The final nine days of August

 I wondered, at the start of the month, whether I would remember to write about the details, albeit mostly rather dull, of a month in Cyprus, semi-aestivating in the air conditioning. 

And suddenly, it's the last stretch... not that September will be significantly cooler, but the days are getting shorter and by the end of September we should at least have stopped using the air conditioning. 

Sunday 23rd

As with every other Sunday, I started by watering the plants, then went for a 2km walk. I'm not keeping my phone with me every moment, as I used to do. So on days when I only walk in the mornings, I don't even register 5,000 steps. I'm more interested in what my app calls 'heart points', ensuring I reach the minimum of twenty if possible, aiming for heart health. 

We were expecting our closest local friends in the afternoon: four of them this time, which is more than usually come now. So I put a loaf of bread on (in the breadmaker), and decided to try a vegan pseudo-'cheesecake' from a recipe I found online some time ago. It suggested a complex crust using seeds, dates and nuts but I thought I'd keep it simple and use a standard cheesecake base with digestive biscuits and spread. Somewhat ultra-processed, but when it gets cooler I'm going to see if I can make digestive biscuits myself, to avoid that problem.

Random Larnaka images for the end of June

 May appeared to last rather a long time. But I'm not sure quite what happened to June.  As it's the last day already, here are some random local photos from the past month that I didn't use in the only other post I wrote in June. I wrote a similar post at the end of May; it may become a trend on this blog. 

We think this is some kind of fashion show that took place in Salina Park early in the month. Everything was set up the evening before, and taken down by the following evening. 

Moving on from winter

 It's usually some time in April when we start to feel a bit warmer, and as if winter has finally come to an end. Not that we experience 'real' winter here; there's no snow, rarely any ice, and the sun usually shines at some point. But the houses feel cold, with the high ceilings and tiled floors. 

At the end of March I was still wearing two warm layers in the house, sometimes three. I wore a knitted hat and sometimes gloves when going out for a walk, morning or evening. We were using our microwave wheat bags every night, the heating was coming on when the temperature dropped too low, and we were snuggling under our double thickness duvets at night. 

Then we spent just over two weeks in the UK, where it was chillier but mostly sunny. The houses, with carpets and better insulated walls, are rather warmer than those in Cyprus. We had heard that Cyprus had had a major dust storm and a lot of rain while we were away. But when we came back, it felt significantly warmer than it had at the end of March.

The first night back, we threw off the thinner part of the duvet, just using the medium one. We didn't even think of using wheat bags. In the morning, I only wanted one warm layer, and when we went out for walks I had no need of hat or gloves. We had turned the heating off before we travelled: we've seen no reason to turn it on again since returning. 

Chilly weather, central heating... and yet more about shopping

As I sit here, wearing three warm layers, with a cooling wheat bag on my lap, it seemed like a good idea to mention our current chilly snap in Cyprus. Among other things. 

Central heating

I don't remember, now, when it started to feel cold out. Maybe a week ago, maybe more. When we're in a cold spell, it somehow feels as if it's always been this way, and probably always will. I know, of course, that it will warm up again soon. We don't have long winters here. Summer - which lasts about six months - is much more difficult for me to deal with. So I'm not complaining. Truly. 

We have a large gas canister outside, and have to phone the company when it shows less than 25% full. At least, it appears to be a percentage, but we're not exactly sure what it refers to. We last had it filled in March last year, after a chilly period in February. If we weren't using central heating, it would probably last us several years as a supply of gas for the kitchen hob.

We finally replaced our old, inefficient boiler almost two years ago. The new one has to be serviced annually, ideally before we start using it. Because November was so warm, we hadn't got around to calling the engineer, but in December he came and did a thorough service. It wasn't very cold, but sufficiently cool that we wanted a bit of heating to come on in the evenings. 

We're very thankful that we have central heating. It's not normal here; houses are built for the summer, not for the winter. We have double-glazed windows, too. But with tile floors and quite high ceilings, it's not easy to stay warm when the temperatures outside drop below 15 degrees Celcius, as has been the case for the past week or ten days. It's been down to 5 or 6 degrees, sometimes less, overnight. 

When we checked the gas levels shortly before Christmas, it was still showing 55% full. We used the heating sporadically over the Christmas/New Year period. We kept checking, and it seemed to go down very slowly. It wasn't until about ten days ago that the levels were approaching the 25% level, so Richard got in touch with the company, and the truck came just over a week ago. 

And yes, the sky was blue, and the sun was out, so it didn't feel all that chilly outside. But the clear sky meant that the nights were very cold.  At least, very cold from our perspective, and cold enough that we needed to wear extra layers in the house. Yesterday the heating came on even during the daytime, when it has to be lower than 15C to click on. We haven't checked the level recently, but I expect it will be going down rather more rapidly than it did in December. I'm sure we'll need at least one more gas delivery this year.  Maybe more. 

Shopping, continuing from previous posts

Early in January, I wondered how long we could go without buying anything other than fresh fruit and vegetables. We still had quite a lot of food left from Christmas, several frozen meals from November and earlier December, and plenty of other things in the freezer. I quickly realised we also needed nuts, seeds and dried fruit, as well as packaged fruit juice... so changed to thinking about only buying unprocessed or minimally processed foods. Which is what I prefer anyway. 

However, until the end of last year, I would buy - without really thinking about it - products such as wholewheat pitta bread (from the fruitaria), and I regularly bought commercial coconut milk (both the drink and the canned versions) and oat milk. I wrote about starting to make my nut and oat milks at home again in my last post, as well as vegan 'cheeze'. 

While I mainly use fresh fruit and vegetables, there are some which (in my opinion) are a whole lot better when bought frozen. And we were running low on frozen peas. We have tried many different brands, and have come to the conclusion that it's well worth paying a bit more for the Birds Eye variety. The fruitaria stocks this, in their freezer section, rather less expensively than the supermarkets. 

So this was my fruit shop purchases on Friday: 

And yes, it does look remarkably similar to the previous photos, albeit with the addition of frozen peas.  Taking photos each time has been an interesting exercise, demonstrating that, although we do eat quite a lot of fresh produce, there's not a whole lot of variety from week to week. The large number of carrots is so that I could make carrot soup for guests on Sunday evening. 

