Third week of Advent

Sunday 14th December was the third Sunday in Advent. It was also a special anniversary for us: 48 years exactly since we went out on our first date, and 46 years since we got engaged. 

But there was no chance to go out to celebrate. I didn't go to a church service, either, as I knew I had to do a lot of cooking and baking in the morning. Every other Sunday our friends come over for an afternoon of games (with a DVD for the teenagers), followed by a shared evening meal. I always provide bread and a dessert, while they usually bring cut up vegetables and protein such as cheese, eggs and tuna.  Through the cooler months, I also make soup. 

In addition, I was hosting our local writing group lunch on the Monday. I wanted to ensure there we had enough variety of food, so I planned to prepare some of that on Sunday morning as well. And our Sunday lunch, which wasn't complicated as I used a previously frozen chicken dish, so I only had to prepare roast potatoes and veggies to accompany it.

I started around 10.00am after a leisurely breakfast and shower... and I tried not to rush, so I wouldn't get muddled. I first started the carrot and ginger soup, one of my favourites; I add previously boiled chick-peas in too, to give it some protein. Then I started preparing some chicken breast with a slightly spicy thick sauce, to serve cold on Monday. And put the ingredients for a loaf of bread in the breadmaker.

Then I leafed through all my recipes looking for something to make for dessert in the evening; nothing really inspired me, so I tried a lemon blondie recipe I had previously downloaded and printed. I had quite a lot of lemon juice which I had frozen last year from an excess of lemons, so it was good to use some of that up. 

By this stage, the kitchen looked like this:

I also wanted to make mince pies... so I had to tidy up a little, to make room for the food processor, and for rolling out the pastry. 

On decorating for Christmas

When I was growing up, decorating for Christmas used to happen at the start of the school holidays. Or that's what I recall, anyway. My parents had a real Christmas tree for many years, so wanted it to last until it was taken down on January 6th. And since they used to host Christmas Day for the whole family even after I was married, Richard and I didn't have a tree for some years.

However when our sons were small we bought an artificial tree; I think it was in 1989 when Daniel was three, and very insistent that we should have our own tree. So he and Richard went out on Christmas Eve... but the only real trees they could find were either very scraggy, or enormous and very expensive. So they compromised with a fake tree, pointing out that if we used it for more than one year it would be good value. Thirty-five years later, we still have that tree. We didn't take it to Colorado when we lived there for two years, and we didn't have it here in Cyprus for our first few years. But it's probably had thirty Christmases. 

Since we were home educating in Cyprus, there was no obvious time to put up the tree and other decorations each year. So it was somewhat random. If we were hosting a Christmas party early in December, we would decorate before that event. If not, it was sometimes left until a day or two before Christmas. When the boys had grown up and left home, we didn't feel much like decorating at all, but usually managed to host local friends (and for many years Tim came home). 

In the past thirteen years, our friends' three daughters have helped put up our tree at some point in December. Thirteen years ago, when the oldest of them was six, and the youngest just two, the adults did most of the work, and the hanging of decorations was a bit ragged, so I adjusted everything after they had left.

But it made a tradition. In 2018, for instance, they managed most of it themselves. 

The date of putting up the tree has gradually become earlier in recent years. Since we take everything down around January 5th, I quite like having decorations up for at least four weeks. So in the past couple of years, we've decorated around Advent Sunday. And despite our young friends now being teenagers of 19, 16 and 14, this is still an important tradition for them. 

They put the tree together rapidly and efficiently, then open the decoration boxes to decide which baubles and other decorations they will use. 

The Roomba is now situated in the place where we used to have our tree, so we haven't quite determined the best place for it. But this year we decided to have it next to the DVD bookcases. 

We had already bought a poinsettia and placed it in the usual spot where they seem to thrive, despite our record of killing indoor plants:

And, as I have done for several years now, I hung last year's Christmas cards up across the doors between our living room and dining room: 

Many people no longer send cards (postage prices from the UK are horrendous) but those that do arrive usually get here in the last few days before Christmas, or the first couple of weeks of the new year. So I always keep them to display the following year.

