Spring, Lent, and Yellow Month in Cyprus

It happens around this time every year in Cyprus. The heating doesn't come on in the evenings, as the house is already warm enough. The days get longer, the sun shines with more regularity, and yellow weeds - often quite attractive weeds - appear in abundance on waste ground, like these ones pushing their way over the path on the Salt Lake trail:

Citrus trees are fruiting too. The one thing I occasionally miss about our old house is the fruit that seemed so unusual to pick at first, then commonplace. But our local friends have a lemon tree that's prolific this year, and have been generous in passing bags of lemons to us. I asked if we could have a few earlier in the week, realising that Shrove Tuesday was coming up, and we Brits traditionally eat pancakes with lemon and sugar.  But I agreed that I could use more than a few...

Easter is an important festival in the Christian Church, and also culturally in Cyprus where the majority of the population are Greek Orthodox, albeit in name only in many cases. In most years, there are two Easters, their dates calculated by different methods. But this year, as happens from time to time, both the Western and the Eastern Easter will be on the same Sunday in the middle of April.

That means that Lent - the forty-day run-up to Easter - should have started at the same time too, one would think. But that's not the case. In our Western tradition, the last day before Lent is Shrove Tuesday, although it's more often known as Pancake Day by the secular majority.  Traditionally one was supposed to use up products such as eggs and sugar prior to a simpler, vegetarian or sugar-free lifestyle during the days of Lent, in preparation for Easter.  Shrove Tuesday was four days ago, and yes, I made some pancake mixture, which Richard cooked after we had our evening meal:

My recipe makes eight pancakes, which was fine when there were four of us living here, or indeed when there were three of us, as we could make them bigger or one of our number would eat more than two.  But this time we decided to put half the mixture in the fridge for the following day.

Back to the difference in Lent traditions, the Eastern church, at least in this country, begins five days before Shrove Tuesday, with 'Fat Thursday', or Tsiknopempti, as it's called here. It's the day when the faithful are supposed to use up all the meat in their household, with barbecues or feasts for the family; Lent as a fasting season was taken quite seriously until relatively recently.

When we first moved here, there wasn't much meat available during Lent, and we were told that we should be certain not to have barbecues or eat any kind of meat outside during the Eastern Lent period. Nowadays there's just as much meat available now as at any other time of year, and Cypriots openly cook and eat meat right through the Lenten period. There are some 'fasting' foods available: more vegan cheese than can normally be found, and a wide range of halva.  Tsiknopempti is celebrated by going out and buying more meat to feast on.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday last weekend were then the Carnival weekend in the Eastern tradition. There are floats and parades along the sea front, with children (and adults!) dressing up in costumes. The word 'Carnival' originally referred to the removal of meat, but that seems to have been forgotten. Carnival in Cyprus is safe and lively, not the dangerous brawls one sometimes hears about in other European countries, but it's too loud and crowded for me, and I keep away.

Monday was then 'Green Monday' (also known as Clean Monday, and the first day of Eastern Lent) which is a public holiday in Cyprus. It's roughly equivalent to the Western Ash Wednesday (the day after Shrove Tuesday) and in theory should be when people cast off sinful attitudes, forgive anyone they're harbouring grudges against, and ensure there are no tempting delicacies in the house.

In practice, at least in Cyprus,  many people spend the morning spring-cleaning their houses, then go out with their families and friends on a picnic, after which they fly kites.  Again, when we first moved here, we were told that on Green Monday we must make certain not to take any meat on a picnic as it would offend the Greek Orthodox.  Nowadays many Cypriots fire up their barbecues again with meat for their Green Monday picnics.

Back to our leftover pancake mixture.

On Wednesday, neither of us felt hungry after our evening meal, so the mixture remained in the fridge.

On Thursday, we decided to have our last pancakes after lunch. So Richard started cooking them...

.. and suddenly the handle sheared off the pan!  It's a heavy-based pan which I've used for omelettes regularly, and there was no hint that it was breaking. Happily the pancake was fine, but clearly, it wasn't possible to repair the pan safely:

So he finished cooking the pancakes in a smaller frying pan, and they were very good.

I knew we had to go to a supermarket that afternoon, and was undecided between Metro and Lidl.... we hadn't been to either since before Christmas, as I do most shopping locally, but we needed various things that couldn't easily be found locally.

