September in Cyprus, and a warm fridge

A couple of weeks ago, we had a guest to lunch. Among other things, I prepared some basic salads - green salad from a bag, coleslaw, sliced tomatoes, etc. Nothing special. But I'm not good at quantities, so there was a lot left over, which I put out for lunch for the two of us the following day. I was a bit surprised to find that the salad was looking a bit sad and brown around the edges, and that the tomatoes were going soft. 

I didn't think too much about it. But by the following day, the tomatoes had fermented, the green salad was going bad, and the coleslaw tasted decidedly weird. I wondered if the fridge was having trouble keeping everything cold enough. But the ambient temperature wasn't any higher than it had been all summer when the fridge had been working without problem. 

Our LG fridge is only a little over four years old. Our previous one lasted at least fifteen years without any issues at all. We replaced it in May 2020. I was becoming concerned that it might break down at some point, and didn't want to risk a summer where this might happen. As it was the year of the pandemic, we knew we weren't going anywhere. 

We also knew that a more modern fridge would be much more efficient to run. Buying a new fridge, we worked out, would essentially pay for itself within about four years with the saving in electricity. And we had money available. The Sam Vines 'boots' theory worked in our favour. 

So fast-forwarding to now, more than four years later, the fridge didn't owe us anything. But still, a four year old fridge ought to be working well. The compressor, the most expensive part, is guaranteed for another six years. And the freezer at the top of the fridge was still working perfectly well. 

We needed empirical evidence that there was a problem. So we found a room thermometer, and put it in the fridge. We waited an hour or so, and were shocked to find it showing 14 degrees Celsius. The thermostat was set to three degrees. The app on Richard's phone that connects with the fridge didn't show any problems. 

We noticed that the fridge was a bit close to the wall behind it. We thought that might be the problem, and moved it forward a few centimetres. Then we waited another hour, and the thermometer reduced to about 12 degrees. But we hadn't opened the fridge in that time, and the room was cooling a little as the afternoon ended. 

On Friday morning, the fridge temperature had gone down to about 6 degrees, but quickly rose back to 10. So Richard went to talk to the owner of the white goods shop where we buy most of our large appliances. He said that he couldn't do anything over the weekend, but would ask an LG engineer to come on Monday. 

The owner then asked if we had another way of keeping our things cold enough. When Richard said that we didn't, he said he would get his staff to bring us another fridge for the weekend. This kind of thing is an advantage of the relational culture here, and of being loyal to one shop. Sure enough, an hour or so later two strong guys arrived with a used but clean and functional fridge. 

We had bought another thermometer in the meantime, one specifically intended for fridges. A few hours later the visiting fridge had cooled to 3 degrees. So we moved things like mayonnaise and spreads into it. We left unopened cans, nuts and chocolate in our fridge - ten to twelve degrees is an ideal temperature for them, and the borrowed one wasn't as big as ours. 

On Monday afternoon, a week ago, the LG engineer arrived. He spoke excellent English, and was happy to talk through what he was doing with Richard. He said that most often this happens when the condenser coils are dirty. We had read that online, but there was no easy way to access them. The engineer pushed the fridge out and removed the back panel. 

The condenser coils, which had not been cleaned in four years, were indeed thick with dust and dirt: 

The engineer had a machine that blew the dust out. All over the kitchen... 

Then he said that would probably solve the problem. 

The following day, the fridge was showing about 7-8 degrees, rising up to 9 or 10 any time the door was opened. The borrowed fridge, for comparison, was down to about 3-4 degrees, rising no higher than 5 when the door was opened. So Richard called the LG guy again, and he said that sometimes it takes 48 hours, so we should wait another day.

We waited another day. The visiting fridge was a bit noisy, and using a lot of electricity. It was also rather in the way, but we were getting used to it. And our fridge was not doing much better. We were getting obsessed with the numbers. But we decided that as there wasn't much that would spoil, we would move things back to our fridge and wait another day or so. 

Nothing went bad. But the temperatures still weren't right, ranging between 5 and 9. Several websites gave checklists of things that might cause this kind of problem, such an over-full fridge or a faulty seal on the door. The only one that was relevant to us was that the back of the freezer was a bit iced up. 