Having said that, in the summer there are many more fruit choices than there are now; peaches, plums etc are quite seasonal. And although I've seen some early strawberries, experience tells me that they're usually a bit tasteless at this time of year. 

In addition, we were given a couple of aubergines by a friend. I do occasionally buy them, but don't often think about it. We had one, simply sliced and roasted, a week or two back. With the other, I made ratatouille, something I had not made in many years.

I had noticed that our supply of sweet chili sauce - bottled - was getting lower. This is something we've only discovered fairly recently. There are a few different brands available; obviously I avoid any with chemical-sounding additives. But even the best brands are, essentially, sugar water with a bit of chili and garlic. Surely, I thought, I could make some myself. 

I had browsed many different recipes before finding one that used apple cider vinegar, and which gave the option of using chili flakes or powder rather than small hot chili peppers. This was a good thing, as the fruitaria doesn't have any hot chilis. Cypriot food doesn't tend to be highly spiced, and even supposedly 'hot' food at restaurants or fast food places is, to our tastebuds, quite mild. 

So I experimented. The result was surprisingly good, similar to the bottled variety in texture. I was concerned about making it too hot - chili powder is a bit unpredictable - so erred on the side of caution. Next time I'll use a bit more chili powder. But as it's so quick and inexpensive, I don't suppose we'll buy the bottled variety any more. 

On Saturday I realised that we had run out of wholemeal pitta bread. We usually have that with our weekly curry - and I was still using up curry portions that I had frozen last year. So I decided to make naan bread, something our son used to do regularly when he lived at home.  The breadmaker deals with the mixing and kneading, so all I had to do was divide the dough into eight, rest it for a while, roll it out thinly, and then cook in a pan. 

Last time I made naan, I used a tortilla press instead of rolling, but it was a bit messy. Rolling was quite strenuous, but the dough was stretchy, and I could roll each one as the previous one was cooking. And they were pretty successful. We used two, and froze the rest in twos for future curries.

By Monday morning, I realised that we were getting very low on wholemeal bread flour, and also the lighter wholewheat flour which I use for cakes. I did have some white bread flour, and also white cake flour, but didn't want to have to make fully white bread, though I use a small amount of white flour in bread, and about 50/50 in pastry and cakes. I had started my reserve bottles of both sunflower oil and olive oil, too, and I hated the thought of running out of either. And I was craving Greek yogurt... 

So I before I went to the fruit shop in Monday, I went to the mini-market opposite. And here's the result of Monday's shopping:

Packaged flour and olive oil are 'minimally processed', as I understand it. And Greek yogurt is processed. The only additive is gelatine, which I would prefer to avoid - but this brand is, in my view, much the nicest. It's the only dairy product I have on a regular basis. 

And if anyone's wondering why I have some produce in plastic bags, it's because the fruitaria has a kind of colour code: the green bags are for their best quality products, the blue bags are for their mid-range, and the pink are for the ones which are either in excess, or which need to be used up quickly. I mainly buy blue-bag and pink-bag products (I have taken most of the fruit and veg out of their bags for the photos). And I re-use all the bags, for things like cat litter. So at least they're not 'single-use'. 

After the autumn clock change

I know, after thirty-eight years living in Cyprus, that September is not going to herald the start of Autumn. I'm learning that October is really the end of summer, at least as far as I'm concerned. The humidity reduces, and temperatures do too, at least a tad. As I had explained in my post early in October, we started to experience under thirty degrees during the daytime, under twenty overnight. 

By the middle of the month I was wearing long (albeit very light-weight) trousers rather than shorts, and we were using our light (4.5 tog) duvet at night. We were still using ceiling fans, but had stopped using any air conditioning. I was more comfortable using the oven, and started doing a bit of baking again. Friends stayed in our guest flat, and we enjoyed a meal out with them one evening. 

The clocks went back in the early hours of Sunday 26th October. I like the extra daylight first thing in the morning - so it's light by 6.00am now, though that will change as the days get shorter. And there's something about the early nights (it's dark shortly after 5pm) - or maybe it's just something about that last week of October - that makes me feel more energetic, more motivated than has happened for several months over the summer. 

I walked to a church service that Sunday, for the first time in a while; I don't like walking anywhere in the daytime when the sun is beating down and the temperatures are high. And we had a peaceful day; I pottered a bit in the kitchen, and read, and in the evening we watched the first episode of Doctor Who series five (Matt Smith's first), which we thought very well done. 

The end of summer... perhaps?

 When we lived in the UK, my least favourite month of the year was November. After the clock change at the end of October, the evenings were dark early, and it seemed to me that the daytimes were often grey and dreary too. November sometimes dragged on and on...

That's rather how I feel about September in Cyprus, although for rather different reasons. Somehow, with schools starting a new year, and shorter days, I feel as if it should be cooler. September is an autumn month, and despite nearly twenty-eight years in Cyprus, it feels wrong that September here is still an extension of summer. 

I don't like hot weather. I am often out of Cyprus for some or all of August - as happened this year so I miss the worst of the heat and humidity. When I arrived back at the start of the last week of August, it wasn't as hot as I expected, nor as humid. We were using air conditioning with our computers, and for an hour or two at night. I thought perhaps I'd escaped the worst of it. 

Then September started, and the humidity returned. There weren't any heatwaves - and on September 3rd I resumed early morning walks with my friend Sheila. I took it slowly; I didn't manage the full 4km the first couple of times, and had to take a couple of breaks to sit down. But it was nice to be out. The Salt Lake was completely dry after over three months with no rain.

Summer in Cyprus. Again.

 I have probably written about summer in Cyprus more than anything else in the past twenty years since I started this blog. And while I've started another couple of posts in the past few weeks, both are awaiting further developments before I can finish them. 

So, in the absence of anything else which I can write about today, here's yet another post about how summer crept up on us this year...

During May, I switched from jeans to shorts. I stopped wearing sweatshirts. We moved from our thin duvet at night to a duvet cover only, and then, by the end of the month were using just a flat sheet as a cover. I started using 'cold' water for showering; it doesn't really get cold in the summer, and the tepid, not-quite-lukewarm temperature of the water that has been in the outside tank is perfect for me. 

