Preparations for the Cyprus Summer

I have written several times before about our preparation for Cyprus summers, and here I am again, on the same topic.  After more than quarter of a century living here, we're used to it; the only slight variation is whether it starts to feel too hot towards the end of May, or some time in June. And even that's somewhat predictable; there's often a burst of heat in the last week of May, making us rush to clean the air conditioners, only to find that we don't actually need them until mid or even late June.

This year is a little different from previous years in that our guest apartment - the flat comprising the ground floor of our house - is pretty much booked up for the whole summer. We don't rent it out, we offer it to family, friends, friends-of-friends and other contacts needing a bit of rest and relaxation. And if they're coming from the UK or similar climes, they're likely to need a bit of air conditioning even if we're still coping without.

So towards the end of May, when there was a short gap between guests, we cleaned all the air conditioners in the guest flat. It's something we do every year before switching them on: we've done it so often that we can clean all five in about fifteen minutes.  The filters have to be removed, washed and sprayed with anti-bacterial spray that's now widely available at many shops. The units themselves also have to be sprayed, after removing any obvious dust. And then they have to be run, as cold as possible, for about fifteen minutes so that the spray evaporates. 

We had expected to do the seven units in our part of the house a few days later, but - as happens so often - the temperatures reduced again in early June, and we were fine with just the ceiling fans. Just as well, really, since we did quite a bit of entertaining in the first week or so of the month, with three different sets of friends for meals on three occasions in the course of one week.  

We had abandoned our thin duvet in favour of just the duvet cover at the end of May, but I didn't wash the duvets - even the thick one - until mid-June, by which time I was sure we wouldn't need either of them again until the autumn. I used to have trouble squashing them into the closet where they're stored in the summer, but a year or two ago we bought some useful air-tight packaging which keeps them dust-free and easy to find when needed.

Last Saturday I switched us from a duvet cover to just a single sheet; it often gets kicked off during the night, but with a cat who likes to sleep on the bed in the daytime, I prefer to have the under-sheet covered.

Washing each duvet takes up the whole of our washing machine, so I can only do one at a time.  Then I leave each one for at least a day on the line outside, to ensure it's completely dry. 

So it was a week later that I embarked on the annual curtain-wash. The curtains we bought when we moved here seventeen years ago are still in great condition. As promised by the people who made them for us, they wash very well and don't seem to fade.  But there are quite a few of them, as well as the ones I made for our dining room nearly two-and-a-half years ago. 

Taking them down is easier than it used to be, as we no longer use pull-cords - they started deteriorating about six years ago, and although we did manage to replace one or two, it wasn't easy to find replacements, and a real hassle to put in place. 

Since by around 20th June the weather is fairly hot but not too humid, curtains dry extremely quickly. So one one day I ran the washing machine at least three times, with three or four full-sized curtains in each.  By the time a two-hour washing cycle had finished, the previous curtains were dry and ready to re-hang. 

It's not a difficult task - the washing machine does all the work! - but I have to be in the right frame of mind. And with the windows bare of curtains, I saw how grubby some of them were, and gave them a good clean. 

Well worth doing and I was pleased with the result when everything was finished, but rather tired, too. 

June has a series of birthdays, and the final writers' group meeting of the season (followed by lunch). To our surprise, it rained on June 19th, heavily enough that there were still a few puddles in the street the following morning when I went out for a walk with my friend Sheila:

It was the last walk until at least mid-September. Sometimes we keep going until the temperature is 25C or more by 6am, but that hadn't happened; however Sheila and most of her family were going away for ten days, and we never walk in July or August. 

So I remembered to take a picture of the Salt Lake, still looking fairly full (helped by the previous day's rain) and even with some flamingoes in the distance, although they can't be seen on this photo: 

It did get a bit warmer within a couple of days, although I do try to take a short walk in the neighbourhood most mornings, staying in the shade as far as possible. 

It still wasn't extremely hot in the daytime, but last Friday we decided to clean the air conditioners in our part of the house.  The same system worked well: Richard went up the ladder and removed the filters, which I then cleaned in the bathroom, while he went to the next air conditioner: 

We had bought a bottle of spray last summer, but I was pretty sure we were going to use it all up and need more. So we bought another bottle a few weeks ago, in a brand we hadn't previously seen - but they all seem to work well. Sure enough, last year's spray ran out when we still had three units to clean. The new one seemed to spray more evenly, and had a surprising scent of coconut, which is considerably less unpleasant than some we have used. 

In the evening, our current guest flat visitors decided to treat us to a meal at a taverna in Kourium, and then this year's Shakespeare production, 'Taming of the Shrew'. 

We hadn't been to one of the Shakespeare plays for years - not for over a decade, apparently. The last reference I can find was to 'Merchant of Venice', which we saw in June 2010. 

We hadn't previously seen 'Taming of the Shew'. I knew the general outline, of course, but was glad of the complementary programme which gave an outline of the plot, including the names of the significant characters. It's quite a confusing play, with people masquerading as others (and some of the male characters were played by women) so it was useful to have a reference. 

It was very well done - a controversial play, of course, but with some humour, and irony, and - as ever - excellent costumes and setting. 

We didn't get home until about 11.30pm which is well past my preferred bedtime, so it's a good thing I wasn't planning to walk with Sheila on the Saturday, as I didn't wake up until nearly 6.45am. 

And still, it isn't nearly as hot as it can be. I have the air conditioning on in my study right now, but that's because my thermometer was showing 29 degrees - which was the outside 'shade' temperature - and computers don't do so well in temperatures above 28. I don't either. We run our a/cs at 28 degrees (82F, for anyone who still thinks in Fahrenheit) which is relatively efficient, and cools us down sufficiently to be comfortable. 

As ever, the cats treat summer quite differently. Jane likes it, and pointedly leaves any room where air conditioning is running. Alex, by contrast, likes to find the coolest places he can. And if he can't find any room with a/c, he tries places that look most uncomfortable to me:

Of course that's not all we do to prepare for summer. I've already stewed and frozen a couple of crates of soft fruit - peaches and apricots - which we're only able to get here during the warmer months. I'm still making hot meals most evenings, and using the oven, although - once again - I plan to stop using the oven during July and August, and focus mainly on different kinds of salad for our meals. 

I've also sprayed and covered nasty crawling insects (I don't even like to use their name) which come in from outside or up the drains, so that Richard can dispose of them. It was about one per day for the first couple of weeks of the month, thankfully fewer in the past few days. Spraying possible entry-points with 'biokill' does seem to make a difference.

Today we had to have a new air conditioning unit installed in one of the guest flat bedrooms. A couple of days ago our current visitors told us they'd been awoken by the old air conditioner making a loud noise, then ejecting pieces of ice! Not something we - or any of our guests - had experienced previously. It was a unit that was, probably, close to twenty years old, and clear that the compressor had given up.  A new one should not only be more effective, but more efficient too in electricity usage. And it's likely to get a lot of use this summer, with so many visitors expected.

For anyone wondering if anything has changed over the years, or who wants to read even more on the same topic, here's what I wrote about summer in 2012; here's my post about summer approaching in 2014; here's one about preparing for summer in 2016; here's another in 2020; and here's one in summer 2022 which is more about what we were doing during summer, rather than as it approached. They're not the only ones, either... but more than enough, I hope, for anyone bored enough to want to read them.