We kept debating whether to call the engineer again... and then it was Friday. We knew that he wouldn't come until at least Monday. On Saturday evening we decided that the following morning we would try to defrost our fridge and freezer entirely. If that didn't work, we would call the engineer on Monday. 

So on Sunday morning, at about 6am, I turned on the visiting fridge again. When it had cooled to 3 degrees - which took about three hours - we moved everything out of our freezer as well as from the fridge, and packed as much as we could into the borrowed one. 

Then we turned our fridge off at the wall. Richard removed all the shelves, in the hope of accessing the panels at the back. It was an excellent opportunity to clean the shelves - and the fridge - more thoroughly than was possible when it had food inside. 

The back panel in the fridge section was easily moved, but there was no ice there. The freezer one wouldn't budge, but clearly had ice behind it. It melted pretty quickly, and left a puddle on the base of the freezer section. It took a couple of hours before that stopped, and all the water had dried up. 

Just after noon on Sunday I put some of the nuts back, and we turned our fridge on again. 

After an hour, the thermometer was showing 24 degrees. 

After another hour, it was down to 18. 

Then it got slower and slower. By four o'clock, it was at about 8 degrees.  By five o'clock it was just under 6 degrees.  We tried to check only once an hour, since opening the door makes the temperature rise, but I couldn't resist. And at twenty to six, I saw:

Hallelujah!

Then at six o'clock, it was back to 4.9 degrees. And over 5 soon after. 

We decided to have one last check at 7.15pm. If it was less than four degrees, we agreed, we would transfer everything back, and turn off the visiting fridge.  If it was higher than four, we would leave them both overnight. 

At 7.15pm, it showed 3.6.  The defrosting had worked! 

So we moved everything back, including the things that had still been left out, and of course that raised the temperature again to 10 degrees.... but we thought all would be well after it had been left overnight.

I hoped it would be down to somewhere between 3 and 4 on Monday morning, but no. It was on 6. I bought some fresh fruit and vegetables and put them in, and the temperature rose to nearly 10. And then it went back to 6. It had occurred to us, more than once, that we actually had no idea how well the fridge had been working prior to this incident. We had never put a thermometer inside, naively assuming that if it said 3 degrees on the front, it would chill to that temperature. 

We knew that 5-6 degrees is not dangerous for food. Many of the things in our fridge wouldn't need to be there at all if the kitchen temperature was 20 rather than 30 degrees. So Richard decided to go and talk to the white goods guy, hoping he might get his employees to remove the visiting fridge. 

They had a good chat. The shop owner said we might as well keep the borrowed fridge a few more days in case our freezer iced up again. He said it was possible that the auto-defrost system wasn't working. He also told us that we should set our thermostat to 4 degrees rather than 3, as this would make the internal temperature more stable. No, I didn't understand why, but Richard did. And sure enough, since setting the thermostat to 4, it hasn't risen beyond about 7 degrees when the door is opened, even when new non-chilled things are put inside.

We're trying to be more efficient about opening and closing the fridge, and plan to clean the coils regularly. At least once a year. We're also being careful not to block any of the vents at the back of the fridge or the freezer section, and will try to ensure that it doesn't move against the wall again.

So we hope this is the end of this saga, and that we'll be able to say goodbye to the visiting fridge before long. 

August in Cyprus: hoping to eat out

Richard got back - eventually - on August 13th.  I'd had quite a tiring day. The family who had been staying in our guest flat had a fairly early flight, so they left about eight o'clock in the morning. They had put one load of sheets and towels in the washing machine already, but there was more to do. And there was another family coming to stay for a few days, friends of Richard's from the conference, arriving later that afternoon. 

Thankfully it wasn't quite as humid as it had been, so laundry dried very quickly. I did another load in the guest flat machine, and a load in our upstairs washing machine, and was able to run the Roomba downstairs, and re-make up all the beds. But it was hot, and everything takes me a lot longer in the summer. Richard had said he should be home before lunch and hoped to help, but more bureaucracy got in the way, and it was mid-afternoon before he arrived back. 

