Getting ready slowly...

So, I started today with a list of about 30 items to do before leaving for the UK tomorrow night. We thought we might try to get ready today, so we could have a dayoff tomorrow. Or, more likely, do all the things we'd forgotten...

Richard had mended the cable I accidentally destroyed last week, so I began cutting the grass fairly early this morning. At 9am some workmen arrived and began climbing over the roof, so we guessed they had come to mend it. Just as well, since they had taken a tile away so heavy rain could have led to disastrous leaking. When they started throwing leaves from the roof, and then hosing it down, I decided to abandon the grass for a while and do some inside jobs. To my surprise, they were here for over two hours and then left their ladder behind when they went, so weassume they'll be back.

This afternoon Richard cleared some boxes out of our garage so he could get the dinghy inside. Then we had to squash some boxes into bin-bags, and decided to burn the rest. There were a lot of branches and other wood that needed burning too, so we had a bonfire... until it started raining again. Thankfully I had cut the last bit of 'lawn' and put the lawnmower away, and I'd also cleaned the patio of all the dirt fromthe roof.

It's now 6.30 and I'm about half-way through my list for today. Some of the jobs are quite short, and I thought I'd just do this one which was to check whether blogging by email really does work. Just in case I get a chance to blog while in the UK. But ifnot, I'll be back in about four weeks.

(Note: It worked, but the formatting came out all wrong. So I've had to edit it. Oh well.)

Genius cat...

We called her Sophia because, even at a few weeks old, she was clearly one of the feline intelligentsia. She knows she's clever. I didn't realise she had quite such a high opinion of herself, though, until she decided to point it out to us in words even we humans could understand:

Journey preparation, first part

Some people are very organised. Everything seems to run smoothly as they prepare for their trips abroad, and their 'last-minute' packing is what they put in suitcases a day or two before leaving.

It never seems to work like that in our house. We often don't even start packing until the day before we leave. We think of things that need doing, but get caught up in non-essentials. Or, more likely, essential matters which we have procrastinated about for the past month or two.

This time I was determined it was going to be different.

Ha.

We leave on Sunday night for a month in the UK. It's only about a week ago that Richard picked up the tickets, and I learned that it was indeed Sunday night (ie Monday morning early) rather than Monday night (or Tuesday early). But that was OK... we let people know, and I adjusted.

A couple of weeks ago I was feeling overwhelmed with Things That Needed Doing, so I wrote myself a list. Stuff to do in the UK (in case I forget when we get there) and stuff to do before we leave. I felt much better when it was there on paper. It wasn't so much after all, even when I wrote down all the details.

But there's the problem... because it didn't seem like much, I stopped worrying about it. Oh, I got in touch with a few friends and relatives who we want to see, kept the list handy for adding things, and did useful chores like cleaning the oven thoroughly and mowing the lawn - or half of it, anyway.

Now it's Wednesday. This morning we went to the supermarket and the bank, I paid some bills, I signed off various email lists, I wrote several overdue emails, I got all our accounts up-to-date, I transferred some money, I doled out cash for the boys to pay for their various classes up to now. But my list is no shorter because I keep adding to it. Tomorrow is Tim's birthday and he's having a few friends over in the evening. Friday we have our house group here. Saturday Richard would like to try out the little boat, if the trailer gets mended in time. I have no idea when we'll think about packing but I'd really like it to be before Sunday.

Part of the problem is that it's so humid. It's not particularly hot any more, only about 30C [86F] in the daytime, but by evening the humidity's over 75%. The air feels heavy, too. Thunder's predicted for the weekend and I can quite believe it. Just walking about the house feels almost like walking through shallow sea... every step is an effort, and my limbs ache after a while. Add to that the feeling of Pritt-stick all over my arms and back ensuring my clothes cling, and apparently a layer of honey in my shoes, and it's distinctly not pleasant doing anything much. It hasn't been hot enough to use the air conditioning all day but this evening we turned it on just for the de-humidifying effect.

Of course I could take a lukewarm shower for temporary relief, but I know from experience that it's hard to get dry afterwards, and then half an hour later I feel much the same as before. So all we can do is to struggle through, knowing it won't last.

At least it won't be hot and humid in the UK.

Tessie

I've blogged already about three of our cats: Cleo and her daughters Sophia and Jemima (now quite recovered). But it's the fourth who's been giving us the most concern recently. Tessie is not related to the others. She arrived on our doorstep in December 1999, shortly after Richard had declared that we were NOT having more than three cats! The others accepted her somewhat, but don't really like her, even now. She was small, fluffy, very friendly, and clearly a family cat. She even liked small children so we thought someone must have lost her. But we never did manage to find her home. Perhaps she was abandoned.

Her name, incidentally, is really Tessa. And that's an abbreviation: not of Teresa, but of Tessera. Anyone who speaks Greek can probably guess why we gave her that name after it had become clear that she was staying, in the absence of any better ideas.