On the table, our knitted nativity set was displayed, this time with the baby conveniently hidden inside Mary's skirts during advent:

I no longer have to do any rearranging of the tree. Our young friends are artistic and competent, and the result was just as I hoped: 

First eight days of December

Although Advent started on November 29th, I wasn't quite ready to start thinking about Christmas preparations until December started. Well - other than making our cake a month ago, and feeding it a couple of times with extra brandy.  And something else I order online for a selected few people, which had to be done before the end of November.

Then I realised I had to think about Christmas cards. Many people are not sending any this year, due to extremely slow postal deliveries. The number of cards we send out has reduced significantly over the years: from about seventy ten or so years ago to just thirty-five last year. That's partly due to losing touch with some folk, for various reasons (including a small number who, sadly, have died), and partly because more and more people are now sending Christmas greetings by email rather than in the post.

Since we didn't go to the UK in the summer, I had no chance to buy Christmas cards for this year; I've never much liked those I can find here (and it's not easy to find them at all - or maybe I'm looking in the wrong places). I discovered that I had a handful of reasonable cards that I was willing to send - but nowhere near 35. So that made the decision easy:  I wrote just six cards, to relatives who are a generation above ours - even though most are on email anyway. 

I even had six UK stamps in my desk. So last Tuesday, the first day of December, I walked to the Post Office, and put the cards in the letter box.  I have no idea if they will arrive in time for Christmas... 

Something else I usually do early in December is to make a batch of mincemeat and some Christmas puddings. But we still had half of last year's mincemeat in the fridge, and one Christmas pudding - so as we won't be doing much entertaining this year, I didn't need to make any more.

On Wednesday, December 2nd, we spent the morning with a local friend helping her publish her collection of forty-two short stories via Amazon KDP.  We have been very impressed with this method of self-publishing and have helped various people this year to publish their work. The quality is excellent and 'print-on-demand' means that there's no need for a publisher (or writer) to risk anything in advance.

In the evening, back on the Advent theme, I attended a short Advent service via Zoom, offered by St Helena's Church. 

I'm not entirely sure where Thursday disappeared to. We shopped on Friday, but only at the froutaria. We met our friends in the evening for a shared meal, as we usually do, and on Saturday I cleaned the house fairly thoroughly. 

On Sunday I did quite a bit of baking: some bread rolls, a pan of gingerbread, and some different biscuits for our shared afternoon with friends, and for Monday. And in the evening we went to the Christingle service at St Helena's. 

We weren't sure whether there would be room - there were strict limits on numbers of people who could attend any church service in Cyprus, and the maximum permitted in the St Helena's building was something like 28, with distancing between unrelated people or groups, and of course masks on all the time. However the service was streamed, and there was the possibility of seating outside. 

In the event, while twenty people watched online (and many more afterwards) exactly the right number of people turned up at St Helena's, and it was a pleasant service. I am very thankful we were able to go, because today new pandemic restrictions have been announced in Cyprus: there will be no more church services with congregation present until at least January. So the Carol service, Crib service and Christmas Day service will be online only.  That will be strange, and quite disturbing not to go to any church service at Christmas. 

On Monday the local Christian writing group had to meet in two groups, as there were eleven or twelve of us who wanted to meet, and no more than ten people can be present in anyone's house. We usually have a shared potluck-style lunch in December, but decided it was best not to do that this year. Perhaps we'll celebrate at Easter instead. Or whenever we are finally able to meet again as one group.

In the afternoon I went to the local book discussion group where we did have some Christmas nibbles to share during the meeting - there were eight of us, spread out in a distanced way around the table which was full of finger foods. 

Then on Tuesday, my friend Sheila and two of her daughters came over to help put up and decorate our Christmas tree. When I say 'help', that's how it was when the girls were smaller. But now they put the three together unaided, and decorate exactly as they wish.  They do an excellent job, and I rarely move or change anything. 

I started ordering presents for family members yesterday too - so much less stressful not struggling through Christmas crowds (not that it would happen this year). 