We cleaned our guest flat air conditioners at the end of May. We were expecting guests early in June, and wanted to ensure the air conditioners were available for them if they felt uncomfortably hot. We are at least somewhat acclimatised, and don't turn them on unless the room temperature exceeds 28 degrees. It had not, as yet, done so. 

However, by the first Friday of June, the forecast was for weather approaching that milestone. So we decided to go ahead and clean our upstairs a/c units. There are four on the main floor, and three upstairs; it took us perhaps forty minutes to complete the job. The house was pleasantly cool for a little longer, since they have to be run as cool as possible for ten minutes or so after using the cleaning spray.

Some of them, Richard said, looked fairly dirty inside. So next year we'll probably get them professionally cleaned. Assuming, that is, we remember before doing them ourselves...

Since the humidity was still low, I decided that it was an ideal day to start the annual curtain-washing. Up to 2013, this was an essential chore, and should probably have done more often than once a year. One of our cats, Tessie, used to spray. She was female, and spayed, but apparently it's not uncommon. Some of our books on lower shelves suffered, as did the curtains. As the weather got hotter, the smell in the curtains became more potent.

Tessie vanished twelve years ago, but I've continued washing the curtains almost every year in May or June. Cyprus is quite dusty, and I always like the fresh scent that permeates the house after washing curtains and drying them outside.  I say 'almost every year' because last year we flew out of Cyprus to the UK mid-June, and the curtains didn't get washed. After two years, they definitely needed doing. 

We have quite a few curtains, and I can usually fit three at a time in the washing machine. Everything I hung out on the line was dry within about an hour, so the washing machine was on almost continually, that day, and the following day too. 

With the curtains taken down, two or three at a time, I saw how dirty the windows were. It's unlikely to rain again until September or October, so I cleaned all the windows, inside and out. 

Along with curtains, I also washed the covers of our wheat bags, and the thin blankets we use when watching DVDs in the winter. When dry, I folded them to pack away in an airtight bag. We've learned from experience not to leave things like this unsealed, as they attract not just dust, but moths, and potentially other undesirable insects.

Since the weather wasn't yet too hot, I continued my early morning walks with my friend Sheila. On some evenings I went for short walks locally with Richard. In the middle of the month we went to Salina Park to an advertised 'Makerspace fair', which had a lot of booths showing what kind of things are done at the centre for youth.  We were surprised at how many people were there, given the minimal amount of publicity we had seen.

We were also interested to see that the café building, which had been empty since the park opened at the end of last year, was serving coffee. We didn't want coffee in the evening, but it was good to know that it was being used. 

I knew I wouldn't be using my oven much longer, and that we would start wanting ice cream. So I put the inner container for my ice cream maker in the freezer, in preparation. 

Regular June activities included a birthday lunch for one of our teenage friends, and the local Christian writing group last meeting of the season, followed by a potluck lunch. Richard has been assisting one of the members of the group with self-publication of her book. 

We were delighted to host some other friends for a leisurely lunch on June 20th. One of them was my most long-standing friend Anne, whom I met when we were both seven. We managed to stay in touch all this time, and even met up in the UK a couple of times, a few years ago. This time, my friend and her husband were in Cyprus for a wedding. It was the other end of the island, but they made the two-hour journey to visit us, which was very enjoyable.

As June progressed, the weather was slowly, inexorably, warming up. My last morning walk of the season with Sheila was on June 21st. She was going away for a week, and it was already approaching 25C at 6.15am.  My last use of the oven for the season was on June 22nd when we had our twice-monthly get-together with Sheila and her family, and I made a cake for dessert. 

And on Monday 23rd June, we started on our summer salads. Which doesn't mean we limit ourselves to lettuce, cucumber and tomatoes all summer.  In 2020, when we knew we would be here all summer, I scoured my recipe books for salad ideas. I checked the Internet, too. I jotted down some of the most appealing ideas, and - of course - adjusted them to our preferences, and the available produce. I try to make three or four salads first thing in the morning with a balance of ingredients. At least one will have some protein such as canned fish, air-fried chicken or legumes.  

On 23rd June I prepared a salmon (canned), cucumber and avocado salad; a peach, tomato and onion salad (with 'fake' vegan feta); and a wholemeal pasta salad with sundried tomatoes. 

This was our main meal, in the evening, but we only managed about half of it. So we had the same thing the following day, with the addition of some coleslaw with a lemon juice dressing rather than mayonnnaise. 

Another example is this, which we started a couple of days later:

The protein dish at the top is chopped boiled eggs with lightly boiled broccoli and leeks, the one next to it is mushrooms, new potatoes and green beans. Underneath the egg dish is a salad with lettuce, red grapes, avocado and walnuts, and the other one is the what remained of the coleslaw, which lasted us three days rather than two. 

There was rather a lot that had to be cooked in that second example, which is why I prepare these salads in the mornings, around 6.30 or 7.00 usually. The kitchen isn't too hot at that time, and there's plenty of time for cooked ingredients to be chilled in the fridge. 

There's enough variety in the salad recipes I use that I don't have to duplicate anything for a couple of weeks, but I might do so depending on what ingredients I can easily find. Our fruit shop has inexpensive, great quality avocadoes at present, so I've bought quite a few. They keep well in the fridge, for weeks, and give a nice smooth texture to contrast with the crunchiness of some other salad ingredients.

So we're all set for the summer, I hope. First thing in the morning I walk either to the fruit shop or round the block, to get a bit of exercise. Three days a week, I then prepare salads. I'll deal with laundry or whatever else has to be done before it gets too hot, then aestivate in my study with the air conditioning set to 28C. Not that I will actually sleep. I'll work on photos (I still haven't finished our 2024 photobook, and want to order it soon), and deal with any bills, and do some writing. I'll blog about the books I read, and perhaps work on my sites. 

A cold February in Cyprus

 While January was apparently warmer than usual - and it certainly didn't seem particularly cold - February this year has been decided chilly. Almost from the start of the month, the temperatures dropped. We were very glad that we decided to replace our central heating boiler last year. It has a control system that allows us to set the maximum temperature without heating for different times, during the day. 

