - during Lent. In the Western world, some people try to give up one thing during Lent, but few people fast. However the tradition of cooking pancakes on Shrove Tuesday remains in the UK... and even more strongly with Brits abroad.

I had actually forgotten that today was 'pancake day' until I arrived at the Mother and Toddler group where I help in the kitchen, and discovered the leader with a large bowl of pancake mixture, and three frying pans, preparing to make pancakes for all the children and mothers. And helpers. Very nice they were, too!

Because I didn't want the family to miss out, I made some mixture myself this afternoon. So this evening we had some traditional pancakes for our dessert, with lemon juice and sugar. And, in my case, also some Greek yogurt, since this is Cyprus. Or, in Richard and Tim's cases, one of their pancakes was with chocolate sauce...

The Greek Orthodox Easter, which is a major public holiday in Cyprus, falls five weeks later than the Western Easter. That's the furthest apart that they ever get. So when we celebrate Easter, they will be just a couple of weeks into Lent. When we first moved here, fasting (or, at least, cutting out meat) was a big thing to Cypriots. In ten years, it seems to have decreased, although people still don't barbecue outside during Lent.

Moreover, they don't have the equivalent of Shrove Tuesday. They count the days differently, and start their Lent with 'Green Monday' which is another public holiday. People clean their houses then go on picnics. The weekend before Green Monday is carnival weekend, when the children dress up and have balloons, and there are concerts on the sea front.

It's all a big mixture of sacred and secular. I quite like celebrating Easter twice. In the Protestant Churches, we don't ignore the Orthodox Easter, as so many of those visiting have Orthodox relatives.

But I do wonder whether the shops will manage to get any Easter eggs before March 23rd...