We worry about her because in the summer she turns into a fighting cat. When she was less than a year old, she managed to get all the local feral cats out of our garden - they were clearly terrified of her. She's like a Jekyll and Hyde character, depending on whether she's with humans or cats. Oddly enough she didn't object to the kittens we fostered for a while, perhaps because they were small and dependent.

In the past couple of years she seems to have decided to expand her territory. Perhaps she started reading the Prayer of Jabez book (about which I have many reservations, but that's another issue). We've actually seen her locked in combat with far bigger cats, and usually winning. But inevitably she arrives home with injuries, some of them looking quite painful. This year she's lost a lot of fur around her throat. It looks very sore but is not bleeding, and she keeps it clean, so we're assuming it's healing naturally. I dread to think what the other cat looked like after the fight...

Still, a big battle with scars seems to be the trigger that stops her fighting for a while. For the last few days she's mostly been inside, arriving on whoever's lap is the last to arrive in any room and wanting a lot of attention. She likes sitting in strange places - yesterday I found her on a plate in the kitchen, and like all cats she considers it her duty to sit on any book that might be absorbing our interest. She's quite interested in computers too: here she is advising Dan on a particularly complex programming issue:


I suppose her stamina was greater than his, but eventually she fell asleep at the computer...

The Odyssey on stage

Last night we went to Theatre Antidote's premiere of their new production, 'The Odyssey', an adaptation for children and teenagers of the epic story by Homer. It's a new kind of venture for the group, and we weren't entirely sure what to expect. Since Dan worked for them last year and Richard (and the boys) spent several hours last week working on sound effects and lighting for them, we were given free tickets.

The play was mostly done in a form of mime - ideal for cross-cultural audiences - although there were a few words in Greek, and quite a bit of singing which, we gather, was in the original ancient Greek. There are just four actors working full-time in Antidote this year, so between them they took all the necessary parts with clever changes either on or off stage. As someone who has very little Greek, I would have been rather lost if I didn't know the approximate story (an outline can be found here, for anyone who doesn't). But apparently all children in Cyprus know the tale, almost like British children know about Robin Hood or King Arthur.

Dan went to one of the rehearsals during the week and took these photos:


These were the basic costumes - plain black and simple - and used for the sailors, when they weren't taking other parts.

This is how movement of the ship was portrayed, with a sail moved by two of the sailors showing the force of the wind.

I assume this was Poseidon, god of the sea, and one of the goddesses. I didn't follow the plot entirely! Every time the crew met someone, such as the Sirens or the Cyclops, one of the actors put on an extra costume behind the scenes. It all worked very smoothly.

Antidote aim to take their productions into the Greek schools, to children who have sometimes seen almost no live theatre before. I should think 'The Odyssey' will go down very well with the teachers, and probably the children too. It's not really for very little ones, but there were children of about eight and nine at the premiere who were transfixed.

The whole thing took just under an hour, and despite my lack of Greek was very enjoyable. There was almost continual music, written by a local composer, which was played by just two musicians: a violinist and an accordian player. There will be several more public performances before the end of the year in addition to those booked by schools.

Cutting grass, plants, and... oops!

I did an hour or so of weeding most mornings last week, before it got too hot. Dan cut some of the 'lawn' about ten days ago, and yesterday morning I decided to try and finish it, so it's reasonably tidy before we go to the UK for a month. There was a definite improvement, here's how it looked after I'd cut the far end:



And here's how it looked in August after over a month with no work on it:



So that was fine. But one of the problems with our garden is that there are a lot of prickly plants with rather thick stems which grow at a vast rate during the summer. I'm not quite sure how, with no water, but evidently they're acclimatised fully.

It's not good for the lawnmower to go over them, so I decided to cut the last few of these using the secateurs before finishing the mowing.

Alas for my carelessness. I didn't notice that part of the lawnmower cable was caught in one of these plants. It's a white cable rather than an orange one, and it was a particularly dirty section. Besides which, I was tired. So I was snipping away without really noticing what I was doing, when I was startled by a big spark leaping from the secateurs. I dropped them instantly, and noticed a click at the same time as the earth leakage trip device tripped. Yes, I had cut half-way through a live cable...

Oops.

So I am very thankful to be alive. Thankful for the trip device which Richard bought a couple of years ago, just in case I ran over the cable with the lawnmower. I doubt if he thought I might cut it with secateurs, though! I reassure myself that I was also wearing trainers with rubbery soles, and that I was only holding the plastic handles of the secateurs. But even so, it was quite a shock. In the emotional sense, that is. I didn't actually feel anything.

Later that morning Richard bought some connectors that will enable him to mend the cable, but obviously I couldn't do any more lawnmowing at the time. Which was just as well, since about half an hour later we had some thunder and a bit more rain.

Car maintenance

A few days ago our car went in to see our (excellent) mechanic. Primarily for a problem with over-heating any time we drove more than a few miles. This was the problem we had way back in early July, but had never had fixed. Secondly, Richard was very concerned about some bad rust around the top of the windscreen. In heavy rain, he was pretty sure it would leak, and would also get much worse. Thirdly, he wanted a towbar fitted so we can pull the mirror dinghy - assuming we can get the trailer fixed.