So overnight it won't come on unless the temperature drops below something like 14 degrees C. In the morning upstairs it comes on if it's cooler than 18C for an hour or so, which warms the towel rail in the bathroom and raises the ambient temperature.  Similarly, through the day, there are different states and temperatures which trigger it to come on.  

And it works perfectly. If we want extra heat, we can turn the thermostat up a degree or two. If we're going out, or not using one floor of the house, we can turn it down so as not to heat an unused space. Individual radiators can be turned up or down, too.  

In December and January, it barely came on at all. We did notice that the gas level was running low early in January, so we ordered more. We have a large tank outside our boiler room, and a man comes with a gas truck to fill it up when we request it. 

The winter of 2023/2024 was so mild that we only had to have it filled once. Our kitchen stovetop is powered by gas too, so we use small amounts for that through the year. And the heating was working in January, and more so in early February when the temperatures dropped. So much so that we had to order another refill of the gas tank around February 10th. 

We didn't think that was too bad. With our previous boiler, we sometimes had to order new gas every two or three weeks in colder periods. This time it had been over five weeks.

But it got colder. Gradually, day by day, I added more warm items of clothing to wear when I went out for an early morning walk. By February 20th, it was warmer in the UK than in Larnaka. Which was fortunate for Richard, as he had flown there for ten days.  There was even snow in some parts of the island, quite extensive in the mountains. 

I felt quite sorry for families who had come to Cyprus for the UK half-term break (either last week or this week, depending on location), hoping for a bit of warmth. 

Yesterday, I took this screenshot from my phone just after 6.00am, shortly before joining my friend Sheila for a walk around the Salt Lake:  

Yes, that says one degree Celcius, 'feels like' minus 3. Maximum of 14, and a note at the bottom saying that temperatures would be a little higher than the previous day.

Wrapped in scarf, knitted hat, gloves and an extra jacket, I still felt cold, although walking helped to warm me up. For the first time this year, there was ice in the park on some (though not all) of the wildflowers:

There was ice on the park benches, too, although in this photo it looks more like a kind of mould:

I had kept checking the gas - we have someone staying in our guest flat, so the heating is on there as well as in the main part of the house - and by yesterday it was quite low, so we ordered some more. It took not much more than two weeks this time, but then the heating has been on almost continually for the past four or five days.  With fairly high ceilings, tiled floors and poor insulation, Cyprus houses are not built for the cold. So the temperature never reached the figures we had set.

Strangely, though, when the heating is on, even if the thermostat only shows 14 or 15 degrees, the house feels warmer than when the heating is off and the thermostat shows 17 or 18. 

Then today it was six degrees at 6.00am. It felt so much pleasanter when I went out to the froutaria. I didn't even wear gloves, though I still put on my knitted hat. And the forecast is much more reasonable - and seasonably normal - for the next couple of weeks:

So perhaps we won't have to have the gas tank filled again until next winter.

October in Cyprus: kittens, eating out and cooler weather

So much for good intentions. I didn't write a single post last month. So this will be a summary (though probably not brief) of our life here in Cyprus over the past month...

Kittens

At the start of the month, I became aware that we had unexpected visitors. There were two very young kittens, wandering around and crying just outside our boiler room, at the back of our house.

We often see kittens in our neighbourhood, sometimes in one of our side yards. There are a lot of feral cats in Cyprus. They are useful for keeping down the rats and snakes, and the female cats sometimes have two litters per year.  There are sometimes national campaigns to catch, neuter and return feral cats but there are far too many cats for this to make much difference. Historically Cypriots have not liked to neuter cats, so that doesn't help. 

There's a grey cat who often appears in our street. We call 'Mama cat' as she raised three kittens in our side yard in the spring. When these tiny kittens were wandering around I saw her nearby and assumed she was their mother, and that she had gone out hunting or perhaps just to take a break from them. 

But if she was their mother, we quickly discovered, she wasn't looking after them. They looked quite hungry and were mewing loudly. I didn't want to interfere. Touching young kittens can drive a mother cat away, after all. But the little voices were plaintive. So I gave them a bit of yogurt, and they fell on it, lapping rapidly. A few hours later, with still no sign of a mother cat taking care of these kittens, I gave them some of Lady Jane's crunchies (or 'kibble', as I understand the term is now), moistened in a little water. They ate those too, gobbling them down. 

Then they mewed for most of the night. So we decided to buy them some kitten formula, and some kitten food sachets. A visiting friend bought them some other kitten food, too. The kittens seemed quite weak by this time so we realised we would have to be more proactive. Richard built a barricade to keep them in the boiler room, as we were worried about them getting into the road and not being able to get out of the way of a car fast enough. 

Thankfully they were able to lap kitten formula milk from a saucer so we didn't have to bottle-feed, as we did with the seven feral kittens we fostered for six weeks at our old house, over nineteen years ago. We guessed that these kittens were about four weeks old. They loved the wet food from the sachets too, though we were careful not to give them too much at once. And they ate the kibble without any need for adding water. 

However, although we now only have one house cat, we can't keep these kittens. Our existing Lady Jane would not allow it for one thing. For another, we have a very allergic daughter-in-law, so we had agreed already that we won't take on any more cats. And, much as we love having a cat, it is something of a bind at times. We can't go away spontaneously, and when we plan to go away we have to organise a cat-sitter. Usually our close friends do this, but it's not always possible. 

We put photos on Facebook a couple of times, but it seems that none of our local friends want kittens. 

So Richard got in touch with a nearby cat sanctuary, who said they don't take kittens until they're at least twelve weeks old, and have had their first vaccinations. Then they try to find homes for them, and they have a much wider audience on Facebook (and elsewhere) than we do. 

Thus, a month later we are still fostering them, feeding four times a day and taking them out for half an hour to our other side yard where there are plants and fake grass, to give them a chance to jump and run and play. They had their first vaccinations last week, and the vet said they seem to be very healthy. 

We haven't given them names; we refer to them as the little girl kitty and the little boy kitty. I hope that someone, eventually, will adopt them. 

Guests and eating out

We've had several human visitors in the past month, too. We do like having our ground floor used as a guest flat. A long-standing friend and colleague stayed for a few days, with a friend, at the end of September.  They left on the last day of the month, and in the evening some even more long-standing friends arrived for a few days' break. It was wonderful to see them. They spent a lot of time on the beach, soaking up some sunshine (which, they said, had been rather lacking in the UK this year).