He suggested we go out to eat that evening, celebrating our anniversary (nearly four weeks late). And so I wouldn't have to think about food. But where to go? Local places were closed, as many businesses are during the middle weeks of August. We knew that the sea-front restaurants would be open, however, as it's high season for tourists. 

We liked the idea of going to the Al Sultan Lebanese restaurant. We've sometimes shared their 'platter for one' as a lightish lunch, but wanted something more substantial for the evening. We knew a platter for two would be a lot of food, far too much for us at one meal. But restaurants in Cyprus are always happy to offer boxes to bring extra food home. 

So we parked at the marina and walked along the sea front. It was hot and sticky, and we took it slowly. We reached the restaurant, and went in. Like many Cyprus restaurants, the front area is somewhat open to the air, and so has smokers. And it was very warm. We asked if we could go to the inside section, where smoking isn't permitted and they said we could, but that there was no air conditioning on. 

Suddenly that restaurant was a lot less appealing. 

Oh well, we decided, as we were starting to feel quite hungry, we would have to go to Alexander's, which is often our default. They also have a large semi-outdoor area, but they have an inside too. 

Unfortunately, the same was true there. The semi-outdoor smoking area was packed and full of both noise and smoke as well as heat and humidity. The non-smoking area inside was even warmer. No air conditioning. Perhaps the restaurants are trying to economise - and many people don't mind smoke around them. Our request for an indoor non-smoking section was apparently an unusual one for the summer.

And when we looked at other restaurants along the sea-front, they were all operating a similar policy. 

Okay, said Richard, let's try the Art Cafe. That doesn't have an outdoor area, and we were pretty sure they had air conditioning. 

What we had forgotten is that the Art Cafe is closed on Tuesdays. 

By then, we were both feeling very hungry and somewhat frustrated.  Yes, this is a 'first world' problem. We could have gone home and cooked something, we could have bought pastries at a bakery. We had many options. But - spoiled as we are - we had been looking forward to a Lebanese meze. So we decided to order the Lebanese meal we'd hoped for, via Foody. 

We sat down near the Post Office to order, then went back to the marina for the car, and drove home, hoping we would get there first.

We needn't have worried. It was another fifteen minutes or so before the food arrived. When we set it out on the table, it looked like a very impressive meal: 

We had ordered the vegetarian version of the platter, as Richard had been eating lots of meat for the previous week at the conference.  There were a couple of hot items (the ones in foil trays - and they were very hot) and the rest was cold.  As we had expected, it was far too much for one meal. More than half of it went in the fridge and we ate it again the next day. And some of it the following day too. 

August in Cyprus and a plumbing manifold replacement

When I got back to Cyprus on August 6th, Richard was supposed to be away, working with his PA kit at a conference elsewhere on the island. So it was something of a surprise to get a text message, after the plane landed, saying that he would be meeting me. It was nice to have a few unexpected hours together. But it was very stressful for him as he came up against bureaucracy and other problems. However, he eventually arrived at the conference venue the following afternoon. 

I had hoped for a relatively peaceful week. It always takes me a few days to get over the brain-fog and exhaustion that hits me when I return to Cyprus. The heat and humidity don't help, but in early August it wasn't as hot as it had been in July.  32-33 degrees in the daytime, rather than 37-38 (or more). 

I was delighted to find a 'Foody' voucher in my email, reminding me that I hadn't used their delivery service for six weeks. Not really surprising, as I hadn't been in Cyprus for that period.  So I ordered a  takeaway salad that cost me almost nothing by the time the voucher was used, and provided a good meal for me without any effort. Not just on the day after I arrived back; there was plenty for lunch the following day, too. Which turned out to be a good thing...

The following day was not my favourite of the week. In our guest flat, Richard had discovered a slow leak in one of the pipes in the bathroom. Someone had put a small plastic container at the back of the sink cabinet to catch the drips, but had forgotten to let us know that there was a drip. We didn't know how long this had been going on, but there was some significant rust and it was clear that the 'manifold' was rusty and needed replacing. 

