When we lived in the UK, my least favourite month of the year was November. After the clock change at the end of October, the evenings were dark early, and it seemed to me that the daytimes were often grey and dreary too. November sometimes dragged on and on...
That's rather how I feel about September in Cyprus, although for rather different reasons. Somehow, with schools starting a new year, and shorter days, I feel as if it should be cooler. September is an autumn month, and despite nearly twenty-eight years in Cyprus, it feels wrong that September here is still an extension of summer.
I don't like hot weather. I am often out of Cyprus for some or all of August - as happened this year so I miss the worst of the heat and humidity. When I arrived back at the start of the last week of August, it wasn't as hot as I expected, nor as humid. We were using air conditioning with our computers, and for an hour or two at night. I thought perhaps I'd escaped the worst of it.
Then September started, and the humidity returned. There weren't any heatwaves - and on September 3rd I resumed early morning walks with my friend Sheila. I took it slowly; I didn't manage the full 4km the first couple of times, and had to take a couple of breaks to sit down. But it was nice to be out. The Salt Lake was completely dry after over three months with no rain.
Other activities resumed, too - games with our local friends, and some online with family in the UK.
It was nice to chat to our son and daughter-in-law but I find the whole process of playing online a bit tedious. We can't use a larger board for four players, and we can't even choose our own colours. And I kept losing track of what was going on.
I worked on photos, and a bit of writing, and did some knitting. I was still making salads for our main meals until the middle of the month. Richard went sailing more than once, and Lady Jane slept a lot.
I had all kinds of ideas for blogging - perhaps updating my recipe blog more often, as I take a lot of photos of food I prepare. Perhaps writing more short posts on this blog. But September dragged on... and on. I know it's a special month for many people: in our family there are four September birthdays and two anniversaries. But there was no sign of summer ending here. Temperatures remained in the 30s during the daytime, the 20s overnight. And no rain.
We also had a lot of unwelcome visitors: tiny ants. Regularly in the dry food which Jane leaves in her bowl. So almost every day I was tipping it into a sieve, shaking it over the sink, and then moving it to another bowl. If we left any crumbs on the dining room table or kitchen work surface, ants would appear in their hundreds. Then we found them in the bathroom. They are supposed to be repelled by peppermint... but we found them crawling around our toothbrushes.
They are supposed to be repelled by lemon, too, so I bought some lemon-scented kitchen wipes and used them extensively... and the ants ran over the scented areas. We had to throw out half a loaf of bread that was infested with ants despite being in a sealed bag. And Richard had a nasty allergic reaction when an ant bit the inside of his mouth. That was from eating a kind of biscuit that was also supposedly sealed in a small metallic bag.
I used large amounts of 'cleankill' (formerly 'biokill') which is supposedly harmless to mammals and effective against insects for up to a month. Its effectiveness against these ants lasted about 24 hours. We bought ant bait trap things... and watched them march around, avoiding the traps. I mopped the floors several times a week with diluted vinegar, another smell that is supposed to deter ants. The floors look cleaner than usual, but the ants still appear. Apparently out of nowhere. I almost begin to believe in spontaneous generation...
At the end of the month, we were still using air conditioning for an hour at night, and sleeping with just a sheet over us. We were still wearing shorts and tee shirts in the daytime, running ceiling fans overnight and in the daytime in any rooms we were using. I was watering the plants twice a week, using the watering can rather than the hose as there's a serious water shortage.
And Lady Jane was still sleeping a lot...
I bought two new cushions for my study a few months ago. Jane decided that one of them is for her, and the other for me. She has never yet sat on the one she allocated to me, but often claims total possession of hers.
And now it's October. I didn't think of anything to write about for this blog in September, and I couldn't decide what to put on my recipe blog, so that didn't happen either. In fact, I'm not entirely sure whether I achieved anything much last month...
On three evenings each week we usually go out for a walk, a couple of times just locally to Salina Park. Before the summer it was closed at 8pm each day, but since about June it's been open until 10pm. It's not a huge park, but surprisingly well used. There are usually families there with small children around 8pm, playing in the playground, and often people sitting outside the cafe, which is also open until late. The water feature is quite attractive in the evening.
On October 2nd, we were taken out to the Lebanese restaurant for a meze with some friends who are visiting. As ever, meze for two is plenty for four people (and we didn't finish everything).
On October 3rd, I had an appointment at Immigration to update my yellow slip (my residence permit) into an ID card. This will be a lot more convenient, as it will fit in my purse. The yellow slip is an A4 piece of paper which I have had to carry every time I travel, and it's looking a bit the worse for wear.
The appointment system at Immigration is much better than it used to be. I had to email to ask for it, and was given an appointment just ten days later. I discovered at the last minute that I was supposed to print and fill in a form, which I started to do but had not completed. I assumed we would have to wait, as in previous appointments. I didn't know what documents might be needed, so I had a folder with my yellow slip, the house deeds, bank statements and more.
We arrived five minutes early, and went straight in. The lady whom we thought was the receptionist dealt with everything. All I had to do was show my passport and yellow slip, and hand over the partly filled-in form. The lady on the desk then printed a new one and told me to sign that. I don't like signing things with nothing filled in, but I wasn't going to argue at this stage. Then they took a photo of me, and I had to give a couple of fingerprints. I have very faint fingerprints, and it looked as though the system wasn't going to take one of them at all, but eventually it did.
The whole 'interview' lasted about five minutes, and we were on our way out less than ten minutes after we had arrived. My ID card, I was told, should arrive in the mail at some point.
On October 4th we played what we used to call 'Settlers by Skype', with our son and daughter-in-law in the UK. It's now over a combination of Zoom and Google Meet. Setting up and using a real game here works much better than the official online version.
In the evening we took part in my extended family's monthly Zoom get-together - something that was cancelled in September, as nobody else could make it.
On October 5th, our local friends were here for a game (and a film for their teenage daughters) followed by our usual shared meal.
It was only five days into the month, and felt like I had done more in those five days than I had in the whole of September. And then I looked at the ten-day forecast online:
Maximum daytime temperatures under 30 degrees! Early morning lows of under 20 degrees! At last, I thought, maybe we're heading out of summer. We still needed ceiling fans, but stopped using air conditioning altogether. On Wednesday morning - yesterday - I woke briefly at about 3am hearing something I couldn't instantly recognise... and realised that it was rain. Heavy enough to wake me. I went straight back to sleep, but in the morning when I went to the fruitaria I saw puddles everywhere:
The photo doesn't begin to do it justice, and there were plenty of other puddles which I didn't photograph. Our car looked a lot cleaner, too. Last night we felt chilly for the first time with just a sheet, so this morning we got out our thin (4.5 tog) duvet and put it in a cover.
When I walked early this morning with Sheila, we were chatting about how nice it is to have had some rain at last. Then she noticed a gorgeous rainbow so we stopped to take photos.
We wondered where it was raining...
Then we felt a few raindrops. We realised that, while we appreciate the rain (and the rainbow) very much, we don't particularly like being out in rain in tee shirts and shorts. So we took shelter under some trees, and then for a few minutes in the lobby of a building that was open. It didn't last long and we soon dried out.
There was enough rain on Wednesday morning that the Salt Lake had retained some, although it's not all that clear from this photo:
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