They took us out to eat twice; once at our favourite Lebanese restaurant, Al Sultan, and once at our favourite everyday restaurant, Alexander's.  At the Lebanese restaurant we ordered a meze for two, which was more than sufficient for four of us. At Alexander's we had individual meals; I had the vegetarian moussaka, one of my favourites, with grilled vegetables. I learned about this option only in the past year and like it so much better than having a huge pile of chips alongside a moussaka. 

Later in the month we had some other guests who were here for just over a week, and who took us out to our favourite Cypriot meze restaurant, Kyra Giorgena. Meze for two there is also more than sufficient for four of us. 

Indeed, it was quite a month for eating out, something we do quite rarely on our own. But in the middle of the month we went out for a 'platter for one' at Al Sultan, to celebrate Richard's birthday:

We managed to do justice to most of it (though we left most of the extra Arabic bread). 

And towards the end of the month we were treated to yet another meze at Kyra Giorgena, by Richard's cousin-once-removed and her travelling companions. They were visiting Cyprus and spent just one day in Larnaka. 

Bathroom repairs - again

We seem to have had a lot of trouble with our bathroom, one way and another, since it was installed in 2016. There was a team of people who did it originally. While much of the work done was excellent, unfortunately the plumber cut several corners. This means we've had to have several extra repairs in the past few years. 

Most recently we found the points of two screws poking up into the bath, and the base started feeling  spongy, as if there was water below. Richard checked underneath and found several problems, including some totally disintegrated wood supports.  That meant that all the builders' foam had to be pulled out, and concrete put in to replace it. 

Thankfully our young and very competent friend L was here for a few days in the middle of the month, and able to do this for us. 

It meant that we had to shower in my study for about a week, after removing all the things stored in it, but, happily, we're now able to use the bathroom shower again. 

Weather

At the start of October the temperatures were still in the 30s during the daytime, although thankfully less humid than it had been a month earlier. We were still in tee-shirts and shorts, with just a thin sheet at night. We had stopped using the air conditioning in the middle of September, but were still using the ceiling fans until a few weeks ago.

By the end of October, we had put our light (4.5 tog) duvet on the bed, and have started wearing long trousers. First thing in the morning and in the evening I even put on a light jacket. 

Sometimes by the end of the first week of November we have a sudden drop in temperatures, but there's no sign of that predicted this year. Just as well, since we'll have to have our central heating serviced before we use it. We had a new boiler installed in February, and as it's still under warranty, we have to have an official service. But we can't do that until the kittens have moved out of the boiler room. 

And also...

During October, Richard made a brief visit to Egypt, I finished knitting some more baby hats, and continued updating images and links on my book blog. We played lots of board games, watched a few DVDs, and I did some daily Duolingo. We hosted a barbecue for a few friends a few days after Richard's birthday, and at the end of the month I made this year's Christmas cake. 

A working boiler and other incidents

 I mentioned in my last post that the weather, at last, was beginning to cool down in mid-January. Our central heating boiler, which had been unreliable for many years, had another service just before Christmas. That is to say, Richard did the standard cleaning and checking valves, but nothing happened. So he called out the engineer - a local and friendly person. He arrived, checked everything, and then gave part of it a big thump. That worked, and the heating came on. 

But it wasn't all that cold, so we weren't surprised when it didn't come on the following day. On Christmas Day itself, we used our air conditioners set to heat. A few days later when it was quite chilly, Richard went to the boiler room and hit the system in the place where the engineer had shown him. He had to try two or three times, but it did the trick: the heating came on. For an hour or two...

A couple of days later, the same scenario was repeated. And Richard said he was a bit worried that he might break something. In previous years we sometimes had to run down and press a button to turn the heating on, but this was more serious. Perhaps, we thought, it was time for a new boiler. 

The heating engineer told us that a new one would be much more efficient - potentially saving us a fair amount in gas bills - and that our old one was so archaic, he didn't think it could be repaired. He came to the house and measured all our radiators (we have at least twenty, including those in our guest flat and some that we don't use), so he could calculate how much power was necessary. And then, after doing some research, he gave us a quote which seemed quite reasonable. 

And while it was a bit of a hassle for him, with just one assistant, to remove the old boiler - it was very heavy! - the installation of the new one was fairly quick, and everything was finished within one (long) day. 

There's a lot more space in the boiler room now. This new boiler looks remarkably like the one we had in our house in the UK over twenty-five years ago. And while it still hasn't been VERY cold, we've had chillier mornings and rain:

And the boiler has worked! We have a thermostatic system in the house so the heating only comes on for a couple of hours in the morning, and a couple in the evening (when it's cold enough) and it's done exactly what it should. It's much quieter than the old system, too. Rather surprisingly, when the heating is on it also heats our water, although we didn't expect it to have done that. Most of our water heating is solar, and we have an electric boost that we had been using when the sun wasn't out. There's a gas boost too, but we've hardly needed that, since the days when the sun doesn't come out are usually (though not always) the days when it's chilly enough for the heating to come on.

And if the steamer, the washing machine and the boiler weren't enough, the day after we had decided to replace the boiler, my stick blender stopped working when I was making some ketchup.  We had an excellent one which had worked well for about thirteen years. I was able to use my regular blender for the ketchup, but it was a bit of a nuisance having to decant everything into the large goblet, and then try to get it all out. Three weeks later and there's still a tomato stain on the cutting blades. 

But my main use of the stick blender is for soup, which I make every other week during the cooler months: usually from November until about March or April. Putting that in an ordinary blender means it has to be cooled quite significantly, then usually only half of it will fit even in the bigger goblet... so we decided to buy a new stick blender.  Unlike a decade or so ago, there were several options at a local DIY shop, so we chose a Bosch brand. 