The mechanic himself couldn't do the towbar or the rust, but recommended someone nearby who could deal with those, although they said they could be expensive and difficult, particularly if the windscreen broke in the process of fixing the rust. The mechanic also said he'd do a full service while the car was there, as it was almost due anyway.

It took a day longer than expected, but that's not a problem. Things usually do in Cyprus. The radiator - which was clogged, causing the overheating - has been totally cleaned out. A full service has been done including replacement of spark plugs. The roof has been mended, the windscreen didn't break, and it's been resprayed to look like new:



A towbar was made from scratch, welded firmly into place, and our towball attached. The people who did it are coming at the weekend to look at the trailer, and quote for attaching new, stronger wheels.


The cost?

We fully expected to have to pay about £400 or even a bit more for all this - almost the value of the car itself. The bill? £200.

Tuesday business

I had to go to the bank first thing this morning. Well, not really first thing since it doesn't open till 8.30. I got there shortly after it opened, and there was no queue. Evidently the best time to go. In the past couple of months I've gone mid-morning, and it's been crowded.

I had to transfer some money from our UK account to our Cyprus account, as I do every month. That one's straightforward. I asked about Internet banking too, since it would make life much easier for paying utility bills. I was given a lengthy form to fill out, with terms and conditions in English. I'm not quite sure what it costs (if anything) - the form didn't say. We don't pay anything for Internet banking on our UK account so I hope it's not much, but the t&c I read this morning did mention fees.

I also had to stop a cheque, something I've never done before. Yesterday our landlady called and said she hadn't received the rent payment for this month. Since I'd posted it on September 1st, it seems to have got lost in the post. The bank clerk checked our account, and it hadn't been cashed (which is good) so she recommended stopping it and writing another. The charge for stopping it was £4!! She did say that if the cheque arrives, we could delete the stop (at no added cost) if we let her know.

Shortly after 11am our medical insurance rep arrived. For some reason insurance here is always paid in person. One month I sent a cheque to the address on the invoice and it caused chaos: it took them about four months to track it down. So now I just wait until the rep arrives! Emergency care is free here, and ordinary doctor visits are inexpensive (about £10 or a little more) so we're only insured for hospital stays. So far we haven't claimed anything on our insurance, nor has any of us visited a doctor for two or three years now, so it seems as if this minimal plan is probably the best for us. It costs £100 per quarter for our family, which seems like a lot for those of us who take free health care for granted, but is far, far less than we had to pay when we lived in the USA for a couple of years back in the early '90s.

Daniel, meanwhile, really did have to be out first thing in the morning. There was a school performance of 'Fairytaleheart' by Theatre Antidote, who he worked for last year. This was one of last year's performances so they asked him if he would join them. It was in Nicosia, so they left at 7am.

As for Tim, he slept until nearly noon after his very late night with Richard in the office, mentioned in the previous post.

At 4pm we had made an appointment to view the house we discovered online. Unfortunately, when I spoke to the agent yesterday, the price is going up by another £20,000! Apparently it's been listed for a year but nobody has been interested, since the downstairs flat has been in rather poor condition. So the owners are paying for major renovations. We decided to have a look anyway, and were pleased to find it in a nice area - only five minutes' walk from where we live at present!

The couple who showed us around were very pleasant and helpful; however when they explained what renovations they were planning for downstairs, we were disappointed. The garden is already very small, and they're going to extend into it, making it almost non-existent both front and back. We don't need a huge garden like we have now, but we need a bit for the cats, to hang out laundry, and just to sit in. There's a little at the side, but not much.

I also felt the apartment block at the back was too close; it could feel rather claustrophobic. And there was no inside staircase from the ground floor to the first floor, just a marble staircase outside which looks very nice but would be slippery, surely, in the rain. There were some attractive balconies all around, but I don't like heights AT ALL so would be rather reluctant to use them.

Having said all that, it was really a very nice house with big rooms and lots of potential. If it wasn't being extended, and if the price wasn't going up, we might well be interested despite the tiny outside space. The downstairs does seriously need renovation, though: it's going to be rewired, repainted, re-floored, and even have false ceilings put in. There's also going to be a brand-new downstairs kitchen and bathroom. It will look very nice. But then again - it will be someone else's choice. We'd rather choose our own decorations.

Anyway, it was interesting to see. We'll certainly be keeping an eye out in that area, and on the site concerned. We still have to sell our UK house, after all; we're not yet in a position to buy.

After we got back, we had a visit from our landlady and her husband, and two builders who spoke very little English. They wanted to see where the roof was leaking. We showed them inside, then Richard got out his long ladder and showed them where he thought the problem was on the roof itself. One of the builders came down with an entire roofing tile in his hand, and said that was the problem. He will come back and fix it some time, but he doesn't yet know when. Of course, having taken away a tile, the leaking will be even worse if it rains again before he returns!