Busy week

It's been quite a tiring week, one way and another.

Richard was away in Egypt for four days, so I was on my own. The first time, really, in about twenty-two years. There have been the odd day or two - when Richard was travelling, and the boys at youth camp, for instance - but I don't think I've been alone with just the cats for four days in a LONG time.

It would have been easy, I suppose, to let the days drift by with no structure at all, but Sophia ensures at least that I get up when I'm supposed to, and eat when she expects me to. Not that I tend to lie in bed in the mornings, anyway; once I'm awake I have to get up.

On Tuesday, as well as helping at Tots and hunting for turkeys, I had to wash my beanbag. The reason is that when I got up, it was immediately apparent that a male cat had got into the house. The cats' feeding dish was totally empty, and there was a dreadful smell in my study. Tessie, our youngest cat, sometimes leaves a little calling card which isn't particularly pleasant, but it's nothing like the stench of a male cat. And I found where it was - a large wet patch on my beanbag. Ugh.

I blotted what I could with kitchen roll, and sprayed with cleaning spray, but it was soon obvious that I needed to take more drastic action. So I found the large plastic sack we were given when we bought the beanbag, and emptied the polystyrene beans into it. Then I washed the cover by hand, rinsed and spun a couple of times in the washing machine, and hung it out to dry.

When I got back from my walking, I aired out the study, but couldn't seem to get rid of the smell. I checked every square centimetre of the floor on hands and knees, and the curtains, but simply couldn't locate it. It seemed worst near my desk. It took quite some time before I finally realised the smell was from the kitchen roll I'd used to blot the worst, and had then - without thinking - put in my bin! Emptying the bin solved that one, thankfully.

By late afternoon it was dry, so I put the beans back (a process which was NOT easy, particularly on my own... but I managed with very little spillage) and all was well.

On Wednesday, I made my Christmas puddings and a little over three kilograms of mincemeat. Remarkably efficient, since I don't usually do anything for Christmas before the start of December (other than the cake). I'm not entirely sure what we'll do with three Christmas puddings and all that mincemeat, with just the two of us, but no doubt will find some way of using them.

On Thursday, I decided to clean the living room furniture with our three-in-one shampoo machine. I'd been thinking about this for some time as they were beginning to look a little grubby, and it's the end of moulting season for the cats. But first I needed to vacuum them. And, procrastinating about both, I realised I needed to clean out some kitchen cupboards.... and then thought of ways of slightly reorganising them.

So I did that, and then vacuumed and shampooed, and then did my regular Thursday upstairs cleaning, and made the bed with clean sheets and duvet cover... it was 4pm by the time I'd finished everything!

Richard got back very late Thursday night - or, rather, 2am Friday morning. We did our supermarket shopping on Friday around 9.30am when he woke up, and bought a couple of chickens since I couldn't find a turkey. He popped into the office for a couple of hours, so I made a pecan pie, having found some pecans at a new local shop that sells nuts and coffee beans. I had forgotten just how long it takes to shell 180g of pecans...

The meal went well, with eleven of us (including two children) sitting down to a feast with a mixture of American and British dishes. We talked about what we were thankful for; and although I am thankful for many things - my family, my health, this house, and much more - the one thing I felt overwhelmingly thankful for, as I looked around the table, was our dishwasher!

November turkeys in Cyprus...?

When we lived in the USA, in the early 1990s, one of the things we particularly liked was the celebration of Thanksgiving. This is on the last Thursday of November, and is when families gather from all over the country. The meal is somewhat like a traditional Christmas meal - roast turkey with trimmings for the main course, with extra side dishes such as green bean casserole, or the one we never quite came to terms with - jello salad. The desserts are mainly pies - apple, pecan, pumpkin, and others.

We celebrated Thanksgiving a couple of times when we returned to the UK, but since coming to Cyprus have not done so. However, this year there are some Americans in the house group which meets in our home on Fridays. We thought it was about time we had a social evening, so we decided to have a Thanksgiving style meal this Friday. Various people offered various dishes, and we said we'd cook the turkey.

A glib promise, it turns out.