I had no idea what a manifold was, so Richard sent me a helpful diagram:

Our young friend L had been in Cyprus over the summer and had done several jobs for us, in our bathroom and elsewhere. But this was not something he felt able to do. So Richard asked a plumber whom we know to take a look. He is very busy, and said he could slot us in on the Wednesday after I returned. Which would have been okay, except that there was a family staying in the guest flat: friends of friends, who have stayed before. They usually go out for most of the day, but were not happy at the idea of an unknown plumber and his mates being in the flat without anyone else there.

So I had agreed to be in the flat with the plumbers. 

They arrived about 11.30, an hour earlier than they had specified. So I wasn't prepared or ready for them. Thankfully they left again for a break around 12.45 saying they needed to get some extra parts. So I was able to get upstairs again to the part of the house where we live. I ate my lunch at speed, and made a frappe, and used the loo... something I could not have done downstairs with the plumbers working in the bathroom. 

Then I filled my water bottle and found a book to read. They returned about two o'clock, and told me that they would probably be another two hours. At half past three, they said they probably wouldn't be finished before five. At five o'clock, they still weren't finished... 

I managed to read an entire book that day. I had to sit in the guest flat without using the air conditioning, since the plumbers wanted the front door open - they were in and out constantly to their van.  It took me a few hours before I realised I could at least turn on a fan. 

It took over six hours in all, with three guys on the job. We still don't know why it took so long, but the result looked good:  

As a friend commented, a manifold a bit like an octopus. Although ours doesn't have eight 'legs'. 

But the day was so draining it took me another couple of days to feel myself again. 

Back in Cyprus after eight weeks away

This summer I had the longest time out of Cyprus for many years. I'm so thankful to those who put me up (or, perhaps, put up with me?), particularly my family in Carlisle who had me for the bulk of my UK visit. It was wonderful being an on-the-spot Grandma for so long, and I was very well looked after. 

Among other things, I played a lot of games with my granddaughter, who is seven-and-a-half. Early in my stay, we played Boggle almost daily, and also the card game Skyjo. I've never really understood why Skyjo is so appealing; it's easy to learn, quick to play, and has very little skill. Or so it seems... but some people (including my granddaughter) manage to win considerably more often than would happen if the game were purely luck. 

And, by the time I'd played thirty or forty games, usually first thing in the morning, I was starting to win more often. I have no idea why.

We continued to visit the Carlisle library most weekends, and also the wonderful 'Bookcase' second-hand shop. It's an amazing place, with several floors and dozens of different sections. The basement has a lot of children's books, and the grandchildren will sit and read for as long as they're able. 

Prices aren't as good as charity shops, but there is a huge selection. Unfortunately there isn't an online catalogue. But the staff on duty are very helpful. 

On other days, depending on the weather, we went out for walks, or went to local parks. We had one morning visit to the Watchtree nature reserve. The children rented bikes, and the adults walked a pleasant trail of a few kilometres. 

We also visited a place called Dalston, not far away, where there was another good walk through a natural environment, and a park. What we didn't know was that it was the first day of the village festival. So we were quite amused to see a rubber duck race in the stream...

There were scarecrows around the village, taking on a variety of important roles:

We walked around an art exhibition in a church, too, and were shown some conjuring tricks. The sun shone and we ate lunch outside. 

I mentioned in the previous post that I was planning to go to my aunt's funeral towards the end of my stay. It was a bit complex organising the transport. The best value was to get a train to Birmingham, then a National Express coach from there to Cardiff. The only problem was having to get from New Street train station to Digbeth coach station. They're not that far apart, but Birmingham has changed a lot since I lived there, and I'm not familiar with the city centre any more. 

So I allowed an hour each time for this.

I left Carlisle just after lunch on the last day of July. The train was mostly on time; maybe five minutes late, so I still had plenty of time to get to Digbeth. But I didn't want to take any chances, and there were taxis waiting outside New Street. So that was easy, even if it cost me a few extra pounds. 

I arrived at the coach station in Cardiff just after 8pm and was very thankful that my sister met me there in the car. It had been a long afternoon, and I  appreciated having my Kindle with me as I travelled.

