Life racing by in Cyprus once more

It's strange how, sometimes, life seems to go by quite slowly. The winter seemed endless, although it was only a couple of months .I know that the summer is likely to drag too. But now that spring is here, a couple of weeks appear - if it's not too much of a cliché - to have flown by. I had to look on my calendar, and then my camera to see what we'd done. 

There were the usual two public holidays on March 25th (Greek National Day) and April 1st. Since both those dates fell on a Sunday this year, there wasn't any obvious effect on the general public. Shops and businesses were closed anyway. We don't even live near any schools or the parade route any more, so we weren't awakened early by drum beats and whistles, as we were in our old house.

Still, I did go to a church service with my friends a couple of weeks ago, and then popped to the PO Box to collect mail. We happened to be there just as one of the parades was starting around St Lazarus Church, so we paused for a moment to watch: 

We seem to have spent a lot of time with different friends, too. We often see friends several times per week, but not, in general, quite so many different ones. Very unusually we were treated to meals out three times in two weeks, each by different people. All meze meals, but at three different places. One was a fairly newly-opened Syrian restaurant, which was rather up-market and very pleasant. One was at our favourite local taverna, and the third was on a rooftop restaurant near St Lazarus Church, which offered vegetarian meze. It included this rather delicious feta/tomato/onion dish:

And also this (melted cheese on sliced aubergine): 

However, my camera is devoid of pictures of anything much else. 

Possibly this is because our world has been rather taken up by forthcoming changes in Richard's office; for various reasons, almost everyone else will be leaving in the summer. So, with rising costs (and signifcantly reduced funding from the US) it was deemed to be time to close the office. He will be continuing some of the production work for at least another year or two, probably more, but will be doing so from the 'studio' in our guest flat. 

So although he is still officially on sabbatical, his time and energy has been taken up in beginning to dismantle some of the current office furniture and equipment, moving it here, and setting up a new production office in the studio. This has meant that the studio - which had become a general dumping ground for sailing and other equipment - has had to be cleared out... and our guest flat is currently in chaos. I haven't been much involved in the physical work, but somehow this, and related discussions, have taken up a huge amount of emotional energy.