I looked through the Lidl advertising brochure that arrives weekly, and discovered that they had a special offer on heavy-based frying pans, in the size we needed.  So that determined which supermarket we would visit!  We weren't too keen on Lidl when it first appeared in Cyprus some years ago, as there is a very limited range of regular items, but we now know what's good value, and sometimes the special offers are extremely good.

So we went to Lidl, and now have a new 24cm frying pan:

We used exactly one of our donated lemons with our pancakes. So this morning I processed the rest, freezing another litre with some peel for lemonade in the late summer or autumn when lemons are no longer available, and making more lemon cubes that can be used easily in drinks or food where a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice are called for. 

The end of Lent

Given to us in Advent, our poinsettia, now outside my study, is still thriving at the end of Lent:

We don't usually do a whole lot during Lent, other than (if we remember) eating pancakes on Shrove Tuesday and hot cross buns on Good Friday.

But at the end of February, while chatting over the dinner table about food in general and the cost of groceries, Richard made an idle comment that perhaps we could try giving up meat for Lent. Since I have decidedly vegetarian leanings I thought this was a great idea, and Tim said that in Anglican tradition, Sundays (and other feast days) are excluded from Lenten fasts, so perhaps we could stop eating meat for six days a week only...

As it happened, in the first week of Lent we had friends staying, one of whom is a vegetarian anyway. So it made a good excuse for me to experiment with a few new recipes, as well as making some old favourites such as Spanokopitta, or vegetable and nut cobbler.

It doesn't help that Richard and Tim are both dairy-free; cow's milk products cause their ears to block up. Goat and sheep cheese are fine in moderation - perhaps once or twice per week - but it meant that I had to experiment with other forms of protein, primarily beans and lentils. Some of the things we ate were pretty good; others less successful, although I don't think anything was inedible.

It's been interesting, but although I haven't felt any cravings or inclinations to eat meat for the past six weeks, Richard definitely has. I'm convinced that some people actually need meat for their metabolism and general health, and he seems to be one of them. So we'll be back eating meat four or five times per week as of tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Daniel and some of his colleagues in the UK were producing a series of mini videos which they released during Lent; one per week at first, and then several this past week. They are in the form of a modern video blog, taking the events leading up to Easter as if happening in the 21st century, from the point of view of the apostle Matthew.  This is the trailer for the whole series:

It took me a little while to get used to the style, but I've liked it very much. It's quite thought-provoking, and certainly helps to understand a little better what it might have been like to be one of the first disciples.

Links to the whole series can be found (with the most recent at the top) at the Matt's Blog, or the related Facebook page.

When we first moved to Cyprus, Lent was quite a big thing: the Greek Orthodox (who are the majority in this country) are supposed to fast from meat and various other foods during Lent. But even in fifteen years, secularism is growing stronger, and there seem to be fewer and fewer who take any notice of Lent.

Well, other than some teenagers and young adults, presumably bored and unemployed, who collect wooden items from around their neighbourhoods - not always with permission - and have bonfires each evening, usually culminating with a huge one on Easter Saturday. Here's a site of an unofficial bonfire site near where our friends live:

In recent years these have become more competitive, and are often accompanied by home-made firecrackers, which are extremely dangerous as well as illegal. Every year there is an accident of some kind; last night our friends' neighbour, a young man in his twenties, was rushed to hospital after a firecracker exploded in his hand. The police were involved, and the bonfire site cleared, later on; but how terrible for the young man and his family.

Poinsettia in Cyprus

Once again, our Christmas poinsettia is still thriving despite the fact that Lent begins (for Protestants) tomorrow, and (for the Orthodox) yesterday.

Here's how it looked when we first brought it home in December:


Each year since we've been in this house we've been given or bought a poinsettia shortly before Christmas. I don't know what made us put it on a table in front of a window in the living room the first time. We're not good with house plants in general, but I suppose I saw a space and plonked it down. And we didn't think of a better place, so there it stayed... and stayed... and, to our amazement, was still looking attractive in March.

So, having found what is apparently the ideal spot for Cyprus poinsettias, we've used exactly the same place each year.

Here's how the current one looked about a month ago:


And here's now it looks now:


The newer leaves are coming in green, and some of the red leaves have curled up and dropped off. It's decidedly past its brightest and best. But still an attractive plant, which I hope will last at least until the summer, based on previous experience.

Green Monday picnic and kite-flying attempts

Today is the first day of Lent in the Protestant/Western church. Yesterday was Shrove Tuesday, when many of us made and ate pancakes - traditional for the last day before Lent; historically it was to use up sugar, eggs etc from the household store, preparatory to Lenten fasting.

