Lighting Candles

 A week ago, I realised that we had stopped using our ceiling fans. One by one, we slowed them down, finally turning them off so that the lights work without them. 

Which meant that we could start using candles again. And since, in the Anglican Church year, it's officially 'ordinary time' (despite this year having been anything but ordinary) I got out a green candle. We'd used it a few times previously, but it still has plenty of wax, and there's something special about having a candle lit while we're eating, particularly as it's now dark well before supper-time. 

It's not something we've done regularly over the years. We've often had a candle on the table around Christmas-time, but not long-term. However we've been given candles as gifts, from time to time, so I had quite a collection of them in my ornament cupboard, a few un-started, some of them slightly used.  

I suppose the idea of using them regularly started last December. Instead of lighting an elderly or small candle, we actually bought a new one, and lit it at almost every main meal over the Christmas and New Year season:

When it had almost gone, we realised that we liked having a candle, so I got out a red, star-shaped one. And when that started to collapse, I found a spherical pink one:

We had realised that having the candles on little glass plates was all very well, but if wax dripped off it went onto the wood of our table, and that wasn't so great. So we were using a table mat, but that wasn't ideal either.

At the end of January, when we were briefly in the UK, we took Richard's mother out to eat at a garden centre, and she bought us a little tray that I had been looking at - one which I thought would be ideal for candles.  The spherical pink candle was burning low, so I added a purple one, and the tray caught any drips perfectly:

By the end of March Cyprus was in lockdown mode; we lit a special candle to have in the window, on days when the world churches were praying specifically about the pandemic.  And as it was Lent, traditionally a time for purple linen in the Anglican church, we were using two purple candles:

I should add that I had not previously previously noticed liturgical colours. But during the lockdown, we started a new Facebook page for St Helena's Church, and I thought it would be a good idea to have a photo of the communion table area with the appropriate coloured linen. So I started taking notice of the colours used - and we just happened to have unused purple candles. 

By the time Easter came around, the purple candles were pretty much used up, and I remembered that, years ago, we were given a orange candle as an Easter decoration. So I decided we would burn it this year:

We were starting to take our candles for granted; lighting them at mealtimes became a routine. And then the weather got warmer, and in the middle of May, when Summer really started, we switched on the ceiling fan in the dining room while eating.

Ceiling fans and candles are not compatible. The candle went out. 

I moved it to the other end of the table, but it didn't help.  So, as ceiling fans seemed to be much more important during the summer months, I cleaned the tray, and the little glass plate things, and put them all away for five and a half months. 

There were a couple of scented candles in my cupboard, but I really don't like those - the scent gives me a headache, and I know that scented candles can be toxic for cats. So I got rid of them. I don't know where they came from - possibly gifts, or more likely a 'gift exchange' game with former colleagues around twenty years ago.  I don't like throwing out anything that isn't rubbish, but reminded myself that I was never going to use them, so it was really just decluttering, which is generally considered a Good Thing. 

The only ones left in my cupboard now are white; we also have quite a lot of tea-lights. But we bought them from Ikea - and although they seemed like excellent value, they don't last very long, and don't burn all that evenly. 

Perhaps we might even buy another new candle to use in December.... 

A few more additions to our house...

In this, the tenth anniversary of our selling our UK house and buying one in Cyprus, we have done a LOT of renovations and repairs. Some of them should really have been done years ago, including repairing some of our rotting windowsills and frames, but we're not very good at making decisions or at getting around to this kind of thing.

So we started by employing a teenage friend to some painting, and he did such a good job that he's done a great deal of sanding, repairing and more painting, and even some plastering.

In the middle of that, we had a damp-proof course installed. While it's still early days, and hard to tell now that the weather's warmer, we do think our guest flat seems to smell less damp and the kitchen and bathroom cupboards are a lot less musty.

Then we did the most major work of all, having our bathroom renovated. I'm still glad I was out of the country while that was going on, and am very much appreciating the new bathroom. It was basically complete about a month ago, but since then we've done a few extra bits and pieces - I bought a wooden toilet-roll holder in the UK, and Richard put that in.

We replaced the bathroom bin and loo-brush holder, both of which were ancient, and even bought some new scales when Lidl had some on special offer.

We spent a lot of time looking for towels, either in cream or peach, but couldn't find any at all despite searching in several shops locally.  The towels we had been using were ten years old and getting rather scruffy as well as having lost any hint of fluffiness. They were cheap ones and served us well, but having spent a significant amount on the new bathroom, we thought it deserved new towels.

We also realised that there was a bit of a gap in the corner next to the toilet, and that we needed somewhere to store toilet rolls. So after much pondering, we decided to buy another Ikea unit, in the same range as our sink cabinet and mirror.

The shelf in the middle clearly needed a plant, so we spent ages looking for one that would survive in partial shade and would not need too much attention, and are happy to report that, four weeks later, it's not just alive but has some new leaves:

Any time we go to Ikea - which is just outside Nicosia - we seem to find several other things we weren't expecting to buy... and in this particular trip, we found some rather nice brown towels, both large bath sheets and some hand towels that would fit perfectly on our towel rail...

... and even a matching bathmat.

Bathroom complete, we didn't want to do anything else major, but we realised we had a new problem. For the last few years we have used an upright fan in our bedroom overnight, from about May through to October.  In the hottest weather, when the humidity is high, we use our air conditioning too, but right now the heat is dry, and a fan is all we need.

The trouble with the fan was that in order for it to be effective, it had to be in a place where Richard tripped over it or bumped into it almost every night. So he thought about affixing a wall fan in a corner, out of the way. I don't think wall fans look particularly nice and didn't know if it would work well enough, so for a few days recently we put the upright fan on top of the chest-of-drawers, and angled it with a couple of books underneath... far from ideal.

The obvious solution is one we had thought about ten years ago... a ceiling fan. We even bought one at Kleima, but it had the wrong kind of fitting so ended up in our guest flat. We had thought that nice ceiling fans, such as we have in our living areas (bought second-hand just before we moved in, from friends leaving the island) would be very expensive new.

But Leroy Merlin, a big hardware/DIY store in Nicosia (not far from Ikea) sells ceiling fans at very reasonable prices. So we went there yesterday, and bought ourselves a ceiling fan, of very similar style to our others. It's perhaps twice the price of an upright fan, but the ones we have elsewhere have lasted well over ten years, whereas upright ones tend to stop working after three or four.

Richard and Tim, between them, put the ceiling fan up yesterday afternoon....

I think it looks good - and more importantly, it was absolutely wonderful overnight. I felt pleasantly cool, Richard even complained of being cold this morning.

As I write this, the ceiling fan in my study is on, providing a pleasant breeze; they are wonderful inventions, and I am so thankful we now have one upstairs too.