Funerals are always poignant and difficult, especially for the close family. My brother took our aunt's funeral service, and it was as uplifting and encouraging as possible in the circumstances. It was a bonus to spend some extra time with my three siblings, although I had seen them all in June. It was also good to catch up briefly with my cousins, one of whom I had not seen for about forty years. I hope it won't be another forty years before we see each other again... 

My return journey to Carlisle started mid-morning on August 2nd. My sister drove me to the Cardiff coach station (so called, though it's outside) and my coach was due to leave just before 11am.  It left a little late, but I was thankful not to be on another one, a couple of lanes down, which evidently had a serious problem. All the passengers were told to disembark and leave their luggage behind... they were still waiting when the one I was on departed.

Traffic was quite heavy en route to Birmingham, and by the time it reached Digbeth it was half an hour after its expected time of arrival.  I knew I had another half-hour and that the taxi outgoing took only about five minutes, but I was still somewhat anxious about reaching New Street in time. I was more concerned still when I got out and there were no taxis to be seen. I headed in what I hoped was the right direction, thinking I would find a taxi elsewhere, but traffic was almost at a standstill in places, and there were no taxi ranks. 

So I kept walking. My sense of direction is appalling (some would say non-existent) but I tried to relax, reminding myself that I did pay an extra pound or so when booking the train which, I think, would have allowed me to go on a later one if necessary. I was praying for guidance as I attempted not to panic; the sun was out and I was getting warmer and warmer after the air conditioned coach....

Then suddenly I recognised where I was. It was not far from the ramp that used to lead up to the bull-ring shopping centre. I knew all the indoor centres had changed, and prayed that it still led to the station, as I had no idea where the main entrance was. 

To my great relief, the ramp still existed, as did the escalators down to the train station. I had done the walk in about ten minutes. I suspect a taxi would have taken longer, given the traffic. The time was 14.45 and I thought my train was at 15.00, but it wasn't showing on the board. I didn't know which platform to go to. I found my ticket - I had both an e-version and a printed one - and to my surprise (and relief) the booked train was actually for 15.10. With an extra ten minutes, I was able to use a loo and buy some sandwiches and iced coffee, as I hadn't had any lunch.

I got on the train in plenty of time, and although it was about ten minutes late arriving in Carlisle, I was back at my son's home by about 6.30 in the evening, for our last weekend together. 

On Monday we played games most of the morning, then walked to town and had lunch at a pleasant (and surprisingly good value) restaurant called Bordo's. 

We followed that with coffee at Costa, and then the family all came onto the platform to wave me off as I left on the train to Glasgow. 

It was perhaps appropriate that it started to rain about half an hour after I had left, and continued for the rest of the day. I was glad I had my lightweight rain jacket with me, easily reachable in my backpack. At Glasgow Central railway station I asked at the information office how to get to the airport, and was given excellent directions to the appropriate bus. I was a little surprised at how long it took to get to the airport - perhaps I shouldn't have been, as the fare was higher than I had expected.

Indeed, it wasn't a great afternoon. So much so that I didn't take any photos at all. Glasgow Airport was devoid of anyone who might be able to help me, and I couldn't find any shuttle buses to the Travelodge where I was booked in for the night. I did find a map which showed it, and set off, walking, in the right direction. However I found myself in a car park which I wandered round for far too long before I found the way out - back near the airport. 

I asked someone in uniform near the airport how to get to the Travelodge and was told to look for the Premier Inn, and then it would be obvious. 

They were wrong. 

But there was a garage near the Premier Inn so I went into the shop and asked a helpful assistant, who pointed me in the right direction. By then I was feeling drenched... my lightweight jacket is showerproof, but not fully waterproof, and I hadn't been able to keep the hood up. My trousers and socks were damp, too. I had to trudge along the side of a road, on a grassy verge where my pull-along large cabin case was looking decidedly wet. 

I did eventually find the Travelodge, and was extremely thankful to do so. It only had two storeys and was surrounded by quite tall trees and hedges. There is no way it could have been visible from the Premier Inn. I had been walking for an hour. I had to open the case and remove the socks I had put around the edges, so they could dry out. I was so tired I lay down for an hour before going to get something to eat at the restaurant. 

