Another farewell

I should be used to it by now. I'm an empty nester with two years experience of my fully-fledged sons living elsewhere. Indeed, four years as far as Daniel's concerned. I'm thankful that both my sons are doing well in their different fields, and that they've made new friends. I'm thankful that their having been home educated for their teenage years has proved a blessing rather than a problem, and of course I'm thankful that they're healthy, both physically and mentally, and that they are able to make their way in the world.

I'm very thankful that Daniel has found a lovely girl whom he's going to marry next year, and that they're able to work together in their calling.

But, like so many parents in Cyprus, it's something of a bittersweet thankfulness. Our sons are not just elsewhere in the same country, they are abroad - a plane journey away. If we still lived in England, we'd probably see Tim at least once a month - depending on where he was at university - rather than just a couple of times each year. And now that Daniel's in England, we'd probably see him more too.

Having said that, though, the time they spend in Cyprus - and I'm extremely thankful that they want to spend time with us - is probably more focussed, and possibly even longer - even if condensed to just one or two visits - than would be the odd weekend together if we lived in the same country.

The past ten weeks seem to have flown past - and yet, looking at photos, it also seems a lifetime ago that Daniel and Becky arrived here in May. They didn't plan to do a great deal while they were here - but we've spent time with friends, played innumerable games, eaten out. A new baby was born to our friends, and she's now over a month old, and we celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary.

Moreover, Cyprus is where Daniel proposed marriage to Becky, and she accepted. So it was very special to us that Daniel stayed on an extra two weeks by himself when Becky returned to a friend's wedding, since for any future visits, they will almost certainly be together.

But no holiday can last forever, and yesterday evening Daniel flew out of Larnaka. He had a lot of travellling ahead of him. He's on his way to work at a conference in Germany, but direct flights there were extremely expensive and infrequent. Flights elsewhere in Europe plus a train would have been even more expensive. So after much discussion, and several possible plans, he opted for the least expensive option, which unfortunately involved the longest hours of travelling. He flew to Gatwick, and was then taking the train to Carlisle, where he works, and where Becky would meet him. He only has a couple of hours in Carlisle, since he will then join the crew who are also going to Germany, travelling by land and ferry. However, it does mean that he won't need to take all his Cyprus luggage with him.

It has become a family tradition to take a photo of our sons as they leave Cyprus. So here's Daniel striding towards the airport with his luggage on a trolley (yes, it's a wheely suitacase, but wheeling on tarmac damages the wheels):


Since I hadn't seen the new airport in daylight before, I took a photo of that too:


And here's Daniel trying to make sense of the departure board inside the airport:


We saw that a flight to Gatwick was leaving within a few minutes of the time he expected to leave. We assumed that was it. He had already checked in online, so dropping off his luggage didn't take long. Then, since the gate closed at 7.30 (according to his boarding pass) and it was 7pm already, we waved him off. We were in the airport less than 20 minutes, so we didn't even have to pay for parking.

Shortly after we got home, Daniel texted to say that his plane was delayed by an hour. I looked on FlightStats - which we had omitted to do before leaving, foolishy - and it said there was a 90-minute delay. This morning I looked on FlightStats again, and it said that the plane had landed two hours after it was scheduled to do so.

I wondered if Daniel would have managed to get on the train, but evidently he had allowed sufficient time. He texted me about three hours ago, saying that he was on the last train, and hoped to arrive in Carlisle in a little more than three hours. Which is about now...

Daniel's cat Sophia was somewhat disturbed when he was packing yesterday, and has been wandering around the house looking a bit lost. But she coped last time he left, and the time before... soon she will be ordering Richard and me around again.

Thirty years of marriage

These gorgeous flowers were delivered yesterday:


They came from my wonderful sister and her family. They were totally unexpected, but very much appreciated.

The reason is that yesterday was our 30th wedding anniversary. The last time we had flowers delivered in Cyprus was exactly five years ago, also from my sister. I wrote here about our 25th anniversary, with a photo of those flowers.

Of course, twenty-five is a very special anniversary. Five years ago, we celebrated for almost the whole of July. First we had a few days away on a mini-cruise of some of the Greek islands, using a generous gift we had been given to spend on ourselves.

Then we held a party for about thirty of our friends. With no air conditioning in the kitchen, it wasn't much fun preparing for a party in the middle of July in Cyprus. I reflected at the time that at least we wouldn't have to have another mid-summer party for another fifteen years or so...