And in the evening, we watched that Christmas classic DVD 'Love Actually', which we hadn't seen for eight years. I had reservations about it when we first saw it, but enjoyed it a lot more last night.

The first two weeks of December in Cyprus

Over the years, Christmas preparation has become easier and more relaxed in our household.  It helps that I have become a tad more organised, and give myself a kind of timetable to get things done. It also helps that we keep it fairly low-key, on the whole, and - most of all - that all the gift shopping is done online.  With no children living at home, no stockings to organise, no grandchildren visiting this year, it's all quite straightforward.

Early in November, I made this year's Christmas cake.  Later in the month I made a batch of mincemeat and some Christmas puddings. I organised and ordered our photo calendars for next year in plenty of time, and also gifts for the family members who will be here in Cyprus.

December 1st, very neatly, was also the first Sunday in Advent.  We went to the morning service at the local church where we're becoming more involved and later I thought about what still had to be done. It seemed remarkably little.

Ten years ago, I wrote and posted at least eighty Christmas cards, mostly to the UK, as well as family newsletters.  Gradually we started moving to email for many of our correspondents, and have lost touch with others. This year, we only sent thirty cards, mostly to family and very long-standing friends in the UK. We also decided, for the first time in thirty years, not to do a 'round robin' newsletter.

On Fridays we use the morning for what we loosely call 'house admin' - in theory doing any odd jobs that we wouldn't otherwise get around to. But more often than not, we do our grocery shopping and check our PO Box, and most of the morning is used up.  However, on December 6th, I had a strange urge to visit this large shop:

Yes, a lot of what it sells is rather tacky.  But although I don't in general like shopping, it's kind of fun to browse through the kitchen section, amusing ourselves by pointing out all the things we would never buy, and even considering one or two that we might (but don't need).

The Christmas section is huge, and there were plenty of things that didn't tempt us in the slighest.  A dancing Santa and tree, for instance:

There were a lot of quite attractive decorations too, some of which might have tempted us if we hadn't had two lively cats who would probably destroy them. Unfortunately they only had one kind of Christmas crackers; we had almost run out of our supply from the UK, and I had thought Jumbo would be a good source. We did buy one pack from there but they were a bit gaudy looking.

We also emerged with a sort of snowflake star and a string of LED lights for our tree, some cushion covers for my study and one or two other bits and pieces. But we were mostly quite restrained.

December is the only time of year we go to Jumbo, and it made me feel as if the countdown had truly begun.  We bought stamps and posted the cards, too.  And bought some more crackers at Metro, which had a much better selection than Jumbo.

Later in the day, I started ordering Christmas presents for family members in the UK.  We all have Amazon wish-lists so it's easy to do, and I send them directly.  It's not quite the same in that I don't get to wrap them - but I'm very happy not to have to go to any real shops to buy them.

On Sunday 8th December, the second Sunday in Advent, we went with our friends to the Christingle service. A local choir was taking part, and it was a friendly, enjoyable service.  Several people had prepared large numbers of Christingles the day before, so we all collected them, with the candles lit, and then sang 'Away in a Manger' by candlelight.

While many people ate the raisins and sweets afterwards, I decided to keep ours in the fridge for a few days and then use it as a decoration until the orange starts to go bad:

The following day it was the last meeting of the year for the local Christian writers' group, followed by our annual Christmas bring-and-share (potluck) lunch.  Twelve of us were there, and as always there was an excellent spread of food:

I suppose there's a lot of comfort in familiar traditions such as this.  And on Tuesday morning, another annual tradition was followed.  I got out our modest supply of decorations:

One of my young friends set up the Nativity scene, with the addition of some tinsel and a former Christmas tree star.  The figure at the back, lying down, was supposed to be the third shepherd. But I didn't make a staff for him.  So my small friend announced that it must be the innkeeper, not a shepherd at all.  And she also decreed that he should be asleep.  I suppose he probably was, when Jesus was born...

The Kings, of course, should be further away but we always put them all together.