Then it was hard to sleep, because the room was quite light and too warm; but as it looked over a car park I didn't want to open the window as it was too noisy. The bed wasn't particularly comfortable either. Previously I've had great experiences with Travelodges, which are 'cheap and cheerful', but usually more comfortable. 

I eventually slept, and then had further disappointment when the breakfast bar had no apple juice, no fruit compote (one of my favourite Travelodge breakfast items) and, worst of all, the coffee machine was out of order. I had some instant coffee for the caffeine, but it was my least favourite brand; one I wouldn't normally use. 

However, there was one very good thing. When I checked out, I asked the person on duty what was the easiest way to walk to the airport, and she gave me clear directions. The day was bright and clear, and I walked back to the airport in about ten minutes. 

Glasgow Airport doesn't have great wifi; it wouldn't let me use Whatsapp or even send text messages, but Facebook and Messenger worked, as did Duolingo. And when it came to boarding my flight, I was glad I had 'easy boarding' (allowing me the large cabin bag as well as my backpack) as it was quick and very efficient. 

Unlike the many horror stories I've heard recently from friends and relatives, the flight left on time and arrived in Larnaka early. And since it was evening, and almost dark, it wasn't nearly as hot as I had feared. 

It's a relief to be home again, after all the travelling. 

Out of Cyprus

Yes, I'm still around. I haven't abandoned this blog, despite the longest gap between posts that I can remember. Part of the reason was my excessive sadness about the loss of our cat Alex. I started to write about him in March, and updated as draft off and on - I dated the post at the end of April, but only just recently remembered to publish it.

Another part of the reason was that I spent the end of March and first couple of weeks of April in Carlisle, being a full-time Grandma during the school Easter holidays. I hadn't seen my grandchildren (or their parents...) for many months. Video chatting is wonderful, but not as good as being with them. 

We played games, read books, went for walks, visited the library, had some outings... it was awesome. 

By the time I got back to Cyprus, the weather was already warming up. We've had the hottest months on record several times in the past year. And I don't do well in heat. 

Our bird of paradise plant had seven different blooms this year, after none at all for the past seven years. There are many theories about how often they produce their stunning flowers; it will be interesting to see if there are more next year, or whether we have to wait another seven years....

May, thankfully, was (unusually) a tad cooler than April. We had quite a few visitors in our guest flat, and did more entertaining than we had done for a while. We continued, of course, to play regular board games with friends, and I went on my early morning walks with my friend Sheila. Three of our young friends were baptised (on separate occasions) this year. I knitted, and wrote book reviews, and cooked and baked... we've often been told that time goes by faster as one ages, and I'm finding this more and more true. 

By early June the temperatures had started soaring and we knew it was time to clean the air conditioners. It's not a lengthy or difficult process, just a bit tedious. The priorities were our studies, where we have computers which become unreliable at more than 30 degrees Celcius. And our bedroom. We had discarded even the thin duvet in favour of a cover, but it was beginning to get humid. 

I abandoned the oven, in favour of making salads only for our evening meals (in conjunction, at times, with the air fryer or microwave). 

But only for a couple of weeks. In the middle of June, our younger son was ordained as a full Anglican priest in London, so we flew out for the ceremony.  Not a great photo: this image is from the livestream, as we weren't allowed to take any pictures during the (lengthy) service. Our son was one of about twenty who were ordained. 

We spent a couple of days with our son and his wife, then drove to Cardiff to see my sister and her husband for the first time in about eighteen months. Then up to Carlisle to stay with our other son, his wife and our two grandchildren.  

Richard had a long weekend with lots of board games, books, and hugs. Unfortunately our grandson wasn't well, so despite really quite good weather, we couldn't all go out anywhere. 

On the Monday he drove south again, leaving me behind, so I could have another six weeks or so away from Cyprus and the excessive heat. And it has been hot in Cyprus! June this year was apparently the hottest on record. I suspect the same will be true of July when they do the calculations.