In December, turkeys can either be bought frozen, or fresh ones can be ordered in advance. But in eleven years, this is the first time we have thought about cooking turkey in November. So, this morning after the toddler group where I help, I walked to Metro supermarket. I looked in the freezer section - no turkeys. So I went to the meat counter. 'Are you doing turkeys this week?' I asked, assuming they would get out their book and take my order.

The girl behind the counter looked a bit surprised, then shrugged, and said, 'No - not now. No turkeys until Christmas.'

I was surprised. There are, after all, a fair number of Americans living in Cyprus, so I'd have thought turkey would be much in demand at this time of year.

On the way home, I called into Orphanides Express, our small local supermarket which is connected with the big Orphanides store. I asked the same question, and received basically the same answer. They told me they would be taking orders from December 15th. Which isn't very useful when we'd like one this Friday!

I texted a friend who told me she's going to a Thanksgiving celebration on Thursday. I asked where her host would be getting the turkey... the reply said they were serving chicken.

Oh well. I suppose we'll be doing the same. Unless anyone who reads this happens to know of anywhere in Larnaka where turkeys ARE available in November...

Surely there has to be a catch somewhere...?

I walked to the PO Box as usual this morning, to collect our mail. Included amongst the envelopes was our bill for CYTA, who provide our phone and Internet services.

With the bill was a letter, as usual Greek on one side and English on the other. In my experience, this usually indicates increased prices, or something of the sort

But no! It says:

From 1 December 2008, Cyta will double the download speeds and, at the same time, increase the upload speeds of all its existing DSL Access Home products.

There's a handy chart, too, showing how each type of service will be automatically upgraded to the next one up. We currently have the Home1000 service, which - at least in theory - means we should be getting a download speed of 1024 kbps. Not that we often get that, but we're supposed to. From 1st December, it will double to 2048.

So that's the good news.

Even better - and even more surprising - is that when this happens, the prices will reduce! Our current system costs us €29.47 per month including VAT. Which isn't particularly cheap, when compared to UK broadband, but is still considerably less than we paid for our phone bills years ago when we were on dial-up access. However, from December 1st, we will apparently be paying €25.30.

It's hard to believe that there isn't a catch somewhere, but this IS Cyprus, and strange things happen sometimes.

Perhaps CYTA made too much profit last year. Or perhaps they're trying to woo customers back from the other phone and Internet service providers. Whatever the reason, it was a pleasant surprise to find mixed up with the bills.

Cats again

In the absence of my sons, I seem to have been taking a lot of photos of the cats recently.

Here's Tessie, pretending to be a pair of shoes:


Sophia, trying to disguise herself as a fluffy turtle:


Cleo, convinced she has hidden herself from the rest of us:


And finally, if anyone's remotely interested, my desk. Reasonably tidy for once, and - of course - Sophia sitting just behind it. Or in front of it, depending on your viewpoint. I like my back against the wall so I'm facing the door when I'm typing. One of my favourite photos of Daniel and Tim is on my computer screen desktop.


And yes, even in mid-November, it's still bright and sunny outside, albeit a bit chillier than it has been. Richard is servicing the central heating as I type, since we need to start using it in the evenings soon.

Making the Christmas cake... and an oven door problem along the way

This year, I did think about making our Christmas cake at the start of November. Briefly.

Then, when we went to the supermarket, I forgot all about it, so didn't get the necessary ingredients.

A week later, I checked my favourite recipe - for Delia's classic Christmas cake - and made a note of everything I would need, which was mainly dried fruit and chopped almonds.

Then, on Friday just over a week ago, I discovered that Metro had run out of glacé cherries, and chopped mixed peel, and chopped almonds. Last year I think I used ground almonds, but decided this year to buy some almond slices and chop them myself. I knew I could do without mixed peel, since I could buy bags of mixed raisins/currants/mixed peel.

But glacé cherries are vital. I was brought up to believe that fruit cake is not fruit cake unless it has cherries in it. There were a few jars of maraschino cherries in Metro, but they're not the same at all. Pretty vile, in fact, in my opinion.

On Saturday I went to look in our local Orphanides Express, and they didn't have any glacé cherries either.

Then, on Sunday last week, I was taking our lunch out of the oven when the inner glass piece suddenly slid down into the metal frame part of the door. Oops. Just as well I was taking the lunch out, not putting it in!