Each year we send and receive fewer and fewer Christmas cards, but I keep those from previous years (many of which don't arrive until January anyway) and hang them up in a couple of places.  And my young friends (two of whom are no longer small) not only assembled the tree without help, but decorated it too.

Later in the day, I ordered the last of the Christmas presents for family members in the UK.

On Wednesday, we had an appointment at Immigration, where - in theory - our permanent residency was granted.  We have to wait up to three months for the actual paperwork to come through.

On Thursday we went to a pleasant and thoughtful advent meditation/discussion at the vicarage, followed by another potluck lunch.  Thursday was also the UK general election date. We're not eligible to vote, but we did hope the result might be different from what transpired.  However, this is not a political blog, so I will refrain from further comment on that topic.

On Saturday 14th, we celebrated 40 years since we got engaged, 42 years since our first date.  We went out to lunch in the pouring rain, and had to park in the Marina as Larnaka was packed with shoppers, most of whom had cars.  We had decided to go to the friendly, low-key 'To Kafe' restaurant, which was the other end of the town, but the rain mostly abated while we walked there.  We celebrated in burgers (a veggie one for me) and then discovered that they had a 'fasting' carrot cake (ie dairy free) so Richard had that, and I had a very delicious (and decadent) lemon cheesecake:

As an added bonus, our friends had been able to get tickets for a local ballet school production of 'The Nutcracker' at the Municipal Theatre.  I don't think I've ever seen it live before; the scenery was excellent, and the whole thing was most enjoyable.

Then on Sunday, among other things, I made our first batch of mince pies:

We finished them today so I shall make more tomorrow, along with a few other goodies. On Thursday evening our younger son arrives to stay for a week, and that's when we'll feel as if the Christmas period has truly begun.

Christmas Eve

It has become a regular occurrence for me to write a blog post on Christmas Eve, with a photo of this year's Christmas cake. I'm not sure at what point a regular occurrence turns into a tradition. Either way, it has happened sufficiently often that it is now on my general list of things-to-do-in-the-runup-to-Christmas.

Not that there are all that many things on the list. We have simplified as much as we can, while keeping to the things we like. This year we still had two Christmas puddings and a large tub of mincemeat left from last year, so I didn't even have to make those.  I ordered UK gifts online, early in December. I wrote our newsletter around the same time, and posted about thirty along with Christmas cards, to relatives and a few close friends. Most of our friends send email newsletters rather than cards now, though;  each year the number we email has increased, and the number of cards written and sent has decreased.

Should anyone reading this, who is not on our mailing list, wish to see our newsletter it's now up at the family site:  Family Christmas newsletter 2018.

We decorated - in a low-key way - a couple of weeks ago.  I printed out the newsletters we received by email, and added them to the handful received by mail in a folder, so we can read them at our leisure. We ordered our turkey mid-December and collected it, along with other food items we need over the next few days, yesterday. I prefer not to shop on Sundays if I can avoid it, but we definitely didn't want to fight the crowds in the supermarket on Christmas Eve.

I have a few things to do today - to bake an alternative cake, and make some vegetarian sausages, and, this evening, help Tim with some of the vegetable preparation for tomorrow. He's made stuffings and the turkey is gently roasting now. Doing it on Christmas Eve, carving in the evening and then re-heating for an hour before Christmas Day lunch, works beautifully for us.

As for the cake, I baked it late in October, fed it a couple of times, made marzipan (without almond essence) about ten days ago to cover it, then iced it (again, making icing in the food processor - so much easier than beating by hand) a couple of days ago.  There was leftover marzipan so I made a few rough balls as it looked rather sparse after I added the least tasteless of my plastic cake decorations.

Wishing everyone a peaceful, relaxing Christmas, and a hopeful New Year.

PS if anyone would like to hear/read a rather different perspective on Advent, this is one of our son Daniel's rare blog posts with something he wrote recently:  Audio Advent Calendar

Christmas Decorations... and a few aberrations!

We don't do a great deal in the way of decorating the house for Christmas. I'm not artistic, so we tend towards minimalism - anything more would look cluttered rather than attractive.

