A foggy morning in Cyprus

Last Saturday night we put the clocks forward, along with the rest of Europe. I thought I might get more sleep in the morning; Sophia usually wakes me up as it gets light, which was around 6am last week. Of course, on Sunday morning even though it was nearer 7am it still FELT like 6am.

I came downstairs. I pulled up the blind in the kitchen, and blinked a couple of times.

It was foggy. I'm not sure I've ever before seen fog in Cyprus. Perhaps a little bit of mist, but not like this:


I took this out of another window, not that it looks all that different:


The fog rather highlights just how many overhead cables there are around here.

By about 8am it had cleared up, and we were seeing the more normal sunshine and blue skies. By mid-morning, it was really quite warm. Had Sophia not wakened me at dawn, I might have missed it.

Daniel's mailbag of books arrived in Cyprus at last

Long ago, in the annals of history, when Daniel was still on the MV Doulos - well, three months ago, anyway - he was online, chatting about the vast amount of luggage he was going to have to take with him when he flew to Carlisle. He had at least 100 books, none of which he wanted to leave behind, but thought he might need at least one or two items of clothing. And of course he had his clarinets, and his guitar, and his computer, and various CDs, and his espresso maker...

'So, why not send the books via mailbag?' I suggested. And then had a look at the Singapore Post Office online, learning that he could, indeed, send out parcels of books and other printed papers at a very reasonable rate. They would take 2-3 months to arrive at their destination, but the cost would be FAR less than taking as excess baggage, or shipping via other methods.

He liked the idea so much that he made arrangements for other Douloids to do this too. And in the midst of rushing around packing and helping to take apart the furnishings of the ship, he managed to stagger to the Post Office with 20kg books to send back to Larnaka.

I'd almost forgotten about it, until he asked me in an email, recently, if it had yet arrived. It hadn't... but I was very glad he had reminded me. When I went to collect our mail on Tuesday, there was a little slip saying that there was a parcel awaiting us, too big for the box. I nearly went in to ask for it, noticing just in time that rather than 'small packet' the postmistress had ticked the box for 'mailbag'.

So I told Richard about it that evening, and on Wednesday morning we drove as close as we could to the Post Office. I'm very glad I didn't try to take it anywhere. It was a large and somewhat battered bag that took up quite a bit of space in the back of the car:


When we got home, I suggested unpacking it there and then, so we could carry armfuls of books up our stairs. But Richard said he could manage the whole thing:


The bag really wasn't in good condition at all, but then it had been sitting around in ships for the past three months. There was a hole near the bottom, although all that we could see was cardboard, so I don't think anything had fallen out:


Apparently Daniel had packed all his books in one large box, which had pretty much fallen to pieces by the time it arrived. So Richard pulled out all the books first, then we had a look at the box, assisted by Sophia, who thought it smelled VERY interesting:


When I asked him why the books were all in one box, he said they were only allowed one box per mailbag. And yes, he realised he should probably have packed three smaller boxes inside the large one, but since the majority of the ship's company were sending out similar mailbags of books, boxes were in rather short supply at the time.

I don't know if it was 100 books, but it made quite a pile on our coffee table:


It was a nicely eclectic mixture, from Augustine to Adrian Plass, from Shakespeare to Terry Pratchett. Rather typical of our household, in fact. And a fairly large amount of clarinet music, too.

The mailbag itself provided some entertainment for the cats. Cleo loves boxes and enclosed spaces of any kind. Sophia was clearly fascinated by the scents. Daniel was her 'person' - almost exclusively - so it's entirely possible she could smell him somewhere around. She kept rushing to the front door and looking outside before returning to the box and bag, until I finally squashed them up and threw them out.


None of the books was actually destroyed, but several of them looked distinctly battered:


I hope they'll all still be readable, anyway.


The next question was where to put them, since they couldn't sit on our coffee table indefinitely. Nor did I want them to fade into our subconsciousness and stay there unnoticed, so I thought I'd better find a home for them immediately.

The bookcases in Daniel's room are already fairly well packed with books. Some from his teenage years, some are already retrieved from his time on the Doulos from his furlough two years ago, and even a few brought back by us from our visits:


So I cleared a bit of space on the bookshelves built into the end of his bed, and put them there:

Our first Greek Orthodox Christening in Cyprus

We were invited, for the first time, to a Greek Orthodox Christening service, on Sunday. Like Anglicans, babies are baptized in the Greek Orthodox Church, although it usually seems to be when they are around six months old. It's much more of a big ceremony; in the Anglican Church, at least our traditions, dedications and baptisms of infants take place during regular morning services, to show that they are a part of the church family. The ceremony takes perhaps ten minutes. In the Greek Orthodox Church, however, the ceremony lasts an hour - and that without any congregational singing, nor even a sermon. So it's done as a special service, usually at 11am after the ordinary service has finished.

We'd been invited by text, to St Lazarus Church at 11am, with various reminders. We weren't sure what to wear, but decided that smart trousers for Richard would be better than jeans, and I thought that, since it was reasonably warm, I should dig out one of my skirts and a pair of sandals.

Thus arrayed, we arrived at St Lazarus Church at almost exactly 11am. We realised that most things don't start on time in Cyprus, but expected to see a few folk we knew...


People were just coming out. We saw someone we knew... but he wasn't connected with the christening. He said it had been a longer service than usual as the Bishop was there.

So we wandered about, peeping into the church every so often. It's quite a tourist attraction so there were visitors going in, looking around, and going out again.

Eventually we walked up the road to our friends' house, and Richard found them still there. Apparently the Christening was at 12, not 11... somewhere he had missed a text message.

So we went down to Alexander's on the sea-front, and had some coffee. At least, Richard did. I had my first frappé of the year. Very pleasant it was, too.