But this year, Daniel stayed with us an extra fortnight after Becky flew back to the UK, so that he could be with us for our 30th anniversary. So we thought that perhaps we'd invite just a few of our closest friends over on Sunday night for a little get-together. Nothing special, we said. Absolutely no presents. Just cold buffet food, which I determined would be as simple as possible. No more than twenty of us in all, since we no longer have a big garden to sit out in. No children, either, other than one or two babies, and my youngest best friend Helen who is now 22 months old.

It was an enjoyable evening. We had, amazingly, finished all the food preparation nearly two hours before anyone was due to arrive. So I mopped the floor, and we took cool showers, and were ready. No headaches. I wasn't even particularly tired. Daniel moved the furniture around to make it easier to circulate, and I found I could relax and enjoy it a great deal more than the party five years ago.

Someone suggested taking a photo of Richard and me, and of course Helen wanted to be in it too:


The actual anniversary date was yesterday (Monday). Richard went to the office as usual, but we ate some of Sunday's leftovers for lunch, and then in the evening went out to eat. We took Daniel too, since he's only here for another couple of days. We went to Alexander's, our favourite sea-front restaurant, where the choice is wide and the portions huge, and there is plenty of vegetarian fare.

I took several pictures of Daniel, of which only this one came out well:


He took several of us, most of which have rather strange expressions. Clearly I should have combed my hair - we only walked about half a kilometre from where we parked the car, but it was a little windy. Anyway, this is probably the least bad of the two of us:


Sharp-eyed blog visitors might notice that I am wearing a necklace in both the photos. I don't often wear necklaces, but this one was another complete surprise: Richard bought it for me in Lefkara as an anniversary present. It has two pearls in it, since this is our Pearl anniversary.

We weren't very original with our food choices. Daniel and I both opted for the vegetarian lasagne, which was very good although I could not finish mine- they come with a bit of salad AND some chips (fries). Richard had the excellent fish and chips meal, which is far too big for me:


When we got home, it was only 9pm so we played a game of Cities and Knights of Catan.

We're still celebrating somewhat today. I took this picture of the cards we've been given for this anniversary:


Richard went to the PO Box and came home with a photo-book, which is our anniversary present to each other, created online at the excellent Kodak Gallery. I recommend Kodak online highly. We upload the best of our digital photos there and order prints every two or three months. They are far better quality than having them done in Cyprus, and considerably cheaper even though we have to pay for postage. Their photo books are excellent value too, at £19.99. Even better - a couple of weeks ago I was sent a discount voucher for 40% off anything ordered on July 9th. I knew it would probably arrive after our anniversary, but it made it even better value and prompted us to sort the photos and make it.

Inside the front cover is a scanned image of our main wedding photo from thirty years ago:


Then we have some prints of scanned photos of us in the early 1980s:


Followed by some of our grandparents, and the boys as babies. There are different possible formats for each page, so for the boys' childhood years I opted for nine per page:


There are 20 pages altogether, working through the thirty years of our married life so far. At the end are pictures of the family from the last few years:


And at the end is one of the four of us, taken in April shortly after my 50th birthday:


At lunch-time we ate more leftovers from Sunday night. I think we'll be doing that for the rest of the week....

Cyprus grapes

I reglarly write about Froutaria Achna, our local froutaria. I pop there two or three times per week for fresh fruit and vegetables that are usually much better value than in the supermarkets.

With extra people in the house we've naturally needed extra fruit and veg... so three or four times now, Richard has come with me in the car, and we've used a trolley rather than a basket. Today was one of those days. We did do a big monthly shop at Metro yesterday, where I picked up large pre-bagged value packs of apples, oranges, carrots, cabbage, peppers and cucumbers. But we needed some more produce and although I planned to walk to the Froutaria around 7.30am when it was still fairly cool, it didn't happen.

By 9am the prospect of walking anywhere was looking less and less appealing, since the humidity was high and the temperature rising. So when Richard said that it was too windy to go sailing today, as he had planned, I asked if he had half an hour to come with me to the froutaria. Since he likes shopping a great deal more than I do, he was happy with that...

Of course, knowing that we had the car meant that I bought a little more than I would otherwise have done. I always look first in the pink-bag aisle where everything is reduced. I bought peaches for at least two days' smoothies, and a large cauliflower. I bought potatoes, and sweet potatoes, and more tomatoes than I would normally have bought. I also bought three bags of nuts - almonds, plain cashews and roasted cashews - since they're better value there than at the supermarkets, and a bottle of carob syrup which is a useful natural sweetener to keep in the fridge.