Then I reorganised some cupboards to make space for the extra bits, and put the steamer away (but with easier access than before), so the new stick blender could sit on the work surface. And we bought a plug extension thing so I don't need to keep pulling plugs in and out for these appliances:

The cats, meanwhile, have very much appreciated the house being less chilly than it was before we had the new boiler. Lady Jane loves the radiators: 

And to my astonishment, our bird of paradise plant, which bloomed in October for the first time in eight years, has another bloom that opened out about a week ago:

Even more surprisingly, there is another one which is evidently going to open within the next week or two:

I hope this doesn't mean that it will be 24 years before it blooms again...

And finally, showing the mixed nature of Cyprus weather, where it's sometimes very sunny as well as quite chilly, we usually go for a short walk along the sea-front on Friday mornings, to check our PO Box. One one of those Fridays, we were feeling quite chilled with the wind (despite the sun) so stopped at Cafe Nero for some excellent hot chocolate, made with coconut milk. 

Another week over...

 Wasn't New Year just a few days ago...? How can it be nearly half-way through January already? Time has a way of racing past, faster and faster and I really don't know where the last week has gone.

Part of that, I acknowledge, is that I've had quite a bad cold. Which I'll come to later... 

On Friday January 5th, we went for a walk along the sea-front to check our PO Box. And there, as so often happens at this time of year, we found ELEVEN Christmas cards. All from the UK, posted on different dates between the 5th and 17th December. 

So much for official 'last posting dates'. It all seems quite random. 

That nearly doubled the number of cards we received for the 2023 Christmas season, so I put them up along with those we had already received:

 

We do appreciate the cards that arrive. If you happen to be reading this and are one of the people who still sends us a card each year, then thank you very much. But we have been rather shocked at the amount of postage necessary to send a card to Cyprus from the UK. So please don't feel that you must! Electronic greetings are also welcome. It's rather sad that, even if folk post cards early in December, they can take a month to arrive. This is why I always keep the latest cards in an envelope along with our tree and decorations, and put them up the following year. 

So these, which we displayed right through December, are actually the cards we were sent for Christmas 2022 (many of which didn't arrive until early or even mid-January 2023)

The traditional times for taking down Christmas decorations range from January 5th (Twelfth Night) through to Candlemas (February 2nd). But having had ours up since December 1st, I felt that it was time to take them down on January 5th... so we made sure the knitted wise men arrived at the manger even though it was a day earlier than Epiphany:

In the evening, Richard helped me take everything down, and packed it away much more neatly and efficiently than I can manage when I'm doing the un-decorating alone.

And so, that was Christmas. 

Winding back a few hours, on that same Friday, which felt like a very long day, one way and another, I went to hang out the laundry I had done in the morning, only to find it still rather wet. I put it on to spin again, and nothing happened. Well, the washing machine made a lot of noise, but the drum did not turn at all. 

Uh-oh.

The washing machine, which was eight and a half years old, had been playing up for many months: I could no longer select the programme I used the most, and had to use a different one. Sometimes it was hard even to find that. We wondered about seeing if it could be fixed, but thought it (a) unlikely and (b) probably expensive. 

With a second major thing not working, we realised the time had come to buy a new washing machine.  Our previous one lasted nine years, and ended dramatically by boil-washing some clothes that never really recovered. Eight-and-a-half isn't significantly less. And whereas we were happy to buy a used (and probably elderly) steamer at the thrift store, just a day earlier, we didn't even look for a second-hand washing machine.  A steamer might be used ten or twelve times in a year, and we can manage quite well without it if we have to. A washing machine is used at least 150 times a year, with just the two of us, and I would find it extremely difficult to cope without it. 

So we went out to our favourite local white goods store, George Theodorou, after perusing their website, and ordered a new machine. To be delivered on Monday. And while many things have become more expensive in the past decade, I was slightly surprised to realise that our new washing machine was forty euros cheaper than the one we bought in 2015. And it comes with a five-year guarantee.

Our washing machine is located on an outside utility balcony, inside a biggish metal cupboard.  It works well; it's right by the washing lines, and it's not taking up space in the kitchen. 

But also in the cupboard, next to the machine, we tend to accumulate things like old cardboard boxes, ends of cans of paint - particularly when they're still in use - and unused cat litter trays. I also had a large bag of polystyrene beads for beanbags. At one point we had four beanbags, but one of them was damaged by one of the cats, and we didn't really think we needed four.. so I rescued the filling, and thought it would be useful for topping up the three remaining beanbags. The fillings tend to get squashed, so the bags become less comfortable with time.

It was, I think, a good idea. But I did that probably five or six years ago, and had not done any topping up. I also hadn't realised that the large bin bag in which I put the spare beads was a biodegradable one. And it started to biodegrade. I had noticed a few beans leaking out but hadn't done anything about it... and the slight leak, just a week or two earlier, had turned into a major cascade...

I might have left this for weeks, even months longer, although a high wind could have caused beans to go flying all over the place. But knowing that a new washing machine was coming on Monday was an excellent motivator. So on Sunday I set to work with a jug and a new bin liner... 

Richard helped, and between us we managed to tidy up the inside of the cupboard effectively, getting rid of some almost empty (and dried up) paint containers, and throwing out some of the beans which had become very grubby. 

On Monday the new washing machine was delivered and installed, and the old one taken away. I hadn't realised that the door was so dark, I couldn't see the laundry going around inside. But I guess it doesn't matter. 

The programme names seem a bit random; I've tried three different ones so far, and they all work well. The cycles are rather quicker than those on the previous machine, which is a plus point. 

On Thursday, when I went out for a walk with Sheila first thing, the flamingoes were right on the shore. It had rained a bit, and evidently there were plenty of fresh little pink shrimp by the shore. 

We can't get too close, or they become frightened, and my phone zoom isn't great - but I was quite pleased with this picture. 

2023 broke all the records for warmth, at least in Cyprus, and December was no exception. As I said in a previous post, I don't think the overnight temperatures dropped below ten degrees (Celcius, of course) and the daytimes were mostly 20-23 in the shade. 

Early January remained warm, too. But on Friday, for the first time, my phone showed slightly cooler temperatures when I got up:

And, indeed, it rained - not much on Friday afternoon, but today has been very grey, with rain more than once. A report in the Cyprus Mail said that snow is falling in Troodos. 

Perhaps winter is, at last, arriving. 

Oh, and my cold...