But we always put up our artificial tree, bought nearly thirty years ago in the UK when we left it a bit late, and there were no real Christmas trees to be had (or not for a price we were prepared to pay). It has become an annual tradition, over the past nine years, for me to have help from my friend Sheila and her daughters. As they gave grown older, they have started decorating without much assistance, and this year they put the tree together by themselves.

They all remembered that the branches are of differing sizes, marked with letters of the alphabet to match the slots in which they go.

We were amused that K (13) was finding one branch at a time, locating its hole, and slotting it in.  H (10) was checking each branch in turn as she searched for those marked 'A', which she wanted to put in first. And E (8) was trying to sort them all into alphabetical piles before starting.

Despite these differences in approach, the tree was put together with surprisingly little argument. K then lost interest, and the younger girls did most of the decorating. I wasn't watching what they were doing... they decided to be creative, and made it look (as they explained) like a face:

They didn't expect me to keep it like that, so after I'd taken the photo H decorated more traditionally, and I didn't have to change anything later:

Well... other than picking it up and replacing a few items more firmly, after the cats knocked it down. But that has only happened twice so far, within a couple of hours of it going up. Since then, they have ignored it.

Meanwhile, E decided to get out the nativity characters which I knitted back in 2016.  Again, I wasn't taking too much notice, until she told me it was set up:

The donkey and sheep, she told me, were having a snack at the manger. Joseph had just acted as midwife for Mary, so he was exhausted and taking a nap (when I said I thought Mary would have been even more tired she rolled her eyes). One of the shepherds was so worn out from his walk to the stable that he had fallen over. And E was still not quite sure what to do with the Magi, since (as she pointed out correctly) they arrived some time afterwards (probably days later, maybe a couple of years later) when the shepherds would have gone home.

I adjusted them later to a more traditional scene:

The post to Cyprus at this time of year is remarkably slow. Most years we receive at least half of our Christmas cards after the New Year.  I've got into the habit of keeping the current year's cards in an envelope, to hang up the following December - not that there are as many as even five years ago, as fewer and fewer people send cards.  Only five have arrived so far this year, and they're up on a bookcase. But I had thirty-three from a year ago.

Yesterday I decided it was time to hang up last year's cards.  I managed to get the shorter string up, and hung eleven of the cards only to have Lady Jane take a decided interest:

While she was occupied, I started putting up the other string, which is a bit more complicated. I didn't expect her to come leaping towards me along the pelmets.  She didn't expect that brushing against the clock would knock it down and shatter the glass front...

I swept up the smithereens, and thought the clock was history. Then I noticed that it was still ticking. So I thought that perhaps we could at least rescue the mechanism. Further investigation revealed that the oval frame at the front of the clock was undamaged, as was the face, although the two had come apart and there were several broken-off pieces from around the edge. Richard said he thought that perhaps he could repair it...

... and succeeded in doing so.  So the clock, without a cover, is now back on the wall, as are the rest of last year's cards.

Oddly enough, Lady Jane has not been back to check on the Christmas cards or the string... and since 'her' human will be arriving this evening, for nine days in Cyprus, I hope she'll be too occupied over the next week or so to think about them again. 

The Twelfth Day of Christmas

While I'm not rigid about traditions, nor superstitious, I like to take our Christmas decorations down before January 6th. It's what I grew up doing, and it always feels like the right thing to do. The Christmas season is finishing; today is a public holiday in Cyprus for Epiphany.  Schools have been closed since just before Christmas and will re-open on Monday. That's not relevant to us, but somehow it makes the past week feel like a relaxed, post-Christmas period before the year gets going.

I thought my young friends might like to help me take decorations down on Tuesday, but their oldest sister was still here, back from the United States for two-and-a-half weeks, and she had been asking to play our game Dixit. So Sheila and her four daughters came over for the morning, and we played Dixit, followed by a few rounds of Ligretto. Then I taught them Kingdominoes, the new game which Tim bought us for Christmas.