In the past month, while the children are at school I've walked into town a few times to get some exercise. I've also done a lot of updates on my book review blog, after Amazon changed the way they provide affiliate links. I'm doing a bit of editing too, and making the posts look more similar so it's not a bad thing to do, just time-consuming. My book blog has more than 2500 posts, written over the past 25 years.  

Another thing I've been doing during school hours is tidying up my computer files. I had rather a muddle of folders, with some things in Google Drive, some duplicates, and a lot of confusion. That's also been time consuming, and a bit complicated at times, but I'm pleased to have it almost all sorted now. Just as well since tomorrow is the last day of school, and it's a half day. So time to myself will be more limited. 

Sadly one of my aunts died recently after a brief illness, so I'll be heading back to Cardiff by train for the funeral, then a few days later, in early August, returning to Cyprus via Glasgow Airport. Yes, it will still be hot, but the days will be getting a little shorter, and by September the humidity should start to drop. 

Losing another cat

We've been married for over forty years, and in that time we have adopted and loved ten different cats. Two of them were, sadly, very short-lived, and four of them disappeared, leaving no trace.  Two died of old age (one at 15, one at over 18).  And we're still feeling shocked and sad after losing the ninth.

Alex was the largest of his litter, born early April 2014. He and his two sisters lived with their mother and our friends until they were three months old. Our son, who lived in a flat about a kilometre away adopted Lady Jane, and we adopted the other two: Alexander the Great and Joan of Arc. We didn't use their full names, of course, unless they were in trouble... 

We had both Cleo, our longest-lived cat, and her daughter Sophia at the time. It took a while for Alex and Joan to be accepted, and they were never close friends with our older cats. But gradually they learned to live alongside each other. I wrote a long post about our newly adopted kittens in September 2014, with some photos. 

Then, just a couple of months after that post, Sophia disappeared. I wrote a post about that, too. And Joan of Arc vanished just before Christmas 2015. She and Alex had only been going outside for six months and mostly played together when, one evening, he returned and she didn't. We thought at first that they must have caught a feline bug as he wasn't well for a few days afterwards, but then realised his tail was injured. He was also terrified when he heard cars, for a while. So perhaps she was hit by a car and he just escaped. We'll never know. 

In the summer of 2016 we adopted Lady Jane, when our son moved back to the UK. And in January 2017, Cleo died after a very brief period of being obviously unwell. She had seemed frail for a while, but had been eating and washing normally until just a week or so before she died, aged around eighteen and a half. We were sad but not devastated, although Cleo's passing felt like the end of an era. She had been with us for almost all our time in Cyprus. 

So then we just had Alex and Jane. They were never as close as Alex and Joan had been, but still good companions. 

Jane remained very kitten-like, scampering about the house, jumping on my shoulder, leaping onto bookcases, chasing bits of string or other 'toys' she discovered around the house. Alex slowed down somewhat, however. Of all our cats, he's the one who had the most medical issues. I think we took him to the vet more than all the others put together. 

It started with his tail injury (well, other than having him neutered at a young age).  Then he had a couple of strange incidents, where he seemed to be short of breath, and crying as if he were very scared. The vet examined him thoroughly each time but couldn't find anything wrong - and, by the time we got him to the vet, he was often getting over whatever the problem was, anyway. 

Alex used to catch birds sometimes, on the roof, so it's not surprising that we had to buy worming tablets for him regularly. We got to know the symptoms (a lot of coughing and retching) so we could just buy tablets rather than taking him to the vet and paying an extra fee for doing so. And we were increasingly concerned that he would drink a lot of water, far more than is normal for a cat. 

One of our visitors was a vet, and she said it was likely he had kidney problems. But she said that it would be uncomfortable for him (and expensive for us) to have tests to confirm this - and that medication, if available in Cyprus (which was doubtful) wouldn't significantly improve or prolong his life. She said he was obviously an active, much loved and contented cat, but we should be aware that the time would probably come when he would have to be put to sleep by the vet. She said we would know when that time was: it could be within a year or two, it could be longer. 