However, Lenten fasting doesn't seem to happen much in the Western world - at most people might give up chocolate, or perhaps computer games. Not flour and eggs.

This year, unusually, Western and Eastern Easters fall on the same date: April 4th. So that means that Lent starts the same week for us all. In the Eastern calendar, however, it's counted a little differently so that Lent actually began on Monday this week, after the Carnival weekend (where children dress up and go on parades... although traditionally it was the time to eat up the household meat, again prior to fasting.)

On Green Monday in Cyprus, people - I'm told - clean their houses from top to bottom (it's also sometimes known as 'Clean Monday') and then go out on picnics with their families and friends, and the children fly kites. Even if they're not fasting or cutting out meat during Lent (increasingly rare, even here) they don't eat meat on Green Monday.

We don't usually do anything to mark the date; however, Green Monday is a public holiday, so Richard planned to spend his day working on King Malu. But on Sunday we had text messages from a friend - the wife of one of his colleagues - suggesting we might get together for a picnic on the Monday. Since the weather was good, and it sounded like a good idea to get out and socialise for an hour or two, we said we'd like to do that. We were going to go somewhere near the Salt Lake, but in the event it was totally packed with Cypriot picnickers, even at 12.30 (which is earlier than they usually eat lunch).

So our friends suggested we go up to the Aradippou picnic site. The top area with benches and tables was apparently also full of people having picnics already, so they found a pleasant spot part-way up the hill.

They had brought some kites. During and after our lunch, the various children attempted to fly them:


- but without any success. Richard, who watches wind speeds and other weather conditions closely since learning to sail, said that there wasn't enough wind. There were occasional gusts and the kites appeared to bob about for a few seconds, only to come crashing down.


Still, the children had fun in the attempt, and in playing together for an hour or so, and the adults enjoyed the fresh air and catching up with each other.

You can see from the photos how very green Cyprus has become with the heavy downpours of rain we've had in the past few months. It really was a lovely day, too. Yesterday was warm as well, probably about 22C; today's a bit cooler and has been rather grey, though still nothing like as cold as it was earlier in the month.

Green Monday and a walk by the Salt Lake

Yesterday was a public holiday in Cyprus. Yet another one! This time it was for Green Monday (also known as Clean Monday), the first day of Lent for the Greek Orthodox and other Eastern churches. Eastern Easter is only a week after Western Easter this year, so their Lent begins the week after the Western Lent - except that it begins on the Monday, not the Wednesday.

According to Steve, a Greek Orthodox friend in South Africa, Clean Monday is a day for forgiveness. However, I have not come across that tradition in Cyprus. This is a country where over 90% of people call themselves Orthodox... However, as a friend in Paphos explains, Green Monday is when everyone goes out on a picnic. They don't eat any meat, and the children fly kites. I did hear, some years ago, that people traditionally clean the house from top to bottom before the picnic, and I did notice some neighbours extensively cleaning their patio in the morning. But the main focus here is the picnic, even when - as happened yesterday - there's not much sunshine, and a distinct chill in the air.

I didn't go on a picnic. I've only done that once in the eleven years we've lived in Cyprus. However, in the afternoon I did join a friend for a walk around part of the Salt Lake. She hadn't done that before, and I hadn't been for a couple of months. we were both amazed at the abundance of the wild flowers:


I haven't seen such an amazing display of wild flowers in many years. The large amounts of rain we had in February are no doubt responsible for their size and splendour.


Most of them are yellow - as I've said in previous years, March is sometimes known as 'yellow month' in Cyprus. There were many other colours too, however.


The Salt Lake was looking pretty good, too. More water than I've seen in a while, although it will probably go down if the sun comes out in the coming weeks.


It might have been on the chilly side for a picnic - although evidently most people didn't agree. We saw several families who had been picnicking and kite-flying in the Salt Lake Park - but it was, from my perspective, a perfect day to go for a walk. There was enough chill in the air that I didn't feel too warm, and there was no sun to give me a headache.

Lenten fast food in Cyprus...?

In our Protestant tradition, we don't tend to fast during Lent. Some people might give up something for the season - chocolate, perhaps, or alcohol - but it's not expected.

However, for the Greek Orthodox Christians, who dominate Cyprus, fasting is a fairly regulated expectation. The official details can be found in this page about the fasting rules of the Orthodox Church.

In a nutshell - as we were told when we first came here, over ten years ago - they don't eat any meat or fish (other than shellfish) during Lent; they don't drink any wine, except on Sundays during Lent; and they don't have any dairy products.