I had a slight sniffle on Monday that barely affected me. I walked with Sheila as usual first thing on Tuesday, but felt exhausted when I got home and very 'coldy' for the rest of the day. It was  really quite bad on Wednesday, then started to improve. It's pretty much gone by now. I didn't test for Covid; mainly because most of our remaining free testing kits have dried up entirely. But I checked several sites to see if there were any clear differences. I was sneezing a lot (common with colds, very uncommon with Covid). However I didn't have a headache, other than slight pressure around my sinuses on Wednesday (headaches are very common with Covid), nor did I have any aches and pains anywhere else. I was a bit tired, but not in a debilitating way. And my coughs were productive.

All of which is probably far more information than anyone reading this cares to read, so I'll end here. 

Where is Autumn....?

We have lived here long enough (26 years) that I no longer expect summer to be over by the start of September. In our first few years, I would feel a stab of disappointment on the first day of the month when it was still hot and humid. I suppose it was a bit like a child waking up on their birthday, devastated to discover that nothing had really changed overnight. 

But I was, briefly, quite hopeful at the end of August this year. We had a downpour of rain towards the end of that month. It was unexpected, and welcome... however, it didn't make the temperatures decrease. Cyprus, like most of Europe, has had the hottest summer on record. September wasn't much better. 

Still, by the middle of September, the humidity did reduce somewhat. And the night-time temperatures dropped to around 19-21 degrees overnight, even though we were still seeing more than 30 degrees in the daytime. So, towards the end of September, I started walking with my friend Sheila again, on three mornings each week. 

The Salt Lake had mostly dried out, but there was a little patch of water. I was told that flamingoes have been spotted already, although we haven't yet seen any on our walks. 

But now it's almost the end of October. We've managed not to use any air conditioning this month - though we were using it right up to the end of September - but we're still running ceiling fans, day and night. The early morning temperatures are still 19-21 degrees. The daytime temperatures have mostly remained up to 30-31 degrees. This morning, the Salt Lake didn't look much different; in previous years it's usually had quite a bit of water by the end of October. 

We've had a bit of rain, two or three times, but no more than about five minutes at a time despite forecasts of thunderstorms and heavy rain. I've had to keep watering the plants, something I don't usually have to do at this time of year.  I haven't yet put even our lightweight duvet on the bed, and I haven't got out my jeans. I did find a thin, light-weight jacket that I wore a few times when walking in the morning, but I didn't remember it today, and didn't need it. I haven't wanted long trousers to walk in, either. 

We had a surprise yesterday, on visiting one of the DIY shops locally, to find that they already had extensive Christmas displays. Here's just one of the sections:

It seems a bit premature, when people are still going around in tee shirts and shorts, but perhaps they know something we don't. November is when we usually start thinking about central heating, so maybe this year we'll move straight from summer into winter...

That's not what the forecast suggests:

But they haven't been all that accurate, recently. And tonight we put the clocks back an hour, so it will be light earlier in the morning (which is good for early morning walkers) but it will be dark earlier in the evenings. 

I haven't updated this blog in a long time.  So here are a few other random items that may or may not be of interest: 

• At the start of September, we had our sofit and fascia boards re-painted, repaired and/or replaced by a young friend, using a boom lift to reach the roof. I didn't even know what sofit or fascia boards were until Richard pointed out that they desperately needed maintenance. 

• Some long-standing friends came to stay for a week, early in September. Mostly they sailed with Richard, but one afternoon we drove to a village festival where there was grape-treading, long speeches and traditional dancing. There were more people than I've seen in one place for a long time:

• Our bird of paradise plant bloomed a couple of weeks ago, for the first time in eight years: 

• Richard celebrated his birthday over two days: we had a barbecue for a few friends in our side yard, and the following day the two of us went to eat at the Art Cafe, somewhere we hadn't been for many years.The staff were younger than they used to be, but the place and the menu did not seem to have changed at all. 

• I had stopped spraying everywhere against large and unpleasant insects, as there were very few in August, none at all in September. Then a couple of days ago, I saw tiny ants swarming on the food processor. I cleaned them off, only to find more on another nearby appliance a few hours later. So I pulled everything out, cleaned away the inevitable crud that accumulates behind kitchen appliances, and sprayed the area with biokill.  Then I found more of these tiny creatures running around on the top of the microwave. Apparently they were nesting inside the vents. Google tells me this is not unusual, and the microwave still works.  Spraying the top and sides of the microwave seems to have helped. 

• Lady Jane must have learned that classic early-reading phrase, 'The cat sat on the mat'. Every time I set the table for our evening meal, she sits down on the mats in the middle:

This may all sound rather frivolous, given the horrific war which, geographically, isn't all that far from Cyprus. A lot of exiles have passed through, en route elsewhere, and a few remain. This little island is braced for many more. We've had two people (both friends of friends) staying in our guest flat: one for a couple of nights, one for rather longer. 

The news sites are increasingly negative, with just a few brief lighter articles. The world seems to be a dangerous place, but, where possible, life goes on. While we pray for peace, with little hope of a solution, we can be thankful for all we have, and make the most of it while we still can. 

Preparations for the Cyprus Summer

I have written several times before about our preparation for Cyprus summers, and here I am again, on the same topic.  After more than quarter of a century living here, we're used to it; the only slight variation is whether it starts to feel too hot towards the end of May, or some time in June. And even that's somewhat predictable; there's often a burst of heat in the last week of May, making us rush to clean the air conditioners, only to find that we don't actually need them until mid or even late June.

This year is a little different from previous years in that our guest apartment - the flat comprising the ground floor of our house - is pretty much booked up for the whole summer. We don't rent it out, we offer it to family, friends, friends-of-friends and other contacts needing a bit of rest and relaxation. And if they're coming from the UK or similar climes, they're likely to need a bit of air conditioning even if we're still coping without.

So towards the end of May, when there was a short gap between guests, we cleaned all the air conditioners in the guest flat. It's something we do every year before switching them on: we've done it so often that we can clean all five in about fifteen minutes.  The filters have to be removed, washed and sprayed with anti-bacterial spray that's now widely available at many shops. The units themselves also have to be sprayed, after removing any obvious dust. And then they have to be run, as cold as possible, for about fifteen minutes so that the spray evaporates. 