So the decorations stayed up for a few days longer, which was appropriate as we finished the mince pies and various cakes. And on Friday, I took everything down. Four more Christmas cards had arrived that morning, so I put them, with the others for this year, in a large jiffy bag to put up in December.  I packed the decorations away, probably more efficiently than my small friends would have managed, and then started to take the tree apart.  Helped - or not - by Alex:

Alex is the kind of cat who accepts pretty much anything. He's good-natured and friendly and doesn't mind things changing around him. His sister Jane, by contrast, doesn't like anything to disrupt her day. So she spent the morning racing around the living room, clearly very disturbed by the fact that all the decorations were going away. She wasn't too pleased when they went up, but she'd got used to them. And now we were making yet more changes...

Today, when Richard went out, I set to work to dust and clean the house, as I usually do on Saturdays, after changing the sheets on our bed. The trouble with dusting is that it makes me notice when things are out of place, now that more surfaces are visible without decorations on them. I re-organised a couple of bookshelves, to make space for some new or recently read books and I also did a couple of loads of laundry. I sorted out the closets on our landing, too; one of them has central heating pipes running through it, so does duty as a kind or airing cupboard in the winter. It's useful on damp days, when the laundry is almost - but not quite - dry.  But there were other things in there, including several pillows that we've acquired recently, and a duvet that belongs in our guest flat..

Once I've started this kind of thing, I tend to keep going until it's finished. I don't know how many times I went up and down the stairs, moving books and bedding. And I still hadn't finished the dusting.  I started about 10.30am and didn't finish until almost 1.00pm.  After lunch I swept and mopped and vacuumed, and the house does look and feel a lot fresher and cleaner, which is good. But Jane was even more disturbed by all the movement, and since I kept going she decided to attack Alex instead. It wasn't just play-fighting, but the ears-back growling vicious fighting that she does when she sees another cat outside, or when Alex comes in smelling of another cat. He takes the brunt of anything that annoys her.

However, after I'd eventually finished, and showered, and sat down at the computer to check email and Facebook, Jane was happy again.

Sometimes traditions or schedules are the only way we get things done. We've been saying for months that we need to play more of our board games. We play Settlers of Catan and/or Cities and Knights at least once a week with our close friends. We don't forget simpler games such as Dixit, Ticket to Ride, or Kingdom Builder, and we're not going to forget Kingdominoes; it's the kind of game that we'll probably play fairly often when we have a spare half hour or so after another game.

But other games - in particular Puerto Rico, Agricola, Above and Below, and Grand Austria Hotel - are a great deal more complicated. So we don't tend to play them very often - and then, when we do, we have to re-read the rules and it takes awhile to get into them. But equally they're not games we want to play too often. About once a month works well.  So we decided that we'll play one of them per week, on a Saturday evening.  If we remember...

Winter and Christmas preparation in Cyprus

I have evidently been neglecting this blog recently. I've been busy with various things, and somehow blogging has slipped off my radar. My last post was early November, when I was writing about October. Since then, winter (such as it is in Cyprus) has appeared, and Christmas will be here very soon. So here's a brief summary of the past six weeks or so:

The temperature always takes a downward turn around the second week of November. So around that time I got out our two cat beds. I made one of them, a few years ago, and we bought the other one. To my surprise, the cats decided to sleep in them.  However, Alex, who is really quite a large cat, squashes into the smaller bed:

While Lady Jane, his petite sister, spreads out comfortably in the larger bed:

On November 20th, we went into the large and somewhat random shop Kleima. I forget what we were looking for, but we spotted some large poinsettia plants at just €4.99.  We usually pay more than that for much smaller ones.  It felt much too early for a plant we consider to be a Christmas decoration.  And I was dubious about buying it from Kleima; the shop isn't known for great quality. But somehow we decided to buy one anyway.  The pot was a little small, so I re-potted the plant:

In the process, a couple of the stems fell out. They didn't break off, or anything; they were stems that had apparently been pushed into the soil to bulk the plant out a bit. I trimmed them and put them in water.  Over the next few days, I noticed other stems starting to droop... and on gentle pulling, found that they, too, were just loose stems.

However, the actual plant, while considerably less voluptuous than it originally appeared, has survived well and is looking good.

Our closest friends here had been away for over two months, so although winter was approaching I hadn't done any early morning walks in October or November. But they returned at last, and I woke early enough to see a sunrise on November 25th:

A few days later, it was my turn to travel, though I was only away for a week.  My flight was quite early, though after sunrise; as I looked out of the plane window I spotted part of a rainbow:

My trip was to the UK, in order to help my father celebrate a special birthday.  While there, visiting a garden centre, we saw this display of mechanical toys:

They were delightful to watch, but then we saw the boxes. Each one cost at least £30, some of them more, and one alone would be rather dull. They're not toys, and they're the kind of thing one would only get out at Christmas. They were a great display for the garden centre, but I did wonder who might buy one!

At the weekend there was a family party, with twenty of us in all, and a magnificent cake made by my father's wife:

Since I was seeing my siblings and their spouses, with whom we still exchange gifts at birthdays and Christmas, I did all my Christmas shopping online before I flew out. I then wrapped everything, and distributed appropriately.  I also wrote all the Christmas cards for UK friends and relatives, and got our newsletters printed and posted too.  I even made this year's Christmas puddings and mincemeat before my brief trip.  I don't think I have ever been so organised, and it was a good feeling.

A week after my return to Cyprus, the Christmas season was well underway.  The Larnaka Christian Writers' group had our annual Christmas potluck lunch with lots of good food and enjoyable company:

Among other things, I took along some of my first batch of mince pies.

Then, the following day, Sheila's daughters helped me to decorate our Christmas tree, something which has become an annual tradition:

A couple of days after that, Richard and I celebrated the 40th anniversary of our first date.  We had a take-away lunch, had some professional photos taken, and saw some of the lights of Larnaka:

In the evening we went out to eat, and then - along with many other people - took photos of this rather strange giant bauble at the end of the small pier:

At the weekend, I hung up last year's Christmas cards, something else I do each year since so many don't arrive until January. And I sewed up another shepherd I had knitted for our Nativity scene:

I made the first of this season's lemonade on Saturday, after buying a crate of thirty lemons for a couple of euros. On Sunday I made the second batch of mince pies, and some veggie 'sausage' rolls for freezing.  On Monday I made some gingerbread and chocolate chip cake.  I also opened up and made up the sofa bed in Tim's room, which made Jane very happy:

Tim arrived last night and she was even happier. He has always been her human of preference.

Today I made marzipan and put that on the Christmas cake. I need to make some more mince pies, within the next few days, and ice the Christmas cake... but that's about all until we cook the turkey on Christmas Eve.

The house is not as warm as we'd like because one of our central heating pumps needs to be replaced. We've bought the new pump, but the central heating engineer recommended by the shop hasn't come to fit it, though he said he would do so yesterday evening or this morning. However it's not particularly cold out, so an extra jacket is sufficient, at least at present.

I hope to write another blog post on Christmas Eve, as I tend to each year, and will then make a 'resolution' to write at least one post per week in 2018. 

Pictures, from Scotland to Cyprus, via Birmingham and Derbyshire...

My mother had several pictures hanging in her house in the UK, but there were a set of three prints which she was particularly fond of. As far as I remember, they had previously belonged to her parents who lived in Scotland.

They hung over the fireplace in my mother's living room in her house in Birmingham for some years. I found this photo which I've cropped to show one of them, although the glass was reflective and the image isn't very clear.

When my mother died, at the end of May 2013, our son Tim, who had lived with her for five years, said that he would very much like these three prints. However we had no easy way of getting them to Cyprus. So one of my brothers took them to his home in Derbyshire, and put the pictures away in a cupboard in a guest room.

In the Summer of 2014, I spent a couple of days with my brother and his wife. I wasn't certain that I could remember which pictures Tim wanted. We found several that were from my mother's house, and I took photos. The ones Tim was keen on seemed a bit faded to me, although that hadn't been obvious when they were on the wall. The frames were quite strong, but there was some staining on the white mounts around the pictures. They were quite large, and of course the glass posed a problem. I had no idea how we could ship them to Cyprus.

Apparently the original artist was one of the early French impressionists, Alfred Sisley. One of the pictures shows a tree-lined path:

One of them shows this view of a canal:

And this one, the one shown at the top of this post, shows a view of a house through some foliage:

Tim confirmed that these were, indeed, the pictures that he wanted. However, he felt no attachment to the frames or mounts, and agreed that it would not be a good idea to ship them with the glass. There was nothing I could do at the time, anyway, so we put them back in the cupboard.

Then Richard and I were in the UK again at the end of February, and spent a few hours at my brother's house while travelling North. Richard was planning to send a shipment back to Cyprus, so we got the pictures out again, and he carefully extracted them from their frames and removed the mounts. This was not a simple process, and took considerably longer than he expected; in one of them we found an old newspaper which was dated, if I recall correctly, from the late 1920s. Evidently the frames had lasted nearly 90 years, so it wasn't surprising they were looking rather tired.

Richard packed the pictures with strong cardboard and, several weeks later they arrived safely in Cyprus. We took them to Tim's flat, and he put them behind a chair, still in the cardboard... and there they remained for another six months. Then I suggested that we might get them professionally framed as our birthday present to Tim, and he thought that was a good idea.

So we took them to a local art gallery that has a framing service, and chose white frames (at Tim's request). The woman who dealt with us showed us several options, and we realised that an outer card mount improved the appearance although we didn't choose one anywhere near as big as the previous mount. We also opted for non-reflective glass.

Tim was pleased with the result on his birthday, and today we took them to his flat so they could be hung in place. He has a long wall in his living room where they look great:

The effect is, unsurprisingly, more modern than the previous style of frames, and goes nicely with Tim's white furnishings.

I'm glad that these pictures are, once more, on display. And having discovered images of a couple of the originals online, I think I like the blue faded effect better. 

Second week of Advent

The week started well. The builders came to work on our roof: installing loft insulation in one part, and - they hoped - fixing and cleaning the place where we have had major leaking (over our stairs) every time it rains.

So once again I abandoned any idea of cleaning and set to work to make some humus and also some mince pies. Later in the morning was the monthly meeting of the Larnaka Christian writing group, and our annual Christmas potluck meal:

It was a good meeting and a lively and enjoyable lunch, a good start to Christmas celebrations.

The following morning, Sheila and three of her children came over for what has become an annual tradition: they helped me put up our Christmas tree:

Actually, they did the work after I retrieved the boxes, and I mostly just took photos. I did remember to hang last year's cards, many of which did not arrive until January:

Post seems to be better this year, and we've already received ten cards, which are now displayed on a bookcase. I will keep them along with any more that arrive between now and the end of January, and re-show them next Christmas. If people take the time and trouble to send us cards, I think they deserve a good long display. And they make nice extra decorations hung up like this.

K and H had some discussion about how exactly the nativity people should be displayed:

Eventually the tree was done, and in place. Happily the kittens had stayed upstairs and asleep while we sorted out the lights and hung the tinsel. They were very interested in the tree:

They seemed to consider that we had kindly hung up some nice shiny cat toys. Alex carefully batted as many as he could off the tree and they chased them around the floor while we retrieved as many as we could and hung them back again...

There was a brief diversion while our new sofa (and the re-covered two-seater) arrived and were put in place:

The material is rather different, and felt a bit creased, or crushed... however when Tim arrived later he said it was quite a modern look. So that's all right.

Unfortunately the kittens were not distracted for long. They spent a lot of time pulling yet more things off the tree, and trying to eat the branches. Alex even attempted to suckle on the lights (which we had turned off by that stage) but, thankfully, he gave that up as a bad job.

It didn't take long for the inevitable to happen:

.. and again. And again. Oddly, when it's lying on its side, they leave it alone.

So. This week, I've made my first batch of mince pies and put up the decorations. I've put the tree up several times. I've also finalised and printed our family newsletter and written cards - fewer and fewer each year, as more and more people turn to electronic greetings. I even posted them. I think we've finished all our gift shopping too, the majority of it online.