The point of fasting is to lead to a deeper spiritual experience of God, and as preparation for Easter. It's to remind us of Jesus in the wilderness, too, and - perhaps - to give away a little more money to the poor.

In other words, whether or not one is legalistic about it, the principle is to abstain from something one usually enjoys, and focus more on God.

All well and good.

And yes, I know Easter in the Western world was last Sunday, but in the Eastern church it's another month away. So they've had just three weeks of Lent, so far.

Many of the Cypriots are only nominally Greek Orthodox, and take little notice of the Lenten fast. We see them buying meat in the supermarkets, and while they don't tend to barbecue during Lent, we can certainly smell meaty scents of cooking, as usual. That's fine - fasting, Jesus told us, is to be done secretly and according to one's conviction.

But in recent years, we've noticed a much more disturbing trend. It started with McDonald's producing a new meal which they called 'McLent' - basically a veggie burger. It didn't take long for other fast-food places to catch onto the idea.

Last year I wrote a post about Lenten 'fast food' advertising. I thought it was a one-off.

Not so. This week, we have had THREE pieces of junk mail advertising - with green background - their special Lenten fasting offers.

Firstly there's Pizza Hut. They're advertising their potato wedges, meat-free pasta sauces, and salads. They still only seem to have one veggie pizza but it has no cheese topping during Lent:


Then there's Everest, offering veggie burgers, veggie sandwiches, and various salads:


Then finally, the one that really makes me cringe: KFC, famous for their chicken, offers veggie burgers, veggie twisters, salads, and spring rolls. Plus special deals - any of the above with fries or onion rings and a fizzy drink:


I'm not a fan of fast food at the best of times. But all this seems so sad - it's encouraging people to stick to the letter of the law, while completely ignoring the spirit of it. I can only assume KFC's campaign last year was successful, since they're repeating it, with even more offers this year.


(I expect these places are also rather annoyed that in Greek, the word for 'fast' meaning 'rapid' (as in 'fast food') bears no relation to the word for 'fast' meaning 'giving something up'. If England were a Greek Orthodox country, they would have such fun making bad puns on the two words!)

It's Lent not Advent, but...

It's strange, really, how we associate certain foods with particular seasons of the year. It differs from country to country, too, of course. I don't think of myself as much of a traditionalist, yet we eat turkey on Christmas Day, and I make my Christmas cake, Christmas pudding and mince pies during November and December. We eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, and hot cross buns on Good Friday, and extra chocolate at Easter...

Most years, I make too much mincemeat. Or, more to the point, as my supply gets low I eke it out by adding extra dried fruit, or grated apple. I don't want to run out before Christmas... so I end up with a couple of hundred grams of mincemeat left over, which sits in the fridge for the next ten or eleven months.

Worse still, by the time the following December rolls around, the leftover mincemeat has usually got rather dried up and crystalline, and looks so sad next to my newly-made batch that I quietly throw it away.

As usual, I had leftover mincemeat from Christmas 2007. It sat in the fridge. Then Daniel came home for his furlough, and mentioned that he had only eaten ONE mince pie in the past few months. They're not generally made on the Doulos. To make even one per person, there would have to be 350 of them, and who can manage just one mince pie? (Well, apparently Daniel can. But that's because he popped into a British evening in December for a few minutes before being on duty. And they happened to be serving mince pies).

So I decided to overcome my strange reluctance to make mince pies when it isn't Advent. I used up all the mincemeat. I eked it out a little with extra dried fruit... but that's because I had made too much pastry. Then I had to roll the pastry thinner and thinner to accommodate the last of the mincemeat.

But.. I used it all up. And made 35 mince pies on Wednesday.


There aren't 35 left now, but there are still quite a few. More than I had expected. Perhaps because, bizarrely, they just don't taste the same when it's Lent rather than Advent.

Shrove Tuesday in Cyprus

Easter is a confusing season in Cyprus. Most years, there are two Easters here. This is because while the Western Protestant Church uses the Gregorian calendar, the Eastern Orthodox Church uses the Julian calendar. If you want to know what that means in terms of Easter dates, here's a page to calculate Easter dates which can tell you all you ever wanted to know, and a great deal more, about why Easter appears to be on a random Sunday - or two Sundays - each year.