We had expected to do the seven units in our part of the house a few days later, but - as happens so often - the temperatures reduced again in early June, and we were fine with just the ceiling fans. Just as well, really, since we did quite a bit of entertaining in the first week or so of the month, with three different sets of friends for meals on three occasions in the course of one week.  

We had abandoned our thin duvet in favour of just the duvet cover at the end of May, but I didn't wash the duvets - even the thick one - until mid-June, by which time I was sure we wouldn't need either of them again until the autumn. I used to have trouble squashing them into the closet where they're stored in the summer, but a year or two ago we bought some useful air-tight packaging which keeps them dust-free and easy to find when needed.

Last Saturday I switched us from a duvet cover to just a single sheet; it often gets kicked off during the night, but with a cat who likes to sleep on the bed in the daytime, I prefer to have the under-sheet covered.

Washing each duvet takes up the whole of our washing machine, so I can only do one at a time.  Then I leave each one for at least a day on the line outside, to ensure it's completely dry. 

So it was a week later that I embarked on the annual curtain-wash. The curtains we bought when we moved here seventeen years ago are still in great condition. As promised by the people who made them for us, they wash very well and don't seem to fade.  But there are quite a few of them, as well as the ones I made for our dining room nearly two-and-a-half years ago. 

Taking them down is easier than it used to be, as we no longer use pull-cords - they started deteriorating about six years ago, and although we did manage to replace one or two, it wasn't easy to find replacements, and a real hassle to put in place. 

Since by around 20th June the weather is fairly hot but not too humid, curtains dry extremely quickly. So one one day I ran the washing machine at least three times, with three or four full-sized curtains in each.  By the time a two-hour washing cycle had finished, the previous curtains were dry and ready to re-hang. 

It's not a difficult task - the washing machine does all the work! - but I have to be in the right frame of mind. And with the windows bare of curtains, I saw how grubby some of them were, and gave them a good clean. 

Well worth doing and I was pleased with the result when everything was finished, but rather tired, too. 

June has a series of birthdays, and the final writers' group meeting of the season (followed by lunch). To our surprise, it rained on June 19th, heavily enough that there were still a few puddles in the street the following morning when I went out for a walk with my friend Sheila:

It was the last walk until at least mid-September. Sometimes we keep going until the temperature is 25C or more by 6am, but that hadn't happened; however Sheila and most of her family were going away for ten days, and we never walk in July or August. 

So I remembered to take a picture of the Salt Lake, still looking fairly full (helped by the previous day's rain) and even with some flamingoes in the distance, although they can't be seen on this photo: 

It did get a bit warmer within a couple of days, although I do try to take a short walk in the neighbourhood most mornings, staying in the shade as far as possible. 

It still wasn't extremely hot in the daytime, but last Friday we decided to clean the air conditioners in our part of the house.  The same system worked well: Richard went up the ladder and removed the filters, which I then cleaned in the bathroom, while he went to the next air conditioner: 

We had bought a bottle of spray last summer, but I was pretty sure we were going to use it all up and need more. So we bought another bottle a few weeks ago, in a brand we hadn't previously seen - but they all seem to work well. Sure enough, last year's spray ran out when we still had three units to clean. The new one seemed to spray more evenly, and had a surprising scent of coconut, which is considerably less unpleasant than some we have used. 

In the evening, our current guest flat visitors decided to treat us to a meal at a taverna in Kourium, and then this year's Shakespeare production, 'Taming of the Shrew'. 

We hadn't been to one of the Shakespeare plays for years - not for over a decade, apparently. The last reference I can find was to 'Merchant of Venice', which we saw in June 2010. 

We hadn't previously seen 'Taming of the Shew'. I knew the general outline, of course, but was glad of the complementary programme which gave an outline of the plot, including the names of the significant characters. It's quite a confusing play, with people masquerading as others (and some of the male characters were played by women) so it was useful to have a reference. 

It was very well done - a controversial play, of course, but with some humour, and irony, and - as ever - excellent costumes and setting. 

We didn't get home until about 11.30pm which is well past my preferred bedtime, so it's a good thing I wasn't planning to walk with Sheila on the Saturday, as I didn't wake up until nearly 6.45am. 

And still, it isn't nearly as hot as it can be. I have the air conditioning on in my study right now, but that's because my thermometer was showing 29 degrees - which was the outside 'shade' temperature - and computers don't do so well in temperatures above 28. I don't either. We run our a/cs at 28 degrees (82F, for anyone who still thinks in Fahrenheit) which is relatively efficient, and cools us down sufficiently to be comfortable. 

As ever, the cats treat summer quite differently. Jane likes it, and pointedly leaves any room where air conditioning is running. Alex, by contrast, likes to find the coolest places he can. And if he can't find any room with a/c, he tries places that look most uncomfortable to me:

Of course that's not all we do to prepare for summer. I've already stewed and frozen a couple of crates of soft fruit - peaches and apricots - which we're only able to get here during the warmer months. I'm still making hot meals most evenings, and using the oven, although - once again - I plan to stop using the oven during July and August, and focus mainly on different kinds of salad for our meals. 

I've also sprayed and covered nasty crawling insects (I don't even like to use their name) which come in from outside or up the drains, so that Richard can dispose of them. It was about one per day for the first couple of weeks of the month, thankfully fewer in the past few days. Spraying possible entry-points with 'biokill' does seem to make a difference.

Today we had to have a new air conditioning unit installed in one of the guest flat bedrooms. A couple of days ago our current visitors told us they'd been awoken by the old air conditioner making a loud noise, then ejecting pieces of ice! Not something we - or any of our guests - had experienced previously. It was a unit that was, probably, close to twenty years old, and clear that the compressor had given up.  A new one should not only be more effective, but more efficient too in electricity usage. And it's likely to get a lot of use this summer, with so many visitors expected.

For anyone wondering if anything has changed over the years, or who wants to read even more on the same topic, here's what I wrote about summer in 2012; here's my post about summer approaching in 2014; here's one about preparing for summer in 2016; here's another in 2020; and here's one in summer 2022 which is more about what we were doing during summer, rather than as it approached. They're not the only ones, either... but more than enough, I hope, for anyone bored enough to want to read them.