I was about to buy some pink-bagged grapes when I spotted that there were lots of grapes in what we erroneously call the white-bag section. Erroneously because these bags are in fact transparent. They contain produce - usually two or three kilogrammes of it - at a fixed price of one euro. And there were several such bags of grapes.

Sometimes the white-bag produce is a bit old and squashy. I picked up one of the grape bags and examined it from all sides. I did see one or two slightly brown grapes, but they felt firm enough and, with Daniel in the house, I knew we could get through a lot of grapes in the next few days.

Cyprus grapes are perfect at this time of year. A few weeks ago they were a little sour, and quite pricey. In another month or so, they will be oversweet and a little soft. But right now they're exactly right...

So, since we had the car, I bought two bags:


Each one weighed about 2kg. Four kg of grapes (that's nearly nine pounds, for anyone who still thinks in imperial units) for two euros (about £1.70 sterling or $2.50 US) seems to me like excellent value.

We had an extra guest for lunch today and between us ate about 800g of them. They won't last long.

A Cyprus meze

Tuesday was Becky's last evening with us before returning to the UK. She had never eaten a meze, which is probably the most 'traditional' of Cypriot meals. So we decided to treat her and Daniel to a meze meal at our favourite local taverna. A meze - pronoucned something like MEZZ-ay - is a meal where small portions of several different dishes are brought out, a few at a time, so that people can sample a wide range of local foods.

When we first arrived in Cyprus, we heard about 'fish mezes' and 'meat mezes' and neither sounded very appealing to me, since I'm not a big meat eater. It was only after some years when we were invited to various events including a meze that we realised that a regular meze contains salad and other vegetable dishes as well as the meat. And at the local one which we like so much, the emphasis is on a wide range of vegetable dishes, with meat coming almost as an afterthought, at the end.

Daniel, being a vegetarian, wasn't at all sure about having a meze, but we assured him that there would be plenty for him to eat.

We arrived about 6.45, which is long before most Cypriots eat, so we had the restaurant to ourselves.


Almost as soon as we arrived, before we had even ordered, we were brought a standard appetiser, which I totally forgot to photograph. It was a plate of what looked almost like mini pizzas. The base was a kind of toast, and the topping was tomatoes with some feta cheese. It was delicious.

We were offered the menus, but had already decided on the basic meze. We also knew, from experience, that to order a four-person meze for four people would be extremely wasteful. The amount of food in this meal is huge. For four people with average appetites, one between two is more than enough. So we said we would like a two-person meze between the four of us, which is quite acceptable in Cyprus.

As soon as we had finished our appetiser, we were brought some halved Greek pittas in a dish, and this platter of dips - which I remembered to photograph after we had started it:


One of the white sections is 'tashi' - a Cypriot speciality which is basically tahini with some added olive oil and garlic. The other white section is tsatsiki - which is yogurt with grated cucumber and some mint (and, of course, garlic. Both are delcious, so I had some without any pittas, knowing that if I ate any bread I would be full before I started the main part of the meal.

At one end there were some olives, which I'm not so keen on, and at the other end some pickled gherkins (at least, I think that's what they are).

Oh, and they also brought us a pot of set Greek yogurt. Delicious!

A moment later two salads arrived. One was a standard Greek salad:

which Daniel is helping himself to in that picture. At the bottom right side of the photo is the first meat dish - a slightly spicy kind of mince, with some sour cream (or maybe yogurt) on something crackly. I'm not sure what. When we've been there before this was served on small taco pieces, but I wasn't so keen on this one

The other salad - which I also forgot to photograph - was a mixed set of leaves with some raw carrots and parsnips.

No sooner had we helped ourselves to salad and started to eat than the next dishes arrived. We were so keen to try them that, once again, I forgot to get my camera out until we had helped ourselves. The one on the right of the picture is halloumi, the wonderful Cyprus cheese which can be toasted without melting. The other is liver... something I don't like at all, but Richard very much enjoys:

Next to arrive was this scrumptious avocado based dish:

And this, which is little pastries filled with anari (another kind of Cyprus cheese or curd) and topped with grated cheese:

Then there was one of my favourites, which for some reason I forgot to photograph altogether - maybe I was too busy eating it. It's a cheese and tomato dish with vegetables underneath - I think maybe leeks and/or aubergines. Hard to tell, but very yummy.