This year, the Protestant/Western Easter falls very early, on March 23rd. That means that Lent - the forty days prior to Palm Sunday, which is the week before Easter - begins tomorrow. Thus today is Shrove Tuesday, when traditionally people used up their eggs and sugar and so on, prior to fasting - or at least cutting out several foods - during Lent. In the Western world, some people try to give up one thing during Lent, but few people fast. However the tradition of cooking pancakes on Shrove Tuesday remains in the UK... and even more strongly with Brits abroad.

I had actually forgotten that today was 'pancake day' until I arrived at the Mother and Toddler group where I help in the kitchen, and discovered the leader with a large bowl of pancake mixture, and three frying pans, preparing to make pancakes for all the children and mothers. And helpers. Very nice they were, too!

Because I didn't want the family to miss out, I made some mixture myself this afternoon. So this evening we had some traditional pancakes for our dessert, with lemon juice and sugar. And, in my case, also some Greek yogurt, since this is Cyprus. Or, in Richard and Tim's cases, one of their pancakes was with chocolate sauce...

The Greek Orthodox Easter, which is a major public holiday in Cyprus, falls five weeks later than the Western Easter. That's the furthest apart that they ever get. So when we celebrate Easter, they will be just a couple of weeks into Lent. When we first moved here, fasting (or, at least, cutting out meat) was a big thing to Cypriots. In ten years, it seems to have decreased, although people still don't barbecue outside during Lent.

Moreover, they don't have the equivalent of Shrove Tuesday. They count the days differently, and start their Lent with 'Green Monday' which is another public holiday. People clean their houses then go on picnics. The weekend before Green Monday is carnival weekend, when the children dress up and have balloons, and there are concerts on the sea front.

It's all a big mixture of sacred and secular. I quite like celebrating Easter twice. In the Protestant Churches, we don't ignore the Orthodox Easter, as so many of those visiting have Orthodox relatives.

But I do wonder whether the shops will manage to get any Easter eggs before March 23rd...

Fasting on fast food...?

It's Lent. Traditionally Christians, and particularly those of the Greek Orthodox faith, fast during the six weeks preceding Easter. It's a reminder of Jesus fasting in the wilderness, I suppose. Not that people fast completely; some give up coffee, or sweets. The Greek Orthodox people are supposed to give up meat and fish (although, shellfish and octopus are allowed, for some reason). Many of them don't in Cyprus, but there are some who do, and we try to respect this. We don't have barbecues during Lent, for instance.

The point of fasting, it seems to me, is to spend time in prayer when one would otherwise be eating, and perhaps to give away the money one would otherwise have spent on a luxury item. Fasting reminds us that others are less fortunate in many parts of the world, and that we can do without many items we take for granted. I don't do it myself, in general, but admire those who do.

So I was startled this week to receive a piece of junk-mail in our letter box (we get lots of junk mail, but I usually glance through it quickly before throwing it out) advertising a new range of vegetarian products at a local fast-food place. Yes, I can see that if people are taking fasting seriously then they might feel they have to grab a veggie-burger at McDonald's on the way to a meeting when they were running late, and in general - having one vegetarian son, and preferring veggie food myself on the whole - I'm glad that supermarkets, restaurants and fast-food places in Cyprus are beginning to notice the need for non-meat products.

But the bizarre thing about this is that the fast-food place in question is... KFC! Yes, Kentucky Fried Chicken, as it was known until a few years ago. Famous for its ultra-high-fat spicy coatings with, hopefully, a little chicken inside. KFC is not somewhere I would ever take a vegeterian, nor somewhere I would look for veggie food.

But, here's the advert:


The salad looks pretty good, but then what's the point of buying salad at a fast-food place?! We'll stick to our local 'Souvlaki Express' on the occasions (about once a month) when we eat fast food... and they already do a vegetarian option, with halloumi rather than meat. Which, I suppose, is just as bizarre as KFC doing veggie dishes, since souvlaki means 'little pieces of meat'.

Oh, and if you want a large quantity of fast food during your fast, you can even try the 'fasting bucket'...

Green Monday and a Power Cut

Today is the first day of Lent in the Greek Orthodox Church.

This year, unusually, Western and Eastern Easter fall on the same day (April 8th) so this week is the start of Lent for us all - however we have two days less in the Western/Protestant church since of course Shrove Tuesday is tomorrow, and Ash Wednesday, the day after, is the first day of Western Lent. Perhaps it's due to different methods of counting 40 days, but it seems odd to me that there would be two days' difference.

