It's been wonderful having Tim here for the past two weeks. But all good things, as they say, come to an end - and he departed in the early hours of this morning for his flight back to the UK.
Today is officially a public holiday - I did pop out earlier to see if the fruitaria was open, but even that was closed - and, indeed, it's still technically a holiday week; many businesses and all schools are still closed, until after January 6th.
But still, it felt like the proper start of Richard's sabbatical, and of life assuming some kind of normality - if such a thing is ever possible in Cyprus - after the Christmas break.
We had very heavy rain on New Year's Eve, and for most of yesterday morning, but today the sun had come out. In the afternoon, we decided to go for a walk, just down to the PO Box.
The rain must have been even heavier than I had realised; I don't think I have ever seen quite such deep puddles in some waste ground:
I just hope they dry up soon, or we could be in for a major infestation of mosquitoes in the spring.
As we approached Larnaka town, we were amused by this life-size Christmas scene outside the municipality music school:
What amused us wasn't that Santa was apparently reading a book, but that the cat sitting under the reindeer was in fact a real cat, who watched us and twitched its ears a few times.
There were a couple more Christmas cards awaiting us at the PO Box. Mail from the UK was very delayed in December, and we collected several parcels and a couple of cards on Friday, so I wasn't really expecting much today.
Today is officially a public holiday - I did pop out earlier to see if the fruitaria was open, but even that was closed - and, indeed, it's still technically a holiday week; many businesses and all schools are still closed, until after January 6th.
But still, it felt like the proper start of Richard's sabbatical, and of life assuming some kind of normality - if such a thing is ever possible in Cyprus - after the Christmas break.
We had very heavy rain on New Year's Eve, and for most of yesterday morning, but today the sun had come out. In the afternoon, we decided to go for a walk, just down to the PO Box.
The rain must have been even heavier than I had realised; I don't think I have ever seen quite such deep puddles in some waste ground:
I just hope they dry up soon, or we could be in for a major infestation of mosquitoes in the spring.
As we approached Larnaka town, we were amused by this life-size Christmas scene outside the municipality music school:
What amused us wasn't that Santa was apparently reading a book, but that the cat sitting under the reindeer was in fact a real cat, who watched us and twitched its ears a few times.
There were a couple more Christmas cards awaiting us at the PO Box. Mail from the UK was very delayed in December, and we collected several parcels and a couple of cards on Friday, so I wasn't really expecting much today.
2 comments:
Hello,
I stumbled across your blog by accident some time ago ( a friend of mine had emigrated to Canada and I was searching for her blog) and I have been following your news ever since. I just want to say that I really enjoy your news and hearing all about your family and friends. I would love to have room to house as many books as you, but with having two young children and all the paraphernalia that comes with them it's impossible!!
Happy New Year and happy blogging.
Corina
Thanks, Corina.. it's so encouraging when people write comments like that :-) We've always had a lot of books... but we've been fortunate enough to have the space for bookcases (or found corners for them when we didn't). When I was growing up as one of four children, my parents had about 5,000 books so we haven't yet reached those heights. My friend with six children (mostly young) has about as many as we do... it can be possible ;-)
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