Oh, and they brought some more olives:

These dishes all look quite small, as they are - but with so many of them, we only wanted small portions. Besides which, neither Daniel nor I wanted any meat and Richard's trying to cut down on cheese, so there was more than enough.

Soon another meat plate arrived:

That's Cyprus sausages, and sheftalia (which I think of as a cross between hamburgers and haggis). Richard and Becky shared this dish.

And another meaty one - this is a couple of portions of a sweet-and-sour pork:

And my favourite: mushrooms. On previous visits the mushrooms have been fairly plain, but this time they were mixed with a kind of scrambled egg. Absolutely delicious. The others had a small portions - since by this time we were all beginning to feel quite full - but I couldn't resist finishing this one entirely:

Then, the final plates arrived. Several kinds of meat on a plate with chips (french fries) in the middle, just in case anyone was still hungry. And two small dishes: the one at the top of the photo is pourgouri, another Cyprus speciality made with bulgur wheat, and the one at the side is pasta covered with cheese.

Becky tried the pourgouri as she'd never had it before, and Daniel had a little, but Richard enjoyed the meat, and I was too full to eat anything else by this stage, other than a few bits of tomato and cucumber which still remained from the Greek salad. We didn't even touch the pasta dish.

We sat and chatted for a while, with Daniel and Richard eating the occasional chip... but there was still a lot of meat left over, as well as the pasta and most of the pourgouri:

After it was clear that we'd finished, the dishes were cleared away and we were given a plate of candied fruit:

Even I managed one of them, as it was quite light, and the others had two each.

We all agreed that a two-portion meze was more than enough for the four of us.

The price was pretty good too. Daniel, Richard and Becky shared a bottle of red wine, and we all shared a bottle of water... and still the entire meal came to slightly under forty euros.

Cyprus appliances

There are those who assume that Cyprus is still a developing country. Or at least that it's fifty years or so out of date. People are often surprised to find that we have broadband internet, mostly good (and very inexpensive) mobile telephony, online banking and fewer power cuts than some parts of the UK. OK so there's no mains gas, the sewage system is still rather antiquated, and things rarely start on time. There's no grocery shopping on the Internet, and it's still very much a patriarchal society.

Many Cypriots employ 'maids' - often from Asian countries, who can earn more here than they can back home. Unfortunately some of them are not treated very well. We don't have the inclination, or the room, or the funding to employ someone to do the shopping, cleaning and cooking, no matter how tempting it might sometimes seem in hot weather.

But I do have a little army of servants in my kitchen, whom I instruct in the mornings and at other random times of day. Sometimes before 9am I have thanked the dishwasher for cleaning yesterday's dishes, told the washing machine to clean another set of clothes, instructed the juicer to make us some nutritional fresh juice for breakfast, informed the coffee machine that I need some coffee to take to Richard, set the breadmaker off to bake us some bread for lunch, and started the yogurt maker with another batch to be ready by the evening. I will have used the fridge several times without even thinking about it, and quite likely the kettle too. A couple of years ago we added a slow-cooker to the kitchen servants, and until recently I might well have arranged for that to be gently simmering away all day too:


And of course I rely totally on my computer to keep in touch with family and friends, store and organise my photographs, and write my blogs.

So yes, we have just about all mod-cons available in Cyprus.

And just like the rest of Europe, they don't seem to last. Unlike the old twin-tub washing machines that probably kept running for thirty or forty years, modern appliances seem to start wearing out after a year or two. Four years is considered a good life; seven outstanding.

It's four years yesterday since we bought and moved into this house. Four years since we bought some new appliances that we needed, putting our older ones in the ground floor guest flat.

I was mildly annoyed, a week or two ago, when my USB hub suddenly stopped working. I don't think it was even four years old; Tim bought it for me a while ago - so it may have been three and a half years old. It's done good service, in use constantly. Daniel and Richard told me it wasn't mendable, so Richard bought and set up a new one.

I wouldn't have thought anything more about it, until Daniel pointed out that the 'enter' key on my keyboard was broken. I hadn't noticed, but it was indeed rather wobbly. If I wasn't careful, it fell off completely:


But the keyboard was working fine, other than that, even if most of the letters had been rubbed off through constant use. I've had that keyboard for over five years, so it's done very well.