In theory, the Greek Orthodox Christians fast from meat during Lent. In practise, in Cyprus, most of them take little or no notice of this, although some do cut out meat during Holy Week (ie the week before Easter). When we first came to Cyprus, we were careful not to have a barbecue during Lent, not wishing to offend any of our neighbours. Eight years later, there is meat available everywhere, and few vegetarian options in restaurants.

I only wish some of them would think of fasting from cigarettes, since smoke is also around almost everywhere, including restaurants and public buildings. At best there's a small no-smoking area, but as it's usually in the same room as smoking, it hardly makes any difference. At least they've made supermarkets and banks non-smoking, as well as the airport, so that's a start.

Many of the Cypriots go on picnics today, which is known as Green Monday, and is a public holiday. The roads are usually packed with people out for the day. Richard took the day off but we haven't done much.

At 12.30, just before lunch, my computer suddenly switched itself off and we realised we had a power cut. These happen occasionally, not usually lasting for very long. Not a huge problem in the middle of the day. I was pleased that the washing machine had finished, as had the breadmaker, so I could hang out the laundry and we could eat the warm bread. We have a kettle that works on the gas hob, so we could make coffee after lunch - and as it's winter, the house isn't particularly hot so we didn't worry over-much about the fridge.

The power cut lasted two hours. By the end of it we were realising just how much we rely on electricity! Water pressure was poor - it's usually pumped electronically. The heating, although powered with gas, is also pumped by electricity and the timers are electric. The hob on the stove-top is gas, but the oven is electric - as is, of course, the regular kettle, the microwave, the steamer, the juice extractor, the dishwasher...

Perhaps the electricians were all out on picnics, with their mobile phones switched off. Two hours did seem a long time to be without electricity, and it was clearly a fairly widespread problem as someone who had popped into Richard's office (about a mile away) said there was a power cut there too. Meaning he had to go and start all the computers up again once the electricity was back on again.

(For anyone interested in Daniel's life on the Doulos, he's currently in the Philippines. There are some recent blog entries at http://brummieatsea.blogspot.com)

Green Monday

Monday this week was 'Green Monday'. It was the first day of Lent for the Greek Orthodox Church. Some years Easter coincides in the Eastern and Western churches, but this year Western Easter is April 16th, and Eastern Easter is a week later, April 23rd.

There's a longer period of Lent for the Orthodox, too. Whereas ours started a week ago, on Ash Wednesday, their started not a week later but only five days later. They have a carnival weekend prior to Lent, with children dressing up in costumes and bands playing at the sea-front, then Green Monday is a public holiday. Traditionally Cypriots clean the houses from top to bottom, ensuring there's no meat in the house, and then go on a picnic with their extended family. We didn't go anywhere - Richard didn't even take the day off, since he has someone new working with him for a couple of months - as we knew the roads would be packed with vehicles.

We don't fast from meat (or anything else) during Lent, but we try to be sensitive to our neighbours. Whereas the next couple of months provide the ideal weather for barbecuing, it's hardly fair to have the smell of meat cooking over a barbie wafting around the neighbourhood. So we make sure we only eat meat inside until after Eastern Easter.

Busy week

My brother and his wife have been staying, and the week has rushed past. They did go away for a couple of days to the mountains beyond Paphos, where they said it rained rather a lot and they got extremely muddy! However the predicted rain in Larnaka didn't materialise, and they were able to get out and about to the town several times, and visited a museum.

On Saturday night was the premiere of the English version of 'Fairytaleheart', the latest play by Antidote Theatre so we all went. It's a teenage play with only two characters, plus three musicians who are off stage but just visible behind a screen. Daniel is one of the musicians, playing clarinet. It went very well and we all enjoyed it - I was surprised that an hour and a half of dialogue could be so engrossing, but it certainly was. There were some quite young children there despite it being at 8.00pm and they too watched and were absorbed by it.

Monday was a public holiday for 'Green Monday', the first day of Lent in the Greek Orthodox and Eastern tradition. They use a different calendar to calculate Easter than we use in the UK, and while the two sometimes coincide, this year the Western Easter is five weeks ahead of the Eastern one. Since Cyprus is mainly Greek Orthodox, naturally their dates are used as holidays, although the Protestant churches celebrate the Western Easter. I'm wondering if there will be any chocolate Easter eggs in the shops in time for Easter on March 27th... there weren't on Saturday.

On Monday evening my brother took us all out for a meal at the Art Cafe, a small and very friendly restaurant on a side-street near the sea-front. We went early, to avoid the cigarettes (many Cypriots smoke at meals, and restaurants don't have no-smoking areas) and had an excellent time.