That afternoon, Richard took the door to pieces. He thought perhaps a screw had come out, but realised the glass parts were only held in place by glue. So he removed the glue, and cleaned the area with some Cif cream cleanser ... and then (every cloud has a silver lining, as they say..) proceeded to clean just about every square centimetre of the door, including both sides of each piece of glass.

We looked online, and found that this isn't an unusual problem. There is special oven glue available for just such an eventuality... in the UK. We could order some, but it would cost about £12 plus postage, and could take some time to arrive in Cyprus.

On Monday, we popped around the corner to a local hardware shop. One of the guys there spoke good English, and when we explained the problem he said we should use fireplace cement. It cost us €6, which, even with the ridiculously strong euro, is still less than half £12. I wasn't entirely certain it would work... but in the evening Richard got out his tube-squeezer gadget thingy, and put lots of this fireplace cement around it:


You can just see the greyish gunge of the cement in this photo, before he put the other half back:


It was supposed to be left for 24 hours before using, so on Monday and Tuesday evenings I cooked our meals using the microwave and steamer. On Wednesday was the first test... the glass in the door seemed secure again, and sure enough was absolutely fine even after the oven had been on for an hour.

It's been fine all week. And looks very clean and sparkling too!

On Friday, when we went to Metro, there were four little tubs of glacé cherries there. Just four! I don't know if Cyprus is running short, or whether all the ex-pat Brits are baking Christmas cakes around now. Anyway, although I only needed one tub, I bought two... a knee-jerk reaction to finding something back in stock after an absence.

So, I thought, I would make the cake on Saturday. Unfortunately, I forgot to soak the dried fruit on Friday night after our house group, and Delia's recipe requires 12 hours of soaking the fruit in a few tablespoons of brandy.

Last night, I remembered. So this morning, when I got home from church, I set to work to make the cake at last. I used the electric mixer for the eggs, I even used real butter. I crushed the almonds, I weighed every ingredient on my kitchen scales that are accurate within 2 grammes.

The final ingredient was the grated zest of two lemons. Actually, on the online version, it says the zest of one orange and one lemon.. I don't suppose it makes much difference, but I had two nice lemons waiting to be used. So I washed them carefully, and dried them on kitchen roll. They were still slightly damp, so I thought I'd leave them a couple of minutes, while I lined the cake tin.

It's not hard to guess what happened. I lined the cake tin exactly the way I was taught at school (probably the one thing I remember and actually use from my secondary school!) then I spooned all the cake mixture into the tin. I went to find brown paper and string (I had to raid Daniel's room for that, but I knew he'd be bound to have some) to tie it up, as Delia recommends, and put it in the oven.

Then I started to tidy up the vast amount of mess that had somehow accumulated. And there were the two lemons, beautifully clean and dry, sitting next to the sink.

Sigh.

I don't suppose lemon zest affects the consistency of the cake at all. I don't think it makes a whole lot of difference to the flavour, either, although we'll find out at Christmas. But I realise it DOES make a difference to the scent of the cake. I expected a gorgeous aroma to emanate from the kitchen... but it didn't. It was pleasant enough, a sort of cakey smell, but not the wonderful Christmas cake scent I was expecting. I never knew the secret was in the lemon zest.

Last year, I cooked it at 140C on regular. This year, I cooked it at 120C using the fan. It came out well, and when I removed it from the tin, it looked almost identical to last year's Christmas cake.

Rain, rain, don't go away...

For the past couple of weeks we've had glorious sunshine, almost continually. Well, not at night-time, of course, and as it's dark by about 5.15pm since the clock the sunshine doesn't last that long. But it's been pleasantly warm; yesterday it was more than 25C around lunchtime. I've been wearing a sweatshirt in the evening, and we're using a thin duvet on the bed, but that's all.

However, the weather often seems to break around the end of the first week of November.

This morning, I woke while it was still dark to hear thunder rumbling around the neighbourhood. I thought I heard some rain, too. However the cats were asleep and I really didn't want to get up, so I drifted off again until about 6.30 - later than usual, but Sophia didn't wake me for once. It looked a bit damp outside, with the sky rather grey; as I got up, it started raining again in earnest.

In Cyprus, when it rains, it really chucks it down. As much rain falls in half an hour as we sometimes get in half a day in the UK. And it continued raining for at least half an hour. I had to fetch a bucket to put on the stairs, since the ceiling leaked... but that always happens in heavy rain, particularly if it's windy too. The cats complained that I wasn't switching the rain off, of course.

Then it stopped.

Now in Cyprus, when the rain stops, the rule is that the sun comes out, and dries up all the rain.

But that didn't happen. It stayed grey, and about half an hour later it came on to rain again. Just as heavily. And it continued, off and on, for most of the morning.

We do need the rain. But rain in Larnaka, apparently, doesn't help much. The papers reported at the end of October that while Larnaka and Nicosia had above average rain for the month, there was almost none in the Limassol and Paphos areas where the reservoirs are. So they were still only around 3% full. I do hope today's rain fell somewhere useful. Of course, I didn't have to water the plants, which is a good thing. Nor did any of our neighbours. But they were probably out in the evening, when the rain had stopped, hosing down their patios and pavements to get rid of the mud and leaves that would have fallen...

I wore a sweatshirt all day today. The forecast is for only 13C tonight, so I might change to our warmer duvet tomorrow, if it feels chilly. Maybe it will warm up again... but it feels as if the end of Summer has now gone, and the start of Winter is here. Autumn in Cyprus is something of a non-event, since the trees all have their own personal schedules.

I suppose we need to think about getting our central heating working again...

Cat-calls

It was another lovely, sunny day in Cyprus today, with the temperature up to about 25C. I don't suppose those of you in the UK really want to know.

Sophia spent much of the afternoon asleep on my beanbag. I wonder if I should change its name to 'cat's cradle'. But perhaps she's just illustrating the saying, 'Let sleeping cats lie'.


Tessie and Sophia are not related. Tessie is the cat who arrived on our doorstep, after Richard had unwisely said that we had plenty of cats. However, although they fight sometimes, Tessie seems to have a lot of admiration for Sophia. At times like this, she's something of a copy-cat.


One problem with cats is that they tend to scratch the furniture, when they're sharpening their claws. One of our sofas was getting distinctly tatty, although I've attempted to mend the worst of it. On Friday, we noticed doormats in Metro at two euros each, so we bought a couple, to place behind the scratched sofa. We hoped it might encourage the cats to sharpen their claws there instead.

I think it's working, since they love scratching at them. But today, Sophia decided instead to illustrate that famous aphorism 'The cat sat on the mat':

Red and pink flowers abound in Cyprus in November

If March is yellow month in Cyprus, I think November should be designated as pink month.

As I walked to the local supermarket a day or two ago, which is probably less than half a kilometre away, I was struck, suddenly, by just how many different pink plants were in bloom. These weren't the weeds of the spring - there hasn't yet been enough rain for wild flowers to bloom. These are cultivated plants, mostly, in people's front gardens.

First, here's our bi-coloured bougainvillea, in a pot on the porch, doing fairly well still:


Here's a gorgeous pink rose from a house not far away:


Something that looks like British 'pinks' - I don't know what the proper name is:


Some red hibiscus:


I think these are oleander, though I'm never entirely certain:


No idea what this is, with the spiky leaves:


Here's a magnificent bougainvillea growing up the side of a house:


Something that looks like impatiens (busy lizzies) gone wild, as some plants do in Cyprus:

A very showy plant here, though I don't know what it is:

And finally, although it's not pink and only has a bit of red, these bird of paradise plants are stunning.


Of course it's a little embarassinging to admit that the only reason I recognise them as bird of paradise plants is from the 'Lil Green Patch' application on Facebook...

Our first home-grown fig

We had eight figs hanging on our little tree, on the front porch.

One fell off, having burst open and hardened. So then there were seven...

Today, we decided that one of them was ready to be picked. It started to hang downwards, and felt soft. It didn't pluck as easily as I expected, but a quick twist and it was off the tree.

Richard washed it, and cut it in half:



A great moment.

I'd like to say that my half was the best fig I have ever tasted, but honesty compels me to admit that it wasn't. Not by a long chalk. It was actually rather flavourless, and not particularly sweet.

Still, it was the first.

So now there are six...

Unfortunately most of them are rather small, speckled and hard. I suspect that, like the first of their siblings, they may just split open and drop off.