More worrying was to notice a crack running right the way through the crockpot part of the slow-cooker:


I spotted it last time I used it, after seeing that some liquid from the casserole I made had leaked out. The crockpot still felt fairly firm, but I had visions of Richard lifting a heavy chili out of the slow-cooker only to have the crockpot fall into two pieces dumping a lot of hot food down his front and all over the floor. It wasn't worth the risk. And although it's only about two years old, we bought it in Nicosia, and I very much doubt if a crack like that would be covered under the guarantee. I probably used something too cold in it. Or if I didn't, the company would say I probably did.

So I stopped using the slow cooker.

Then the electric kettle stopped working. It happened first a few weeks ago, when Daniel accidentally switched it on empty. Richard took it to pieces, determined that it wasn't mendable, put it back together... and found that it worked.



But the same thing happened (my fault this time) last week, and it didn't seem worth taking apart yet again. The kettle was over four years old, and thus probably on its last legs. Thankfully we had a whistling kettle that sits on the stove, which Tim gave me, so we used that instead. Slower, but worked perfectly well.

Then on Sunday, Daniel was cleaning the pyrex jug of the coffee-maker (four years old) and a piece of it broke out of the side:


Neither Daniel nor Richard will drink instant coffee unless they have no alternative; but we have a cafetiere as well, so it wasn't a huge disaster. However that only makes about two cups at a time, and we frequently have to make more coffee than that. Sometimes we have to make some regular coffee and de-caff in an evening.

So.

Yesterday, I was doing our accounts, as I usually do on Monday. And noticed that we still have quite a lot of money in our virtual 'family gifts' account - where we put money given to us jointly at Christmas or other occasions, so that it doesn't end up used for everyday items.

While we hate throwing out appliances, it does seem that they are disposable. There was no point keeping a broken kettle, coffee maker and slow cooker in the kitchen just taking up space. So I tentatively suggested that we might at least see what was available to replace one or more of these items.

After much discussion, we went to the big Orphanides. There were a surprising number of filter coffee machines, at a wide variety of prices. Neither of us is at all good at making decisions. It was easy to reject the very expensive ones, and the ugly ones, and the white plasticky looking machines. We narrowed it down to three possibilities quite quickly. Eventually Richard chose this Krups machine, since he knew it was a good brand:


While he was making the final decision, I wandered around the electrical department, and saw that they had slow cookers. They had the 6.5 litre size, which we bought before since it was the only one we could find anywhere in Cyprus. They also had the 3.5 litre size, which is what we had actually intended to buy a couple of years ago. The price wasn't too bad - so we decided we would get one of those too:


Then we looked at kettles. Oh my - so much choice. We quickly rejected the ones with plastic sides as I don't like the smell of the water boiled in most of those. I'd quite have liked one with glass sides, like the one we had before, but there weren't any. So we looked at several made of metal... and eventually chose this one, mainly based on its price:


I hate spending so much money all at once. But at least we didn't have to pay for the repair when our blender went wrong recently.

So... we were about to pay for these three items when I remembered my keyboard. Daniel reckons that supermarkets are the best place to buy keyboards and mice, as they're much better value than computer shops. Orhpanides had four different keyboards, all of them suitable for my needs, ranging from 15.99 euros to 19.99. I liked the most expensive one best. My instinct was to buy the cheapest... and yet, there was only a five euro difference between the two. And I do a lot of typing.

So - with a little persuasion from Richard - I chose this one:


... and we made our purchases. A moving-in anniversary present to our house.

Cleo takes naps...

Cleo is our mostly black, still not entirely domesticated panther-like Cyprus cat. She's about 12 years old now, so she isn't quite as active as she used to be. Then again, now summer is approaching, she's a lot livelier than she tends to be in the cooler months.

Cleo has always liked to take naps in unusual places. The top of a bookcase - preferably a tall one - is so common that we barely notice it any more. I sometimes see her stalking around on neighbouring flat roofs, too. It worried us when she first started sitting outside on the exterior air conditioner units - but she hasn't yet fallen off, even when having a wash, and seems to like surveying the neighbourhood from a position of safety:


She likes radiators for their warmth in the winter, and as a place to sit in the summer:


But this year she seems to have discovered several new places to sleep, or at least to rest. This one probably doesn't look too unusual:


- until you realise that she's actually on the top of our tall freezer:


This one is very weird - she likes to sit in the sink of our outside utility area:


She's always liked squashing herself into boxes, so we shouldn't have been surprised when we left a game, just started, and returned to find her in one of the lids:


- here's a close-up; I wonder if she deliberately chose the lid labelled 'Traders and Barbarians' rather than the regular CAT-an game:


And here's her most recent spot for a nap: Daniel's electric guitar case: