How I spend my days... in theory

People occasionally ask me how I spend my days. So I thought I would try to keep track for a while, and also include some deliberate structure to the week. At least, as default, for days when nothing else crops up. It's too easy to get caught up in following links online, or doing puzzles, or answering questions on forums when there's no specific plan. That's fine in holiday periods, and is mostly what happened in the 'week between the years', when Christmas Day was over, and the New Year had not yet begun.

The earlier parts of my mornings are usually fairly similar. First thing in the morning (which can start any time from 5.00am to 6.30 or so) I do a few online games (Wordle, Connections and Strands) on my phone to help me wake up, and check the headlines on a couple of news sites. Sometimes I do some knitting (I make baby hats for refugees and asylum seekers). Sometimes I work on Duolingo, the language-learning app which I have on my phone. I might do just five minutes, I might do half an hour. Sometimes I read. 

Three days a week I walk five kilometres or so with my friend Sheila, leaving the house around 6.15am, then we sit outside and chat for a while. Three days a week I leave the house a bit later and go for a short walk around the neighbourhood, ending up at the fruit shop (and sometimes the mini-market opposite) where I do most of the grocery shopping. On Sundays I just go for a walk, for a couple of kilometres.

However the day starts, I'm usually in the kitchen (with groceries unpacked and away if relevant) by around 8.00am. I squeeze oranges and put nuts in a little ramekin dish, and heat up coffee, and take Richard a tray of breakfast to eat on our balcony. Then I have my own breakfast in the dining room (neither of us is sociable at breakfast time). Afterwards I sit in my study and drink coffee while reading, or doing Duolingo if I didn't get time earlier. 

Around 9.00am Monday to Friday the Roomba starts up, and I go upstairs. We spend anything from ten minutes to an hour chatting, talking about the day, discussing issues, or just hanging out. It's too easy to let time go by without connecting intellectually, so we try to ensure that we have at least this time together, without any distractions. On a typical day I then get in the shower about 9.45, when the solar panels have heated the water sufficiently, and Richard starts whatever work he's doing. Sometimes it's a bit later.

After showering, I potter somewhat - maybe putting on laundry (usually three times a week) and putting away the previous load if it's still hanging up on the utility balcony. If we ran the dishwasher the night before, I'll empty it. If the kitchen floor needs mopping, I'll do that. If I haven't done at least fifteen minutes of knitting, I'll make sure I do that. And I read the 'verse of the day' on my Bible app, and a few chapters of whatever 'plan' I'm currently following.

By then it's usually around 10.30-11.00. I have to have some idea of what I'm going to do, or the time will fritter away.

So, I decided to allocate a couple of hours on Monday mornings to working on my sites or other blogs, except on Mondays when there's a writing group meeting. On Thursday mornings I plan to deal with photos. I have got very behind on making photobooks and organising my digital photos, and thought it would be a good idea to allocate at least one morning per week to working on them. On Tuesday mornings my friend Sheila with one, two or three of her daughters comes over to play board games and hang out. On Fridays Richard and I do any shopping that's needed by car, and I allocate other Fridays to keeping track of our spending and printing statements, etc, as well as paying (online) any bills. 

As for Wednesdays, I thought I'd try to do something slightly different each week, not computer related. Once a month the local Anglican church has a book sale, for instance, on a Wednesday. I like to walk to the thrift store about once a month, too, to browse their interesting selection. I might walk into the town, if it's not too warm, or I might do a bit of baking.

On Saturdays I sometimes prepare a curry to go in the slow cooker in the morning, and I do the weekly cleaning. I change the sheet and pillowcases on the bed, dust surfaces that need it, clean the kitchen countertops, and run the roomba upstairs. I clean the bathrooms thoroughly, too, and sweep the stairs. If I'm feeling energetic and it's not too hot, I can get everything done in around an hour, but usually I take it more slowly, and that takes up most of the rest of the morning.

On Sundays I aim to go to the Anglican church service twice a month, although I don't go in the hottest months, and sometimes events conspire to stop me going anyway. On the other two Sunday mornings each month I am in the kitchen, preparing soup and a dessert for the evening which we spend with friends. 

All of which takes us to lunch-time. Six days per week we eat cold food: bread, salads, leftovers, cheese (dairy-free, mostly), humus, peanut butter etc or, on chilly days, soup. On Sundays, left over from the traditions of our childhoods, we have a cooked lunch which usually includes roast potatoes. 

By two o'clock I've had my coffee and cleared away, and hung out laundry if relevant. I'm ready to sit down for a break with more online puzzles, helping on a forum, checking email and Facebook etc. In theory I stop this about 2.30, but I know it's easy to get distracted; more realistically, it goes on to nearer 3pm. After that, for a couple of hours in the afternoons my plan is to write: reviews of books I've finished reading, or DVDs we've seen, or perhaps do some short-story writing or blogging. By 5pm I'm usually read to start food preparation.

We eat around 6.00pm, maybe a bit later, and afterwards I clean up, and do my evening Duolingo session (around ten to fifteen minutes, usually). 

At 7.30 or so we stop using the computers; three evenings we go out for a short walk, followed by either a couple of episodes in a DVD series, or a two-player board game. 

One evening a week we watch a film on DVD. On Thursday evenings, Sheila comes to play a game.  Every other Sunday she and her family are here for games/DVDs in the afternoon and a shared evening meal, and they stay until 8pm or later, after which I do Duolingo and read. On Saturday evenings either she comes for a board game, or we watch some Doctor Who. 

And some time between 9pm and 10pm I start getting ready for bed... 

New year, new decade, new (to me) phone....

Back in September 2018, I wrote about starting to use a basic smartphone. I called it my 'slightly intelligent' phone as it didn't actually do all that much. That was good, I thought, as I had resisted the idea of a smartphone for a long time. But being able to see photos of the grandchildren via Whatsapp was a big motivation to acquire one, and to start using it as a phone when my old phone (which was not at all intelligent) was becoming unusable.

I was surprised how much I liked it. It didn't have room to install much, but my son put an extra chip in it, and I was able to download an app for gmail, and Facebook 'Lite', and a few other things. When I travelled briefly to the UK a year ago, to see the family, I didn't take a computer; I was able to keep in touch with friends and Facebook via my phone.

What I liked most of all was being able to check email and Facebook updates quickly in the morning, before going out for a walk or having breakfast. Sometimes I'm anxious to hear from someone, or concerned about something, and in the past I would have turned my computer on - only to get distracted, possibly for hours. With the phone, I could check all I needed in about five minutes, and then get on with my day. I've reached the point where I don't usually turn my computer on until after lunch, meaning I get a lot more done in the mornings.

There were some disadvantages to such a basic phone, however. The main and most frustrating one was not having a camera on the front. Not that I wanted to take selfies; the problem was that trying to video chat with my grandchildren meant I had to stand in front of a long mirror in order for them to see me. We would try the computer, but the technology doesn't always work. So we would usually end up waiting for Richard, if he was out, so we could use his phone.

I was mildly disappointed that there was no way to instal a step-counter on the phone, and also found the poor quality of the photos on it a bit disturbing. I still have a camera and mostly use that. But when I go walking with my friend Sheila early in the morning, I don't usually take anything other than my house keys and phone.  There are a lot of flamingoes on the Salt Lake this year (over a thousand, we're told), but when I tried taking a photo with my old phone, the best of them looked like this:

If you click to enlarge it, you'll see that they just look like pink blobs.

Back in the summer, my family tried to persuade me to buy a better phone, and I did look at some options. But some were too big, and some were too heavy, and the ones that quite appealed (and which weren't horrendously expensive) had poor reviews.  So I decided not to bother.

However, Richard bought a new Android to replace the one he had been using for work which had become unreliable, switching itself off every couple of minutes.  He had hoped I might like one the same, but it was too big for my hands, and too heavy to feel comfortable.

In an idle moment I did some online research and learned that random turning off is a common feature of this kind of phone when the battery needs replacing; it swells slightly, and triggers the off button. I quite liked that phone - so we decided to order a replacement battery, to see if it could be made to work.

Our son brought it out with him when he came for a week over Christmas, and I agreed to try it. He moved my sim, and the extra memory chip, and put the new battery in.  It worked!  It was so much faster than my other phone! Installing the same apps was easy and quick!

Yes, it really is only 15 degrees here at present, down to about 9 overnight.  Not warm at all.

The phone is bigger but not much heavier than my old one, and it has a camera on the front as well as the back. It also let me instal a step-counter, which I hope will motivate me to do a bit more walking. I'm not doing very well so far; this morning it was raining at 6.00am so I didn't go out walking with my friend.

The pictures taken still aren't as good as my real camera, but they're a lot better than the other phone was.  Here's how the flamingoes looked on the 'new' phone when we walked early in the morning on New Year's Eve:

They're still not particularly clear in a photo this size, but much more obviously flamingoes if you click to enlarge the picture.

Within a couple of days, I was carrying the phone around with me everywhere. I'm still getting used to some of the functions, and am quite slow with it. I am not planning to use it for YouTube or even browsing, but I like the speed, and the quality, and the ease of use.

I passed my other phone to my friend, for her younger daughters to use when out and about. They have already done more with it than I ever managed to do.  No doubt there are far more features on my 'new' one than I am aware of, and I probably won't ever discover the majority.

But, as we start the 2020s (yes, I know, this is technically the last year of the previous decade, but still the first year of the 'twenties') I don't expect to return to using a non-smart phone.

Photobooks on Photobox

I have always liked photographs. As long back as I can remember, anyway. I was given my first camera when I was seven. I took photos on holidays with my little Instamatic. At some point I was given my grandfather's old 35mm camera.

In my teens, I took photos at school; I embarrassed friends by taking photos at parties. I was absolutely thrilled with the gift of a negative album and half a dozen photo albums when I was about fourteen. I organised and annotated some of my pictures; I stored my negatives carefully, with dates, names and places.

I suppose it's because I'm not at all a visual person that I like looking at photos. I can't picture anything clearly in my head, with my eyes closed. So I rely on photos to remind me of scenes in the past, and people I have known. My parents had a darkroom in the house I grew up in, and I loved seeing the pictures emerging after developing the films, and then processing the images.

In the early 1980s, colour films dropped in price, and it was possible to send films to be processed, at a cost that was rather less than that of buying new chemicals for the darkroom. I was newly married, at university and then out at work, with a house that needed a lot of repair work and redecoration. So I appreciated the saving in time, too. I was much less disciplined about organising negatives - they came in nice little sleeves anyway - but I bought new slip-in albums and kept more-or-less up-to-date with the photos.

In 2005, we moved from analogue film to digital photos. But I still ordered prints. It was more economical and far more efficient - I could take as many photos as I wanted, choose the best ones, and order just those.  I didn't get them locally; I uploaded them to one of the online photo processing places; originally Kodak Gallery (which closed some years ago), and then the excellent Photobox site.

The number of albums kept growing. It was proving more difficult to find suitable new albums, however.  And I was running out of space:

Back in 2010, I had managed to make a digital 'photobook' at Kodak Gallery online. It was our thirtieth wedding anniversary, and I wanted to make a memento. I scanned some of my favourite photos over the years, which I uploaded, then the site took me through the steps of creating a hardback book.  There were several different formats offered for each page - I could place just a single picture, or four, or nine... I experimented with the options, and we were very pleased with the eventual result:

I had wondered, more than once, about making more photobooks.  The Photobox site offered them, but they seemed extremely expensive.  However, they regularly sent me emails of special offers:  50% off everything on the site;  60% off photobooks;  extra pages free with photobooks; - I never knew what was coming next, but tried to take advantage of special offers with the prints I was ordering.

Early in 2016 I calculated the cost of making a regular photo album with prints ordered from Photobox.  I had discovered somewhere in Cyprus that sold photo albums holding 300 prints, which would - just about - take about a year's worth of pictures.  The album cost about €20.  300 photos at about ten pence each cost around £30.  Total: not far off £50.  The special offer reduced-price Photobooks, with up to 100 pages, cost about £40.  I could put in more photos - each page can take at least six photos - and I knew they would take up much less space than regular albums.

I decided to try it with our 2016 photographs. I finished my last analogue album, ensuring it ended at the end of 2015. And over the year, I sorted and uploaded to Photobox one month's photos at a time, then very much enjoyed playing around with the online system to create the photobook. I realised I didn't just need to use the pre-defined templates. I could add extra photos, place extra text, and change the size or shape of the pictures.  There were different backgrounds available, and also some extra illustrations I could add.

Many of my online friends were creating 'bullet journals' at the time; hand-crafted beautiful books containing memorabilia of their day-to-day lives, along with photos and hand-written text.  I am so un-artistic that I could not do that kind of thing; but making an online album fulfilled a similar function.  Early in 2017 I ordered my 2016 album, and was very pleased with it.  There were, inevitably, lots of pictures of my grandson:

I liked being able to include several similar images.  And at times I placed far more than six on one page:

Inevitably there were a few typos in the text, and I had not been consistent with the font size or colour. But I was so pleased with it that I've kept making the current photos into photobooks: 2017 and 2018 are complete, and 2019 is in process; I'm up to the end of June so far.

Having established that photobooks are good value, great quality, and - best of all - replaceable, should any disaster strike the ones we have - I started thinking about making them with older photos.  My first album, from the 1960s, has photos falling out; we don't have an album at all from Richard's childhood.  But I had some scanned copies of negatives of photos from both sides of our family, and decided to start with the year Richard was born.

I quickly realised that I didn't have all the available photos. So this project was going to have to pause until I could get hold of them to copy.

Meanwhile, our 1980 professional wedding album was looking considerably the worse for wear:

The photos inside fall out if we're not careful, and some of them are starting to fade.  We only selected about eight of them, but there were about fifty or sixty taken by the photographer, and more by my father and my father-in-law.  We had photographed the 'proof' album with all the professional photos (which my parents-in-law had bought), and I had scanned my father's negatives, and also some slides we had taken on our honeymoon.

So I decided to skip forward to 1980.  I first made us a new wedding/honeymoon album:

I even scanned copies of the wedding service booklet and hymn sheet to include:

And then I made the decision to create photobooks of ALL our photos - the analogue albums only ever contained a selection of the better ones, and some of them are very faded now.

So I got going on chronological albums, making one that covered the years from 1980-1983, and one that covered 1984-1985.  I've been reminded about my grandparents' golden wedding, my grandfather's 80th birthday, and some holidays we had in the Middle East, where my parents were living.

I was particularly looking forward to the next few, as they include our sons as babies.  I ordered 1986-1987 about a month ago:

Daniel had four grandparents and five great-grandparents still living when he was born, so I have loved seeing photos of them together.  I've also included pictures of Richard's work at the time - photos which never made it into our former albums.

I've been working on the next two albums as well, and they're just about ready to order; I'm hoping for a good special offer in the next few weeks.  There's no hurry - once created, they stay in my Photobox 'creations' collection, along with the ones I have ordered.

The bookcase in the photo above is about 60cm wide.  The middle shelf contains twelve books, which just about fit, covering something like 18 years of our married life.  The lower shelf contains ten slightly bigger books, covering ten years of our life.  Digital photography leads to more photos being taken, and as I get older I like more photos anyway. Particularly of our grandchildren.

By contrast, here are our first eight photobooks. The two on the left are the special anniversary and wedding ones. The remaining six, covering ten years (1980-1987 and 2016-2018) take up just eight centimetres of shelf space:

It's said that one knows how good a company is by the way they deal with things that go wrong. I had to test that out a couple of months ago, when I ordered two photobooks at the same time. When the parcel arrived, it contained one of the ones I had ordered, and one that was nothing to do with me - on the front was a photo of someone I did not recognise, and some text in one of the Scandinavian languages.

I clicked 'help' on the Photobox site, and was greeted by an online 'chat' box. I explained the problem to an extremely helpful assistant, who apologised profusely and said that just occasionally something goes wrong with the printing, and an order gets missed out. She ordered a replacement album to be sent to me, and asked me to return the one that wasn't mine, and to send them a copy of the postage receipt. I did so, and the amount was refunded to my Photobox account within a day.  I was very impressed with how quickly it was handled.

I would highly recommend Photobox to anyone interested in trying this kind of thing. If you do, make sure to get on their mailing list so they send you regular special offers.  

A fortnight in January in Cyprus

I decided I would write a blog post each Saturday this year. I managed it once.  I'm not sure what happened last Saturday, but evidently I didn't write anything. I haven't taken many photos this month, either. Rather a contrast to last Summer, when the family were staying and I took several photos on almost every day.  One of the things I've been doing is creating our 2017 photobook on the Photobox site, a few pages at a time. I've reached the end of June, which has almost as many pages as the first five months put together.

Nearly two weeks ago, we had our friend Jacob and his employee Mike back for a few days to do some more repair work on the house. They painted balcony railings, and the spiral staircase we have outside our house, and they 'spritzed' some of the back wall. They made a cover for one of our water tanks, which was - for some strange reason - missing its cover, and they worked with Richard to encase all our external wires in trunking. One of the cables had almost perished in the sun; it should have been encased a long time ago.

We've continued playing board games regularly with our friends, and on Tuesday this week revived an old habit - we played Settlers-by-Facetime with our son Tim, who now lives in the UK.  It took a while to get everything set up and working as we hadn't done this for some years; I think the setup took as long as the game. But it worked well, and was great to have a three-player game, and chat, even if he's two thousand miles away.

On Thursday, we woke to grey skies. Sheila and I went for our walk, although the trail was somewhat muddy and there were a few spots of rain. Within about half an hour of getting home, it started to pour.  Thankfully I had brought in the laundry I did the previous day. In Cyprus, when it does rain, it can be torrential.  There were high winds and hours of rain; the sun came out briefly a couple of times, but mostly the sky was grey. We had a few drips of water through the roof, but mostly it was fine. We had to use our electric water heater to get hot water for showers, as there was no solar heating at all. And it was cold. It had been a mild winter so far, but the house felt very chilly.

Yesterday Richard did the annual UK tax returns. It's not a task he relishes, though I do the bookkeeping through the year so it isn't too hard to get the figures we need to enter. He was quite frustrated by the whole process, as the UK government website seemed to be extremely slow. However, he finished eventually, and in celebration I made his fifteenth cake (out of sixty) for his 60th birthday year. It was a simple microwave chocolate mug cake with Bournville chocolate squares pushed into it; a little dry, but the melted chocolate helped:

It filled the large mug we bought for this purpose, and made two good sized portions:

In the afternoon, the entire Internet seemed to slow down. I don't usually notice when it's a bit slower than usual, but I was trying to print the statements from our two bank accounts and credit card, and I couldn't get some of them to load at all. No problem with the Cyprus bank, but the UK one, which is usually very quick, was unbelievably slow.  

Richard, meanwhile, was trying to download some videos for work, which he had to edit. He was already somewhat frustrated as the work computer had broken down twice in the past couple of weeks. The first time he took it to Nicosia and they cleaned something; the second time, they took it to the Apple dealer, who said it had a hardware fault and they would replace it free of charge... which is fine, but meant Richard was without his main editing computer for several days. So he hooked up his laptop to the system, which wasn't entirely satisfactory... and then the Internet appeared to grind to a halt.

He phoned our Internet provider, and they said that two major cables that connect Cyprus with the rest of the world had been cut.  This news article confirms it. The authorities don't seem to know why... but by this morning, thankfully, it seemed to be much better.  

Scanning negatives

When our young friends were here last week, one of them asked what the odd noise was in my study. I explained that I was scanning some negatives. She looked at me, a little puzzled, and asked what I meant.

'I'm scanning some old negatives of photos,' I explained, 'and putting them on my computer.'

'Do you mean you're printing some photos?'

'No...'  I paused, and realise that this is one of the technological divides of recent history. A child of seven years old may never have seen photo negatives. Yet until ten or fifteen years ago, the majority of cameras used them.

I've always liked taking photos. Perhaps it's because I don't have much of a visual memory, I like to be able to capture people's faces and special moments on film. I had my first basic camera when I was about six or seven, with black-and-white film which we developed and printed at home. I progressed to a 35mm camera during my teens, and was very organised with my negatives, filing them in albums along with 'contact sheets' that showed positive images in thumbnail sizes, and an index at the front.

I continued doing that up until about 1978, when it became clear that developing and printing at home cost rather more than sending photos to be printed. And I wanted to start using colour film, which was a great deal more difficult (and expensive) to process at home. So I tried several different companies, both high street ones and mail order ones.  Here are a few of the envelopes I found recently:

Since the negatives came in little packets attached to the ones containing the prints, it didn't occur to me to store and catalogue them anywhere else. The prints went in albums, those I didn't want got thrown away (eventually), and the envelopes with the negatives were stored in random boxes and drawers.

I had vague thoughts of eventually getting bigger prints of some of the pictures, but it never happened... and the collection of negatives got larger and larger. I did label some of them with the date and sometimes even the subject matter, but mostly I forgot.

We bought our first digital camera in 2003, but the print quality wasn't great, so I continued using my 'ordinary' camera for prints, with the digital one for newsletters, and the family website, and - when I started it - this blog. That was a definite improvement on waiting for photos to be printed in the UK, and then using our elderly scanner to get them transferred to computer.

In 2005, after losing our first digital camera, we splashed out on a nicer one and found that the prints were now sharper better quality in general than those from my film camera. So the latter was, at last, retired, and the negative collection stopped increasing.

When we first moved to Cyprus, my old negatives were stored away in our UK house, but eventually came out here when we sold it. They were then stored in a high cupboard in our new house. Meanwhile we'd also managed to collect several slides that belonged to my grandparents, and a few quite old negative plates that my mother had been keeping. I knew there were places where one could get these things transferred to CD but they were expensive, and there were just so many of them...

In May 2007 my father was staying here, and wanted to buy me a nice present. I couldn't think of anything I wanted at first, then I wondered aloud whether it was possible to buy a scanner that would also do negatives and slides. He and the more technologically aware members of the family went to investigate, and returned with a 'CanoScan'.

Sophia, who was always a very curious cat, investigated it thoroughly when it was first set up:

(I tried to think of a clever comment about 'cat scans' but couldn't think of anything suitable)

In great excitement we followed the instructions and scanned a few of the slides, and were very pleased with the results. Then we tried a few negatives, and were even more pleased with the results. It was a bit of a complex process: only two strips of negatives can be scanned at a time, or just a couple of slides. But it worked very well indeed.

In 2010 we decided to make a special album for our thirtieth anniversary, so I hunted through photo albums and scanned either photos or negatives (if I could find them) to get pictures of us and the boys when we were younger.

A few years later, we wanted some photos for my father's 80th birthday celebrations, so I scanned some of my old (and well-organised) black-and-white negatives.

A year after that, a cousin wanted some old photos for her parents anniversary, so I did some more scanning. And I thought, several times, how nice it would be to get ALL my negatives scanned, and organised on the computer, and maybe made into new albums....

... but it was all quite daunting. I did spend a few Saturdays doing a lot of scanning, but during the week it returned to being a spot for Cleo to sleep on:

Then one day, last Autumn, I wanted to scan something and the scanner refused to speak to my computer. I tried everything, to no avail. My technically minded son tried different leads and different USB ports and everything he could think of... and it still didn't work.

We assumed that the scanner had stopped working.  Richard reminded me that he had an identical one which he rarely used, so suggested we switch them.  Several weeks later we tried... only to find that his one wouldn't speak to my computer either, while my one worked perfectly with his computer.

It turned out to be a problem with the operating system, but after much frustration and many experiments, we finally got a version of the CanoScan software that works for me. A little klunky: I have to switch the scanner off and on again after each scan, but I can deal with that.

So I decided to make the effort to work through ALL my negatives, one film per day.  If the last software update made it more difficult to scan, the next one might make it impossible; the scanner is, after all, nearly nine years old.

Here are some of the negatives waiting to be scanned:

I've done about ten films so far.  There are at least two hundred more to do, but that means I should have finished by the end of the year.

Back to my small friends, their mother and I managed to explain, roughly, what negatives are and how they worked. The girls' response was that they sounded SO COOL! They thought I should put them on my walls as decoration, because it would be AWESOME to see photos where all the colours were reversed...

I don't always like modern technology, but I am very happy with my digital camera. I wouldn't ever want to go back to the old methods.

Flamingo photo... sort of

On this morning's walk along the Salt Lake trail, the flamingoes were clearly in evidence, close enough that I thought they would look quite clear on a photo:

As so often, they just stood in a long, long row, rather crowded at one end and well spaced out at the other. They were chattering away, but it sounded a lot more amicable than the noisy argument they were having ten days ago.

I was a bit disappointed to see that they still looked rather like dark blobs on the photo. However when I cropped it really close to the flamingoes, they could at last be - just about - recognised:

We have no idea how they manage to arrange themselves in these rows, nor why...

Life racing by in Cyprus once more

It's strange how, sometimes, life seems to go by quite slowly. The winter seemed endless, although it was only a couple of months .I know that the summer is likely to drag too. But now that spring is here, a couple of weeks appear - if it's not too much of a cliché - to have flown by. I had to look on my calendar, and then my camera to see what we'd done. 

There were the usual two public holidays on March 25th (Greek National Day) and April 1st. Since both those dates fell on a Sunday this year, there wasn't any obvious effect on the general public. Shops and businesses were closed anyway. We don't even live near any schools or the parade route any more, so we weren't awakened early by drum beats and whistles, as we were in our old house.

Still, I did go to a church service with my friends a couple of weeks ago, and then popped to the PO Box to collect mail. We happened to be there just as one of the parades was starting around St Lazarus Church, so we paused for a moment to watch: 

We seem to have spent a lot of time with different friends, too. We often see friends several times per week, but not, in general, quite so many different ones. Very unusually we were treated to meals out three times in two weeks, each by different people. All meze meals, but at three different places. One was a fairly newly-opened Syrian restaurant, which was rather up-market and very pleasant. One was at our favourite local taverna, and the third was on a rooftop restaurant near St Lazarus Church, which offered vegetarian meze. It included this rather delicious feta/tomato/onion dish:

And also this (melted cheese on sliced aubergine): 

However, my camera is devoid of pictures of anything much else. 

Possibly this is because our world has been rather taken up by forthcoming changes in Richard's office; for various reasons, almost everyone else will be leaving in the summer. So, with rising costs (and signifcantly reduced funding from the US) it was deemed to be time to close the office. He will be continuing some of the production work for at least another year or two, probably more, but will be doing so from the 'studio' in our guest flat. 

So although he is still officially on sabbatical, his time and energy has been taken up in beginning to dismantle some of the current office furniture and equipment, moving it here, and setting up a new production office in the studio. This has meant that the studio - which had become a general dumping ground for sailing and other equipment - has had to be cleared out... and our guest flat is currently in chaos. I haven't been much involved in the physical work, but somehow this, and related discussions, have taken up a huge amount of emotional energy.  

Text messages instead of parking meters in Cyprus

Yesterday, when we went to get my passport photos taken, we had to park in one of the side-streets near the town. It's many months since I have been there, so I started looking for change in my purse, expecting to have to pay for a parking meter.

I was a little startled to see this, which at first glance just looked like an advert:


But Richard explained that parking meters in Cyprus are being superseded by parking-by-phone. Not being very technologically minded this was a little beyond my comprehension. Apparently he had to send a text message (SMS) to a certain number, giving the parking slot, the car number plate, and the amount of time we wanted to park. Since half an hour cost 30c and an hour 60c, we thought half an hour would be sufficient.

How, I wondered, did we actually PAY for the parking?

It seems that just making the call effectively deducts money from the phone contract or credit.

So, I asked, how does a traffic warden know that we've paid? Assuming they still have something a old-fashioned as traffic wardens, that is...

Apparently the call puts details on a database somewhere. The traffic warden would have access to it. And the phone had a reply text, confirming the slot.

It all seemed rather like a conjuring trick to me, but Richard said he'd done it before and that it was a good idea. I could see that it would stop the problem of vandalised parking meters, and would also stop people from 'giving' their unused time to other people since the car registration is noted.

Anyway, we went to get my photos done, and had pretty much forgotten about the parking meter, when a text message arrived on Richard's phone, reminding him that his parking slot expired in ten minutes. We were still waiting for the prints at that stage. I wondered if he would have to go and move the car...

But no. He simply sent another text message, booking another 30 minutes. No need to return to the car, no worries about running out of time. And the cost is exactly the same as it would have been if we had booked an hour in the first place. Suddenly I could understand that it's rather a good system.

The only obvious drawback appears to be that some drivers do not own mobile phones.. although this would be very unusual in Cyprus.

I wonder if this system is now in place in the rest of the world...?

Renewing a British passport from Cyprus

My current passport expires in the middle of November. I have been aware of this for some months, but knew that travelling in April would be fine - as there was more than six months left. However, I realised that I needed to have it renewed before our planned trip to the UK in the middle of October. In April, I did briefly check whether I could get it renewed while we were in the UK, but the cost seemed high for 'quick' options, and there did not seem to be any guarantee that the 'regular' option would return the passport to me in time for my return trip to Cyprus. Moreover, it seemed like a waste to lose the last six months of validity.

A pity I did not investigate further, since apparently up to nine months of remaining validity can now be added to new passports.

Moreover, it is even more complicated than it used to be to get a passport renewed while in Cyprus.

Previously, such as when renewing Daniel and Richard's passports over five years ago, we went to the British High Commission in Nicosia, with photos, passports, and filled-out forms. Someone would then glance over the paperwork, ensure that the photos were good enough and satisfactorily endorsed, and then send it all away. Typically it would take less than two weeks, after which time we could call to check whether it was ready, and return to Nicosia to collect it.

So, during May and June I didn't think about it too much. During July I forgot about it entirely, with Tim visiting. August is typically holiday month in August with many businesses and organisations closed down, so I assumed we would renew my passport early in September.

Yesterday I thought I'd check the High Commission website to see the opening hours and costs of passport renewal.

To my surprise - and horror - I saw that passports can no longer be renewed in Cyprus. Instead, they have to be sent to a regional processing office in Spain. It can take around four weeks from the time when the fee is processed, it costs considerably more than I had expected, and they warn people not to book flights until their new passports arrive.

Oh dear.

When Richard arrived home, I told him about this, and he said that it's not even legal for courier companies to carry passports over international borders.

What to do??

It turns out that many couriers do in fact transport passports even if it isn't legal, including the better-known ones. It also turns out that there is an application form which can be downloaded and printed, and filled in to send with the passport. I was in panic-mode, which tends to make me freeze up, incapable of anything, so Richard did this, and even filled the form in, tellling me exactly where to initial and sign.

This morning we went out to get photos taken. There are no passport booths in Larnaka, as far as I know, but we've previously used a good photographer who didn't charge much. Unfortunately, when we arrived at the place where his shop used to be, it was no longer there. So we went a little further, and found a photographer shop.. but it was closed. Perhaps still on August break.

Thankfully we did manage to find yet another shop - Photo Jimmy - where we were told that yes, they did passport photos. It was a lovely Cypriot small shop, with a child wandering about, several adults engaged in different activities, and seats for us to sit on.

We had to wait a while until the photographer was ready, then she took about five or six different shots before getting one that she was happy with. Conscious of the instructions about British passport photos I had to stay serious; not a hint of a smile is permitted. I was a bit puzzled that the photo was taken with a green background, but that was soon changed by the young woman sitting at the computer.

We had to wait a while longer while the printing machine was cleaned - by the photographer and the guy whom we assumed to be the owner - and were then asked if we wanted four or nine photos. Since I only needed two, we asked for four. They printed some, then came to check the dimensions. Richard had printed out the full, detailed instructions about passport photos including 'good' and 'unacceptable' variations, so they double-checked, ,and then printed some slightly smaller versions. When done, we measured them and they were exactly correct.

We were charged 7 euros for the photos, which seemed like good value to me, given the amount of time spent by so many people - and the owner even gave us the slightly-too-large versions free as they were obviously of no use to him. So we gave him the printed instructions, which were no longer of use to us, but which could be helpful for producing passport photos for people who don't know the rules.

This afternoon Richard is asking a banker friend to endorse one of my photos, and he will then take the envelope with documentation, passport, payment instructions and photos to one of the courier companies to take to Madrid. I just hope it arrives back more quickly than expected, so that we can book flights to the UK for the middle of October.

In all it's going to cost over 200 euros for my passport to be renewed, which is rather a shock to the system, but if we think of it as 20 euros per year, it's not so bad.

What did give me pause for thought, however, was realising that the next time I need my passport renewed, I will be 61...

Lunar eclipse as seen from Cyprus

For once, I knew in advance that there was going to be a lunar eclipse last night. More importantly, it was supposed to start in the evening when I would still be awake. I might still have forgotten about it, if I hadn't seen this fairly amazing huge and beautiful full moon in the evening sky, just as I was pulling the curtains around 8.00pm:


I checked a couple of websites, which said that the eclipse would be visible in Europe and Asia, primarily - either of which could apply to Cyprus. They said it would start at 18.30 UT, which I gather is the new politically correct GMT. So I added a couple of hours, entirely forgetting that we're now in Summer Time. Which explains why, at 8.30, the moon still looked full, albeit rather higher in the sky (and less easy to photograph without camera shake):


Realising that I was an hour out in my calculations, I didn't look at it again until 9.30, by which time the eclipse had undoubtedly started:


I thought about it again at 9.50, and took this picture, holding the camera as still as I could:


I suppose I should have found a tripod, but it hardly seemed worth it just to capture a few pictures for my personal use. Still, I was quite pleased with that one.

I realised the moon was disappearing quite fast, so I only left it ten minutes before taking the next picture:


Being much more of a lark than a night owl, I don't like staying up much beyond 10.00pm if I can avoid it, but for the sake of posterity, I did take one more picture just after 10.15:


So much for astronomy. The last eclipse I wrote about was over five years ago, when Tim and I watched a partial solar eclipse.

Procrastination is a great thing, in moderation

It's been weighing on me for a few weeks, now. The annual newsletter, that is. I started writing it, full of good intentions, towards the end of November. Then we heard the news that the MV Doulos will no longer be allowed to sail after the end of the year. It was possible that Daniel and his girlfriend might be coming to Cyprus in January. So naturally, I had to wait until we knew for sure what they were going to do before finishing the newsletter.

It was last weekend that we heard that they are going to Carlisle for three months, to work in their organisation's audio-visual department. So they won't be coming to Cyprus until April, which was the original plan. So I could write the newsletter on Saturday, write Christmas cards on Sunday, have the newsletters printed at Richard's office on Monday, and then post them on Tuesday, when I went to the PO Box.

No problem... but somehow the metaphorical weight of this newsletter had increased. I did search for a few relevant photos, and exported them to a useful size. But on Saturday, we did our big shop, so I had to put vast amounts of groceries away, and fold up the carrier bags to re-use. We were given some lemons earlier in the week, so as the mains water was on, I thought I'd better make our first batch of lemonade for the season. The laundry on the line was dry, so I had to put all that away in between rain showers. I even did a bit of ironing. And of course I had to fill the drinking water bottles. And I do a couple of Facebook games at weekends. In the evening we were out for a game of Settlers. And so the day went by, and I didn't write the newsletter.

On Sunday, we were expecting friends in the evening for our breakaway get-together of part of our renegade cell group. So I needed to make bread (three loaves), and soup (tomato) and our first batch of mince pies - not for the evening but for the following day. And I really needed to do some general sweeping and mopping, and keep up with my email, and Facebook. And I realised that I needed to look at the anthology that I'm going to produce for the writing group. Our friends came at 4pm to watch the musical 'Annie', and then we had an enjoyable evening together. So the day went by, and I didn't write the newsletter.

On Monday I was hosting the writing group, which includes one person who is allergic to cats. So I dusted and swept and mopped again, and vacuumed all the soft furniture, and then - since I had some extra time - I even cleaned some of the windows. And spent a bit more time looking at material for the anthology, so we could discuss it at the meeting. Since it's the last one of the year, we all brought some finger foods and had lunch together. And in the afternoon I did some laundry, and read and wrote email... and the day went by without me writing a newsletter.

On Tuesday I help at Tots. I did get to the PO Box first, which wasn't easy since I'd stubbed a toe quite badly on Monday morning and it was rather painful on Tuesday. I was thankful to have a ride home after Tots. And am always so tired by the end that I couldn't do anything much in the afternoon, other than sorting through the mail, and putting away the laundry, and writing some lengthy emails.

On Wednesday, I knew I had to get to the newsletter. But Wednesday is the day when I clean the upstairs and make the bed with clean sheets, so I determined to do that first. I did a very good job. I cleaned the entire house on Wednesday morning, and made up Tim's bed as well as ours, since he's coming back for Christmas. And I made some bread, and a slightly more organised lunch than usual since we were entertaining Richard's book-keeping colleague, and his small assistant at King Malu.

Then I'd offered to play games with our friends' children in the afternoon, so that was another couple of hours. By the time I got home I needed to start cooking for our evening meal, and when we'd eaten Richard suggested some board games.

So I still hadn't written the newsletter, but at least the house was sparkling clean by the end of Wednesday.

Today, the boy who usually spends the morning here wasn't coming, so I knew I had to write the newsletter. But first I had to proof-read Tim's latest essay, which he sent me last night, and which has to be handed in tomorrow.

Then I looked at my 'task' list in gmail, and was a bit shocked to see just how many things I'd neglected in the past few days. And I remembered a few short, urgent emails that I needed to write. So I did those. I made an online payment that was outstanding. I finally got around to ordering prints of the past five months' worth of photos which I'd uploaded to the Kodak gallery. I wrote reviews of the last two books I'd read. I realised that the Bibliophil.org site where I've kept my full list of books for the past few years really isn't functional - it hasn't been, for a few months now - so I searched for a new place to have as backup (Goodreads being my prime book list) and decided to try Shelfari. So I had to export and import the list.

In fact, I got right up to date with everything on my lists for the past few days. Other than one item...

.. and finally, I had nothing left on the list other than the newsletter. Procrastination had to be put aside. It didn't even take me particularly long to put in the photos, write a bit more, and adjust it to fit on one side of paper. Tomorrow Richard will print it on his office colour laser printer, and I hope to post them next Tuesday. Or possibly even Monday.

But if I hadn't procrastinated about the newsletter for so long, I probably wouldn't have got all those other things done...

Frustrations and worries in Cyprus and elsewhere

It was a mixed kind of day, yesterday. For one thing, I kept thinking it was Friday, though I've no idea why.

Late morning, I had an email from Daniel, letting me know that after an inspection, towards the end of their major, and quite lengthy dry-dock in Singapore, the end is finally drawing near for the MV Doulos. Major steel replacement is required in order to meet next year's new and more stringent regulations, and the cost would be several million euros. It would take a few months to do, and even then the ship would not be able to sail beyond September 2010. Decidedly not worth doing, although it was a difficult decision to make. And although he seemed pretty certain this was definite, it wasn't quite 'official'... so we couldn't let anyone know.

Naturally, my mind was churning. What would he do next? Will he come directly to Cyprus in January, or do something else until returning - at the end of his commitment - in April? What will happen to the other 300 or so volunteers on the ship, some of whom only joined a couple of months ago, expecting to stay for two years?

(Today it all seems to be official. I saw an update about it on Facebook. Letters are being sent to important people in the organisation, and information to supporters. It's been announced officially on the main page of the MV Doulos website. I gather morale is pretty good on the ship, but some people, naturally, are very upset at the potential closing down of this elderly ship.)

Back to yesterday: I chatted a while online with Tim, who was pondering which of several options he should choose for his next essay. It led me to checking several websites as he mentioned various philosophers. He was feeling frustrated, because some of the academic journals that his course tutors recommended for the essay that appealed to him most were unavailable online, and nowhere in print in any of the Birmingham libraries.

Meanwhile, my many home educating friends in the UK are feeling threatened and very worried about proposed government regulations. These - in a nutshell - comprise compulsory registration, annually (a time-wasting money-wasting exercise at best) and all kinds of restrictions and requirements for home educators, including regular inspections. They completely miss the point that children educated at home are motivated to learn without curriculum, timetable or planned 'lessons'.

On a lesser - but still frustrating - note, I've been getting a bit behind with uploading photos both to Facebook (for friends to see) and Kodak Gallery (where I can order prints). I organised the November ones for Facebook - that was fine. I have a direct plug-in from Picasa, which makes it easy. But when I tried uploading to Kodak Gallery, the java uploading mechanism didn't even appear. Nor was there the usual link to 'easy upload' which is all I've been able to use since having this mac computer. I'm using Safari as my browser now, since Firefox was so slow after recent updates. But when I tried Firefox, wondering if it was a Safari problem, it didn't work either.

I sent Kodak a report on the problem, and had an auto-reply, but nothing more. So I can't upload photos, which means I can't easily order them. Getting prints made in Cyprus costs considerably more and isn't as good quality.

In the evening, we went to play another game of Settlers of Catan with some local friends. That was good. It was a close game, but Richard won eventually. So I took a photo:


It's possible that I shall be going to Germany for a week, with our friend and her 14-month old daughter. Our friend hopes to attend a conference, and the toddler is too small to leave with her father and siblings, but too big to be quiet in a conference. So I'll be her 'nanny' for a week. It could be fun, and certainly different. However, our friend is having trouble with Cypriot bureaucracy, and still doesn't have her residency agreed. Until it happens, she doesn't want to leave Cyprus, in case she's not allowed back again, since she isn't a European. And the conference starts in about ten days, so time is running out. It's a bit unsettling not knowing whether or not I shall be going.

Then, with my fourteen month old friend sitting on my lap, I received a sudden blow to the side of my forehead. It was a hard plastic cup, which she thrust upwards unexpectedly, and was surprisingly painful.

We got home about 10.15pm, and I was tired. But my mind was churning - mostly thinking about Daniel and the Doulos - and the side of my face hurt when I lay on it. I usually get to sleep within about five minutes, but I lay awake for at least an hour.

And yes, I know that in the scheme of worldwide suffering, none of these worries is really significant.

I've chatted online with Daniel today for quite some time, and he seems quite upbeat about the future. I hope I sleep better tonight.

Shopping in Cyprus

I must start by stating that I'm not a fan of shopping. Large malls, bright lights and rows and rows of things to buy are of little interest to me.

On the other hand, I don't utterly loathe shopping. Sometimes, it has to be done, after all, and I'm thankful to be able to buy what's needed so easily. I'm also glad to be living just a few minutes' walk from a smallish supermarket, an excellent fruit shop, and two or three very good bakeries. Then there's a local gift shop (of sorts), a shop that sells coffee beans, a couple of pharmacies, and - just around the corner - a useful small hardware shop. Now we've lived here three years, I can usually pop out (preferably at about 7am at this time of year), buy what I need within five minutes or so, and return home promptly. What more could anyone want?

(I should, for the sake of transparency, probably add that bookshops are not categorised in the same way as regular shops. I can spend a LONG time browsing in a bookshop. Second-hand bookshops, if well-supplied and reasonably well-organised, are even better. I like charity shops too, and car boot sales, and even jumble sales so long as they have book sections. And I LOVE online bookshops)

Summary of the rest of the post, for those who don't like long-winded rambling: we did some shopping this morning.

Long version of this morning:

When the boys lived at home, Richard (who, strangely DOES like shopping) and I made a once-a-week trip on Fridays to Metro supermarket, where we usually filled a trolley easily. Since they have both left home, we now go once every two or three weeks. I would much rather pop out a few times per week to the local supermarket anyway, unless we need really heavy things such as cat litter.

We didn't need to go to Metro today. But I did realise, yesterday, that I needed a new photograph album. A few years ago, I spent a lot of time searching Larnaka for suitable albums (I prefer the slot-in variety that holds about 300) but I now know exactly where to buy them - at Estia. Which doesn't open at 7am, as far as I know, and - worse - is near the sea-front. Not five minutes' walk from our house, but about twenty. No problem at all in the winter months... but I didn't want to wait four months before filing away the last few photos that arrived recently.

Richard also realised, yesterday evening, that we needed a few items for our guest flat. A fluorescent tube had blown, and the bathroom door wasn't closing or locking properly. So we decided to go out, with the car, to do a little shopping. Or, as they say in the USA, to run a few errands. This might not sound like anything remotely interesting (or worth blogging about), and perhaps it isn't. Except that it's not something we do very frequently. Estia is in the town centre, and we prefer not to go there by car.

Still, since we were going anyway, we called by the PO Box to collect mail, and for me to post another small parcel (containing almonds, chocolate and herbal tea-bags, just under 300g) to send to Daniel on the Doulos. I send these by SAL, a special Cyprus style delivery standing for 'Surface Air Lifted'. As far as we can gather, it means airmail speed at surface mail prices. I'm not entirely sure why anyone would use any other method of posting parcels internationally... but I suppose that's how they effectively tax newcomers to Cyprus more heavily.

Richard was able to stop outside Estia, so I dashed in. Last time I went there (probably 18 months ago) they only had one album of the sort I wanted. Today there were about ten, so I decided to be extravagant (they were marked at 9.75 euros each), and picked up two of them. I took them to the elderly woman at the counter, who speaks almost no English but is very friendly.

I handed her a twenty-euro note.

She smiled at me, then pulled our her calculator. DEE-scount', she said. Of course. I was buying two albums, so naturally they wouldn't charge me full price...

She clicked away on the calculator, then turned it around so I could see. 1.75 was showing. Was that my discount? Was it a percentage, perhaps? The change I would expect from my twenty euros?

She then opened the till, and removed a one euro coin, which she handed me with another beaming smile.

I wasn't going to query it. Richard probably wasn't parked legally, and since I had only been expecting fifty euro-cents change, I could hardly quibble at being given twice as much.

Next we went to the shop that sells fluorescent tubes. We needed one four foot long... and Richard found it quickly, for 1.58 euros, while I sat in the car.

This, I thought, is my kind of shopping. Go to the correct place, put the car outside leaving one of us inside in case it's not a legal parking space, pop in, buy the item, return to the car.

Finding a fitting for the bathroom door wasn't so easy. First we went to EOL, Richard's favourite hardware shop, knowing that if they didn't have it they'd suggest places that might. As indeed they did: Mastris and NEC.

Mastris was not far away, so we went there first. They told Richard that the door fitment was too old - that they didn't make it that size any longer. They suggested a shop called Capella.

So Richard tried NEC, and again was told they didn't have it. So he walked the short distance to Capella, and was successful. Something else we'll know for next time, if another door closing mechanism fails.

By then, we'd been out for nearly 40 minutes, but the car has air conditioning and we were, at least, buying what we needed without too much difficulty. All that was left was to buy some diesel for the car, and then call into the fruit shop. I could have walked there, of course, but I wanted to get a watermelon and even the lightest ones are several kilograms. And by then it was 9.45 and getting rather hot out.

So we got the diesel, then I bought slightly more fruit and veg than I would normally, knowing I didn't have to walk home with it. Richard chose the smallest watermelon, which was still nearly 7kg (and cost us the grand total of 1.50 euros).

All in all, a successful shopping trip. Definitely preferable to the ones where one doesn't find anything one wants - or (worse) the 'window shopping' kind where one doesn't know what one wants anyway and doesn't necessarily expect to buy anything at all.

Another warm week in Cyprus

September. I somehow feel as if the weather should be Autumnal, but it's still hot. Less humid (thankfully) but still much too hot for me during the daytime.

Cyprus started to come to life again this week after the summer break. All the shops and businesses were open again, and some of the schools returned on Thursday. Others will be back next week. A lot of ex-pats are still away - it's generally cheaper to go at this time of year - but others have returned.

What have I done since I last wrote?

General house things: cleaning, laundry, cooking. Email, forums, a bit of chatting in Instant Messenger with both Daniel and Tim. Talking with Richard about temperament and interaction styles, so that he could help someone else understand about personality differences.

On Wednesday I had my hair cut at a local place. A good cut, but a terrible blow dry, and not particularly good value. Half an hour late starting, too. But very convenient in the hot weather when I really don't want to walk down-town more than I have to. Then some colleagues came to lunch. On Thursday I took our BGCM (the Bissell 'Big Green Cleaning Machine')_ to the church hall, to clean the three large rugs used by the mothers-and-toddlers group. That took a couple of hours, and was very warm work but well worth doing.

On Friday evening the house group meeting in our home re-started after the summer, and last night we went to the annual inter-church meal at the Aradippou picnic site. Excellent food, and it was good to catch up with some people we hadn't seen for a while. Good views over Larnaka, too:


.. and observant readers may notice I've chosen another similar view to turn into a new banner at the top of this blog, since the previous one was really a winter photo showing an empty beach.

I've also sorted out, uploaded and ordered from Kodak some prints of our last three months' photos, during the past week.

I hope, as the weather turns cooler, that I will get rather more done!

Ordering photo prints from Cyrpus

When we bought our first digital camera, I naively assumed that we would print our own photographs. I didn't realise that (a) we would need a rather higher quality printer than we had, and (b) the cost of photo paper is pretty high. Not to mention cartridge refills. Moreoever, one tends to waste a lot of paper and ink just testing it out.

At the time, we were unimpressed with Cyprus photo printing. There are plenty of photo shops, some of them offering very quick services, but they were expensive - much more so than the UK - and, more significantly, not very good quality. We heard rumours that they rarely changed their chemicals.

So I was pleased when I found a place online, based in the UK, where I could upload digital photos, and then order prints. It was called Ofoto. I made quite a few orders from them, up until about 2005. The quality wasn't perfect - but then our first digital camera wasn't that great - and the uploading process was rather painful, but the prices weren't bad. And we didn't want that many prints from our digital camera anyway.

At the time, we still used a camera that took film, as well. I sent my rolls of film off to another company in the UK, called DirectFoto. They were prompt, they didn't charge any extra to deliver to Cyprus, the prices were good, and the prints were excellent.

Then in 2005 we bought a new digital camera, and around the same time I discovered that DirectFoto had a similar system to Ofoto. I could upload my digital prints at full quality to an online album, and order prints online. They would keep the photo albums online, I could 'share' them with relatives who wanted to see what we'd been doing, and there was no cost for doing so. They sent me occasional emails with special offers, and codes for 15 free photos.

The uploading process was a bit complicated and extremely slow, but I didn't mind. It was better than the one at Ofoto. I used DirectFoto several times, usually uploading a few months' worth of photos at a time, and making a big order two or three times per year. The prices were very good, the quality superb.

The last time I ordered at the DirectFoto site was around the end of June.

Last week, I wanted to order some more, mainly of our time in Hong Kong and Malaysia with Daniel. So I sorted through Picasa, exported all the pictures I wanted to print in a separate folder, and went to DirectFoto.

The site had been updated - it looked much more modern and easier to use than it had previously. Except that... I couldn't log in. It didn't recognise my email address at all.

I emailed the support people, and had no reply. Eventually I registered again. Then I hit a new problem. When I wanted to use the online album system - where I previously had hundreds of photos stored - I had to register yet again. And this time it wouldn't allow me to enter Cyprus for my delivery address.

So I emailed their support team again.

Today I had an email back. They said they were sorry, but they could no longer deliver outside the UK.

Oh no!

However...

Although I had not been using Ofoto, every so often I received an email from them. I learned that they changed their name to Kodak Gallery. So I went to the site today. They also had changed their design radically. They also looked modern and efficient. More importantly, I had no problem logging in, despite not having visited them for over two years. To my surprise, they still had the online albums I uploaded way back in 2003 and 2004.

And, although their prices look a little higher than Directfoto, their uploading system is wonderful! It's amazingly quick. It's efficient. It doesn't require Java or special downloads. Best of all, they have no problems delivering to Cyprus.

So I shall be making my orders from Kodak Gallery for the foreseeable future.

Ups and downs

The Christmas cake looks as though it turned out fine. I turned the oven off after four hours, but left the cake in as it cooled down. This morning I wrapped it in greaseproof paper and foil, and put it in an airtight container. Other than feeding a couple of times with more brandy (if I remember) I don't need to worry about it again until a few days before Christmas, when I'll do the marzipan and icing.

So that's one thing to cross off my list.

I also wrote three cards. That means there are only about 75 left to do.

I went to the PO Box this afternoon, expecting a few items I'd ordered from Play.com to have arrived. As I got there, I remembered that Richard's colleague still has my PO Box key, which we gave him while we were away so he could check for mail. Very irritating. But I did post a parcel to Daniel (a few music books we'd ordered that arrived just after we left, and a CD Tim has made for him).

Which reminds me, anyone who reads his blog, he's updated it a couple of times this week - not much text, but there are a couple of new photos. Not mentioned on his blog is that the Doulos is currently having lifeboat inspections by a company in Italy. The lifeboats are safe (ie they won't sink!), and the crew have been complimented on their hard work, good attitude, and extensive safety training. On the other hand, the lifeboats are very old and may well not pass the new international safety requirements.

On the way back, I popped into Argos. It was nearly three months ago that we ordered a pair of fluted lightshades from them. We were told they would take 4-6 weeks to arrive. Well, I suppose this IS Cyprus. We were just wondering if the order had got lost or forgotten, when I had a phone call yesterday (asking for 'Mrs Shoe') telling me they had arrived. And indeed they had, packed nicely in a carrier bag, for someone called 'Richard-Sue'. I didn't need any identification, and as soon as I said Richard's name they produced it. That's a good side of life in Cyprus: tust and friendliness.

I also started uploading photos this afternoon, to DirectFoto, so I could order some prints, something I intend to do every couple of months, but keep forgetting. Unfortunately I got in a muddle as I apparently uploaded some before, which I didn't order. And my computer started complaining that it was low on virtual memory - something that happens relatively often when I have Picasa open. Bah. I left the rest till tomorrow.

I wrote the Christmas family newsletter, complete with photographs, about a week ago. Tim set up the colour deskjet printer on the 'guest' computer which runs Windows 98. My computer runs Windows 2000, and for some reason the deskjet printer won't work with that, so I have the black only laserjet printer on my desk.

But no problem, I emailed the newsletter to myself on gmail, then retrieved it on the guest computer.

I could probably have got hold of it somehow through the network. But it seemed easier to do something I understood, and I wanted to see what it looked like as an email attachment anyway.

When I printed it, the black ink looked smudgy. Tim installed a cleaning/setup thingy - the printer hadn't been used since we moved in July - but it made no difference. Indeed, each test print was slightly worse than the previous one. Evidently we needed a new black cartridge. We've had one refilled for the past few years, but I recalled that it wasn't very good last time, and it clearly hasn't lasted well, so it's probably at the end of its life.

But a new cartridge for this rather old printer costs over £20 in Cyprus. If they're even still available. The colour one will probably run out before long, too, and it costs even more to replace new. Which is totally ridiculous, since we can buy a new deskjet printer, complete with new cartridges, for under £40. Truly we live in a disposable society.

Tim suggested I take the file to the photocopy shop and have it printed there. But last time I asked about colour copies, they quoted me 50c per page. 80 copies at 50c each... that too would cost more than a new printer.

But we don't WANT a new colour printer. We only use it once a year. It was an impasse...

However Richard and his colleague have been discussing buying a colour laser printer for the office, for publicity (among other things). They were given a good price, and decided to order one so we can all print our Christmas newsletters on them. Assuming it arrives tomorrow. I might even get our cards and newsletters posted before the 'last posting date', which would be unusual.

Just to round off a rather mixed day, Tim was finishing the last few words of the third assignments for his theology degree course when his ibook notebook computer failed. Dramatically. The mouse ball thing refused to work at first, and when he tried to save his latest version using the keyboard, he got a grey screen (apparently the Apple equivalent of 'Blue Screen of Death') and couldn't do anything other than switch off. When he switched on again, the same thing happened. And again.

Richard thinks it's a hard drive problem. But, alas, the computer is just one month out of warranty. Even worse, there's no Apple repair centre in Cyprus. If it had gone a few weeks ago we could have taken it to the excellent Apple centre in Singapore...

So now Tim's downloading something (on my computer) to enable him to save all his data. Then he'll try reformatting and see if that helps. But he's very frustrated, particularly as he was within about an hour of emailing his essay to the course tutor. It's due tomorrow, though he may be able to get an extension if he has to work on the computer all day.