For the first time this winter, it's been chilly this week. Not as bad as the UK, I'm glad to say, but really quite cold for Cyprus. Down to about 3 or 4C overnight, and no more than around 10 or 11 during the daytime. On Monday I walked to the PO Box wearing my warm jacket on top of a sweatshirt - the first time I've worn it since last winter. I thought i would be over-hot by the time I got home, after a couple of miles of walking. But I wasn't. I wasn't cold any more... but I didn't want to take my jacket off until I was home. Tuesday, if anything, was colder. The sun shone, which was cheering after last week's rain, but it was decidedly not warm.
Yesterday it was so cold that we even ran the heating during the daytime, something we very rarely do. The cats found what was probably the warmest place in the house... and despite Sophia and Tessie not liking each other, they managed to share my beanbag in relative peace:
We hadn't done a 'big' shopping trip for a month. Admittedly we did two in December: one where we spent a huge amount of money, early in the month, and one the day before Christmas Eve, when we basically went to collect our turkey and sausagemeat,and ended up buying rather more than intended. We did have to ensure we had food not just for Christmas Day, but for the weekend afterwards, and perhaps even the Monday which was the official Boxing Day holiday... but even so. December was an expensive month, grocery-wise.
For the past four weeks, I've popped into the local froutaria, and the local small supermarket, Orphanides Express when I've needed anything. Plus the occasional foray into a bakery for milk. I go on foot, so am limited to perhaps a couple of carrier bags of shopping. I use a wire carry-basket to collect what I need, and - since I don't want too much to carry home - it's fairly rare that I buy anything other than what I went out to get. Unless there's a very special offer on something which I'm going to need anyway, of course, and if I have room for it.
But once again we were running low on frozen portions of meals, and also cat litter. I could, of course, buy fairly small bags of cat litter from Orphanides Express, but we prefer the large 16kg bags from Metro, which are considerably better value. However, we have to go by car to buy one of those. As for meat: several people over the years have commented that Metro has by far the best meat. It's certainly better value than Orphanides Express, and much easier to find what we want.
So we decided to go this morning. I jotted down a few other bits and pieces that we needed - to save me a couple of trips locally - but didn't expect to buy a huge amount of shopping.
The trouble with Metro is, it's a nicely organised supermarket, and while I don't like shops in general, it's a lot better than most. if I go to one of the really big supermarkets, I've had enough after about fifteen minutes, so rush to get out as fast as possible. I'm much more inclined to browse at Metro.
Then there are the special offers, temptingly placed on low shelving as you go in. I'm quite good at avoiding bargains that we really don't want or need. But when I saw our favourite Arial washing powder, 4kg size, reduced from 12.99 to 8.99 euros, I picked up a bag. Even though the current one will last us at least another six weeks. Then we saw Heinz tomato ketchup in squeezy bottles, reduced by a euro, making it less expensive than the usual DF brand we buy. I picked up a couple... then a third...even though we didn't actually need any ketchup just yet. But we will, sooner or later.
We had a look upstairs too, just because we find it interesting to see what will be in stock. While we were there, we remembered that I needed some new lightbulbs in my study. Europe, of course, is phasing out all the old style lightbulbs so the only ones now available are the energy-saving ones... in quite small sizes, with 'warm' light, but at about ten times the cost of an old style bulb. I have a ceiling fan in the study with three bulbs underneath that can be used one, two or three at a time... so Richard thought we'd better buy three bulbs, so that they would match, even though only two of them needed replacing. So that was another 15 euros I didn't expect to spend. Then we saw the computer supplies, and I remembered that we needed some blank DVDs for backing up photos... and of course the best value, by far, were in racks of 25. Which should last us a couple of years, at least.
We did buy the meat, and the cat litter, and all the things I'd jotted on my list. I wasn't going to get any fruit and veg, other than - perhaps - some oranges and pears, and maybe some potatoes and onions. But then I saw the special offer places were piled high with bags of fruit or veg at either one euro, or 1.70 euros... in very good condition. Including the oranges and pears that I wanted anyway. So we bought a kilogram bag of broccoli, one of bell peppers, and one of mushrooms, and also a 2kg bag of carrots.
The trolley was much fuller than I had expected. Thankfully the bill was not as huge as the ones in December. Excluding the light bulbs and DVDs, it was about 180 euros, which I suppose isn't too bad for a month's supply of most groceries including all the meat.
When we got home, I decided it would be best to deal with the bulk veggies immediately. I knew if I put them in the fridge, I would forget about them... So I washed them all, peeled the carrots, chopped everything, blanched the broccoli, and have now frozen a large number of two-portion bags of mushrooms, carrot sticks, broccoli and peppers.
So that was my morning.
I was glad I didn't have to go out anywhere, since it started raining as we finished bringing the shopping into the house, and has barely stopped since.
Yesterday I decided to walk to the Post Office and back. Not that I was expecting anything, in particular, and I knew I could go today, before or after Tots (which meets in the new community church building nearby). But I felt like a bit of a walk, and I wanted to pop to the health food shop nearby to buy some molasses.
I set out about 9.30am, and enjoyed the walk on a day that wasn't too cold, but was quite overcast. I didn't go particularly fast - it took me about 20 minutes to get there, and it's only around a mile away. There were various letters for the office and one bill for us.. not very exciting. I went round the corner to the Olive Tree health food shop, and chatted to the owner while buying the molasses and a couple of other things.
Then I made my way home in a fairly leisurely way, calling into one of the bakeries to buy some milk, thinking it would save me a trip out to the supermarket later.
About five minutes after I got home, it started to rain. Just lightly at first, but I was pleased I'd arrived home before it started. I assumed it would stop before long, as is usual with Cyprus rain.
I was wrong. It rained, solidly, for twelve hours. Sometimes fairly lightly, sometimes heavily, always steadily. No storms, not much wind... just lots and lots of rain. I didn't go out of the house for the rest of the day - instead I took some of the photos off the wall by the stairs where our roof is still leaking, and mopped up when the drip went outside the carefully placed bucket.
I really hope yesterday's downpour has been good for the reservoirs. Today more rain was predicted, but there have only been a few light showers.
This afternoon, the gas man arrived. We have a large gas container which has to be refilled by a truck, and the man comes about once a month during the winter (since our central heating is gas-powered) to fill it up. It's the first time I've seen him since last March.. but not the first time he's been. One of the great things about Cyprus is that nobody minds if payments are made late, and there seems to be a lot of trust. Early in November, the gasman came before I was up; I was vaguely aware of someone banging somewhere, but didn't realise what it was until I found a notification that he'd been, with attached invoice, in our outside mailbox.
He's often done that before; usually he phones Richard to let him know he's coming, but if he doesn't, then he doesn't mind at all if we pay on his next visit.
But his next visit was in the middle of December, when I was out. I had begun to wonder if our gas supplies were running a little low, and came home to discover another slip and invoice in our outside mail box. Since then I've been wondering when he would come again... hoping it wouldn't be first thing in the morning before I was up. So I was pleased when he came mid-afternoon, in between rain showers, and filled our gas barrel up again.
Of course I had to write him a cheque for all three lots of gas at the same time. It was just under 430 euros, which seems like a huge amount. I suppose for all our heating since the start of November, and the gas used in the hob on our oven since last March, it's not too bad. Except that, until the past week or two, it's been a remarkably mild winter and so far we've only used the heating for an hour in the mornings, and three hours in the evenings. We only run it at about 16-17C, too.
I've also moved the last four year's newsletters from this blog to the family website, which makes more sense. It wasn't particularly difficult but I'd been putting it off for weeks.
I don't seem to have written much about our cats recently. But they're all still doing well, despite their advancing years. If there are approximately six cat years to one human year, Cleo is now approaching 70, Sophia's around 65 and Tessie's around 55. You wouldn't guess from the way they still leap around up and down stairs, and over neighbouring rooftops.
But they do sleep more than they used to. In the Summer, they prefer bookcases and cool tiled floors, but now winter's here, albeit relatively mild, they prefer warmer surfaces. Cleo often spends most of the day curled up on our bed, chasing patches of sunshine, although Sophia is usually in whatever room I happen to be in. Tessie mostly sleeps on her favourite chair in the living room.
But just occasionally they all appear in the same room at the same time. Sometimes that's because there's a good smell from the kitchen, but a couple of days ago they just - apparently - wanted to be sociable. I went into my study, and there they all were:
Sophia was on her usual favourite spot in the beanbag:
Tessie was curled up in comfort on the sofa:
While Cleo, who sometimes looks remarkably uncomfortable, had decided to settle on the scanner:
Although Tuesday was a slightly frustrating day, with King Malu unable, at the last moment, to go in the cradle, it all worked out well yesterday. We're not at all sure how the boat did get in the cradle... Richard and Tim arrived there about 10am to find she was already there. But there was no sign of the next-door boat having been moved at all.
Shortly before 2pm Tim's wife came to collect me, so we, and Tim's mother, could go to watch the launch. At least, we hoped that's what would happen... we got to the marina to learn that (a) the tow-boat was out of the water, having repairs, so Tim had had to borrow a friend's motor boat and (b) another large boat was waiting to come out of the water, so rather in the way... but these minor considerations were soon solved, and at last the crane started its ponderous path to the launching place.