Then we headed back to St Lazarus, and got there about 11.50. This time the Christening party were there, so we went inside. Did we have to sit separately, we wondered? Apparently not. Were we allowed to take photos? Yes, no problem.

At 11.55 the service started. There were only about 15 people present including the family... but it was all quite informal. Other guests arrived around noon, or even later. By the time it ended, there were probably 30 or 35 people there.

The whole thing was in Greek - probably Ancient Greek, so we didn't expect to understand it. The mother isn't supposed to touch the baby at all; instead she's held by her godmother. The priest was reading something from a book, presumably some kind of liturgy.


At one point, the godmother had to give some responses - and I even caught a few words. They sounded similar to the promises made by Anglican godparents, although they were repeated three times rather than just once.


Up to this point, it all seemed fairly familiar despite being in a very ornate building in a language we didn't understand. Everyone was happy, and the baby was doing well.

Then she was taken away from the main area, and her clothes removed. Was she going to change into a special christening outfit...? No. Instead, the priest anointed her with some special oil. She was not impressed. She started crying... and the only person who was able to hold her was her godmother. Apparently, once this part of the ceremony begins, if her parents touch her she becomes unclean and the whole thing would have to start all over again. So they just had to watch and listen while their little one became more and more distressed. I'm not sure I could have gone through with it if it had been one of mine.

After the oil, the baby was immersed three times in water. She went in right up to her neck, and water was then splashed all over her head so that she was, basically, fully immersed. By this time she was screaming continually... and this is not a baby who usually cries much at all.


She was then dried, and while we couldn't see everything that was going on, I think there was more oil put on her, and more liturgy said. Then the priest cut off some of her curls. We asked afterwards why that was, and nobody knew. She was dressed in a pretty (but not very comfortable looking) Christening gown and hat, and gradually calmed down in her godmother's arms, although she started crying again whenever she caught sight of the priest. I'm sure he's a very nice man - he seemed friendly, and apparently apologised to the baby's father... but said it all had to be done properly.

Towards the end, a young lad carrying a candle accompanied the godmother and baby as they walked around the table while the priest swung some incense and said more liturgy. They stopped several times in different places; I've no idea what the significance was.


The whole thing took about an hour. It was an interesting experience for us, traumatic for the baby, and devastating for the baby's mother!

However, the baby was then taken home for a feed and a nap, after which she recovered fairly quickly, and the rest of us were given a sumptuous spread, prepared by some of the baby's relatives.

The sun shone, and it was pleasantly warm. Richard was getting over a nasty cough and I was getting over an unpleasant sinus infection, but we both felt much better as we sat and chatted with people we knew, and enjoyed the excellent food.

We left about 3pm, and when I got home it was chilly enough that I changed into jeans, socks and trainers pretty quickly!

Plants and other random bits and pieces

The week has rushed by, as ever. We have our friend Alison staying for a 'working holiday': sorting out accounts at the office, and also spending time sitting in the sun and reading. Richard's had quite a nasty cold and cough, but has continued working many hours including spending most of the weekend, as usual, painting and doing other work on King Malu. The weather has been fine, and mostly sunny although not particularly warm.

A couple of months ago I realised that some of the planters on our front porch were looking a bit bare. Well, actually they were full of weeds, and one of them had rather a lot of tiny geranium seedlings which had evidently planted themselves, aided by the rain. I'm really not much of a gardener. I'm more than happy not to have to do any gardening any more; it used to be quite a hassle at our old house and I don't miss that at all. But I do like to see a few pots at the front of the house.

So we went to the local place, and bought a few petunias and antirrhinums, both of which do well in Cyprus.


Then I spent half an hour getting rid of weeds, transplanting geraniums into other pots. I'm not at all sure what we'll do with these little ones:


- but these ones are doing quite nicely on top of the posts by the gate.


I haven't even needed to do any watering so far - other than one day when I suddenly realised we'd had a warm and dry spell for nearly a week - but no doubt I will have to get back into the habit of regular watering when the weather starts to warm up.

Oh, and our Christmas poinsettia, as usual, is still thriving and looking colourful on the windowsill by our front door:

Winter draws to a close, as 'yellow month' begins

I started writing about March as 'yellow month' in 2006. Each year it happens - as February draws to a close and March begins, the sun shines a little more, the days get longer, and the town is awash with yellow wildflowers.

I should be used to this by now. But each spring, I am awed again by the wonderful variety in these flowers - weeds, technically - which grow each year, beginning in the winter rains. The warm yellow is cheering and fresh. I used to love seeing the primroses and daffodils of UK springtime; most of them were originally planted deliberately by other people, even if they then spread. But these weeds aren't even wanted. They're just a splash of beauty without an inherent 'value'. God is undoubtedly a master painter.

Here are a few photos I took yesterday as I walked to the Froutaria. These are probably my favourite of the wildflowers; we used to get them in profusion in the garden at our old house:


Here they are in context, with different yellow weeds growing on the other side of some waste ground nearby:


These are a subtler colour, and a more interesting shape. I've no idea what they are, but they're very pretty:


And then there are these, large daisy-like flowers which wouldn't usually appeal to me, but the colour is rich and bright:


This morning I walked towards town, to go to Tots. I passed this large patch of waste ground opposite Fanoroumani Church; the ground is covered with a mass of yellow flowers:


This is a closer view of a small patch of them:


Looking through my older photos, I discovered a picture I took of the same area (albeit from a different angle) almost exactly two years ago. In March 2008 we had just finished a very dry winter, with the reservoirs dangerously low. That same patch of wasteland looked like this:


There were some yellow flowers poking through, but nowhere near as many as there are this year after what's probably been the wettest winter since we arrived.