I suppose it was around 3pm by the time she was finally lowered into the water:
By that stage, I was on the video camera since Richard was in King Malu. So I filmed her being towed away by Tim on his friend's motor boat, then rushed around to the place where she would be taken. Part-way there, I noticed that she was sailing across a patch of water in the harbour, so I stopped for a quick photo:
.. and got to the new place just after she arrived. She still had to be brought in, carefully, so as not to bump into the neighbouring boats.
Richard has written a great deal more about King Malu's launch on his blog, and linked to almost ten minutes of video, if you want to see how it all happened.
I must preface this post by stating that Cyprus is a wonderful place. The people are great, and in many ways it's an ideal place to live. Even this winter has been remarkably mild, at least so far.
But one has to learn that in some things Cyprus simply doesn't operate like mainland Europe. People are not good with times, for instance. We - and they - joke that two o'clock 'Cyprus time' is really anything from two thirty onwards. If someone wants us to arrive somewhere between ten and eleven, they might say 'Oh, about ten o'clock Cyprus time'.
King Malu, the boat in which Richard was given a share, and on which he has been working extremely hard for the past few weeks, was looking very smart, ready for being moved into the water on January 13th. Tomorrow, in fact. There's still plenty of work to do inside, so she probably won't actually be sailed until March or even April, but the underneath is all now painted and sealed, and ready for launch.
Other than the very bottom - the tiny strip of the bit sticking out underneath (which I am reliably informed is the keel) that is actually touching the ground. While the boat is still standing with those props, it can't be painted. So Richard spoke to the people who operate the crane that moves the boats in and out of the water. No problem, they said. Today - Tuesday - they would bring the crane when they had finished their other jobs for the day, and lift King Malu into the cradle. Then Richard and Tim could do the necessary sanding, priming, painting and anti-fouling at two-hour intervals in the evening and/or early Wednesday morning, and they'd move her into the water around 9am (Cyprus time) tomorrow. It would cost more, of course, but seemed worth doing.
Richard thought the move into the cradle would be around 5pm. Then, when he popped down to the marina this morning, they said 2pm. So after lunch, since the day was overcast, I accompanied him down to the marina. We wandered around for a while and learned that the crane-moving people weren't going to be around until 2.30. We weren't surprised.. so we went for a walk to find out why my phone was refusing to send texts. We were assisted by a very helpful man at the MTN shop who fixed the problem in about five seconds, and got back to the marina around 2.30. No sign of the crane-moving people, so we sat down for a while.
Around 2.45, we saw the crane start to move. Was it coming our way? Apparently not, since it moved instead towards the place where boats go in and out of the water. Perhaps another job had come up. Richard went to ask - no, apparently they needed to put some extra bars in the crane, and it was then coming to King Malu.
About twenty minutes later, the crane started on its way again. It stopped temporarily when a car was in the way, and for a bit longer to fill up with diesel. But at last we could see it coming down the little aisle where King Malu has been sitting for the past eight years. Richard started filming with the video camera.
It wasn't long before the crane was in position to turn around, and then move slowly in alongside the boat. So we moved to the back of King Malu, to photograph and shoot its careful progress:
The crane moved very carefully - which is a good thing, of course. It got to about half way. And then it stopped.
The men got out, and started gesturing, and walking around. We could see it was a very tight fit to get it in place. The boat on one side is not centrally placed in its parking slot, and the crane was perhaps an inch away:
On the other side is a large lamppost, which may even have been put there in the past eight years, since King Malu arrived:
Could the crane be angled carefully? No, they had already tried that. The man in charge of the crane said he really didn't care about the lamppost. That could be knocked down. But the base of it is made of concrete, and if the wheels of the crane went over that, the whole thing would tilt to the side and probably damage the boat on the other side.
Here's the video Richard made of events to date, with annotations:
It's a good thing they care so much about the boats. But it meant that there was no way that King Malu could go in the cradle tonight. The crane operator said that he would get in contact with the boat next door, since they would have to move it further away, and so it can't be done until tomorrow.
So the plan is now that, around 10am (Cyprus time) they will first move the nearby boat a few inches further away, then they'll put King Malu in the cradle. Richard and Tim can then prime and anti-foul the base (apparently the epoxy layer isn't so vital) with a couple of hours gap between, and she can then be put in the water at some point in the afternoon.
About ten days before Christmas, I suddenly realised that our mains water tap had been flowing for two days, without any cuts. Prior to that, we had got used to the pattern of being on one day, for about 12 hours, then off for the next. That's how Larnaka did it, anyway. Other municipalities around Cyprus had different ways of trying to save water. Since we all have large water tanks on the roof, it shouldn't - theoretically - have made a lot of difference to our water consumption. It just meant that when the mains was on, we filled up water bottles to use on the 'off' days. Water from the tanks should be drinkable, if the tanks are air-tight, but we prefer fresh water that hasn't sat around in a tank.
A little gingerly, I kept trying the mains water over the next few days, so that we could have truly fresh water in a jug at the table, rather than from a bottle. Every time, it was on. We guessed that we were having freedom from restrictions over the Christmas break, starting early... and it's amazing, really, how quickly we became accustomed to having fresh mains water on tap all the time.
In the back of my mind, however, was the thought that it probably wouldn't last beyond Christmas. So on the Sunday afterwards, I made sure that all our drinking water bottles were freshly filled.
But the mains water continued to flow. Perhaps it would last until the New Year, I thought. On the Sunday afterwards, once again I ensured that the water bottles were full with fresh water.
To my surprise, it continued last week, too. Of course, Epiphany (January 6th) is another public holiday here, and considered part of the Christmas/New Year period. Schools were off until last Thursday. But the mains water continued pouring out of our taps on Thursday, and Friday, and over the weekend.
Yesterday, I did use older water from bottles to water plants, and filled up two or three of them with fresh water again. But the impetus wasn't so strong. I began to wonder if, due to the excessive amount of rain we had in November and December, we might have water on all the time. This morning, once again, mains water was on.
Then at lunch time, it wasn't.
I had a quick search to see if there was any information online, and sure enough I found this article: Water cuts to resume after Christmas wastage. Sigh. I would have liked the title better if the last word had not been there. I don't think we wasted any water; indeed, I'm sure we used less than we did in the summer, since we weren't watering the outside plants.
But apparently, when water is not restricted at all, people assume there's more than enough, and waste it. Excessively. To be sure, we've seen neighbours hosing down not just their patios, but the pavement and sometimes even the street outside their houses. It's a Cypriot thing, apparently. It seems very strange to us. Perhaps they've also been washing their cars more than they did (not that restrictions seemed to stop them). Or maybe they're just being less careful in general, leaving taps running, or having much longer showers.
So we're back to restrictions. I don't mind; the only difficult part is right now, not knowing when we're next going to have the mains water on. Going off at lunch-time was not part of the pattern before mid-December. Does that make today a water day (switched off early) or a non-water day (switched off late)? Will we still have water every other day, or will there be a new system altogether?
All we can do, cliched though it seems, is wait and see.
Larnaka has felt quite bereft of people recently. So many of them go home - or away - during or just after Christmas.
So we were very pleased that Mark and Joan returned from their holiday in Europe Monday morning, and came for a meal with us in the evening.
They brought with them a new game for us, one we'd never even heard of, called 'Ticket to Ride: Europe'. So after we'd eaten, we suggested they teach us how to play.
It turned out that they'd never played it either. Their daughter recommended it to them - and brought it from the USA - but, they said, it was supposed to be quite easy to learn. I usually prefer to learn games from other people, but we decided to try it out anyway, following instructions.
I read aloud, and we set the game up. The main board is an approximation of the map of Europe, supposedly from about 100 years ago in the early days of train travel. Some of the cities are placed rather erratically (according to Richard - my geography is not good enough to know) and Cyprus is missing entirely. But then it's a game, not a geography lesson! There are little plastic train pieces in five colours, little stations, and a selection of cards which rather confused us at first.
As we got started, we began to realise that there's a lot of potential in this game. The idea is to collect train cards and then claim routes between cities, using the appropriate coloured cards, and then placing little trains. The longer the route, the higher the score. There are little wooden scoring markers that travel around the side of the board, keeping track.
In addition, there are journey cards picked up randomly, which list two cities each. Some short journeys, worth 6 or 7 points, some much longer, worth 20 or 21. We were supposed to discard any we didn't want, but since we weren't at all sure at the start of the game what we might want, we decided to keep them all while we got used to playing. We gradually realised that we were supposed to build complete routes that travelled between these destinations, for extra points at the end of the game.
My cards were similar: two of the journeys overlapped completely, which I was easily able to complete. I also had one from Frankfurt going south, but my 'longer' route card covered many of the same stations as my two overlapping shorter ones. It meant that I - somehow - managed to complete all my routes in the first hour, so on my next turn I picked up three more cards (as permitted, if one wishes) and then kept one which was, again, very similar.
The game ends after one player is down to two or less plastic trains. That happened to Richard. By that stage our wooden markers were all fairly close to each other, although I think mine (yellow) was slightly ahead. But when we'd added on the extra points due to completing journeys according to our cards, I was WAY ahead.
We could see that there are some interesting strategies to this game, which we didn't begin to explore... so will definitely have to play it a few more times in the near future.
Here's the final board itself:
Richard had the red trains, Joan was green (and won an extra 10 points for the 'longest route'), Mark was blue - and didn't complete any of his journeys. If we had subtracted points for unfinished journeys, he would have been in negative points! However since none of us is particularly competitive, and the enjoyment of the game is in the playing and conversation, it didn't particularly matter who had won.