In the event, he died at home, unexpectedly on 19th March this year. He had another crying and breathless episode which lasted a bit longer than usual, then he seemed to recover. Then he had a kind of fit, and within a few minutes, was gone.  It was just a few weeks before his 10th birthday.

I don't think we've ever been so sad and shocked at losing a cat. Alex was more of a companion than a pet - he followed us around (particularly Richard) and kept us in line: he was quite demanding sometimes, but always very loving. 

In retrospect we wonder if there was a problem with his heart, as well as his kidneys. He had slowed down so much, more so than other cats of his age. Admittedly Jane is unusually active and lively, but he had started plodding rather than running, and was less and less inclined to jump more than a short distance. 

Alex had a good life, even if it was cut short. And we're both thankful that we didn't have to make that final decision for him. But still, it has been very difficult to get used to him being gone. Jane is now an 'only' cat: even if she would permit another feline inhabitant of the house, we're not planning on having any more cats. 

I started writing this post a day or two afterwards, but I couldn't bring myself to finish it until now. 

Rest in peace, Alexander the Great. 

Buying Billies

 Before I ramble about on our recent experience, I should explain that when I talk about 'Billies' I'm not referring to:

• The lightweight pots (billycans) used for outdoor cooking, popularised in one of the versions of an Australian song, featuring a swagman who 'waited 'til his billy boiled'. 
• A male goat, as, for example in the fairytale 'The three billygoats gruff'.
• A stick or club - known as a truncheon in the UK - which, I learned when checking for meanings of the word, may also be known as a 'billy' or 'billystick'. 
• A group of adults called Billy (or Billie), which is usually an abbreviation of the name 'William' or (possibly) 'Wilhelmina' 

Instead, I'm referring to a brand of bookcases that can be bought in the Swedish furniture chain Ikea. It's one of the few brands that we are able to pronounce. 

Our first introduction to Billy bookcases happened in the summer of 2006 just before we moved out of our rental house in Cyprus, into the one we bought. Some colleagues were leaving Cyprus around the same time, and offered to sell us some dark wood bookcases. 

At the time it was rather difficult to find bookcases locally. Sixteen years ago, there was no Ikea in Cyprus. The thrift store had some bookcases, but they were a bit flimsy. We had been able to buy two large ones second-hand from the organisation Richard was seconded to, some years earlier, and we had some rattan bookcases we had brought out from the UK. 

But they were starting to overflow. And we had shipped another five hundred or so books out when we sold our UK house. So the offer from our friends was timely, and since they were asking a very reasonable price, we had little hesitation in buying the two bookcases. They told us they were 'Billies' and we probably looked blank. They had been brought to Cyprus by another family who had moved from France but returned a few years earlier. Billies, we were told, were quite popular in countries where there was an Ikea. But we were not familiar with them. 

It's possible that we had the first two Billy bookcases in Cyprus. We rapidly filled them. 

(As an aside: the same folk were also selling four ceiling fans. They were exactly what we needed for four places in our new house. We didn't know that they were available until we went to see the bookcases, and our friends didn't know that we were looking for something to replace the fancy chandeliers that the previous owners of the house had taken away. It felt like a divine appointment; those four ceiling fans still work well, and are a tremendous blessing in the warmer months). 

We had visited an Ikea in the UK a couple of times, and hadn't found much that appealed. But we very much liked these bookcases, with their adjustable shelving, and the little metal knobs that fit into holes in the sides. They hold a lot of books, too. 

A year later, in September 2007, Ikea launched in Cyprus, just outside Nicosia. We visited a few months later, and acquired two more Billies: a tall black one for our DVD collection, and a smaller black one, which ended up taking our recipe books... for a while.  I wrote about the experience in this post. That's when we discovered that the 'new' system Billies were not only a darker colour, but ten centimetres narrower. However, that was ideal for our DVDs, and had plenty of room for more. 

Another year later, in September 2008, we visited Ikea again. This time we bought three shorter Billy bookcases for our dining room. The rattan cases were not only running out of space, they were being progressively destroyed by our cats, who thought they were convenient scratching posts. I wrote about that experience in this post. 

Nearly three years later, we were contemplating adding to our Billy collection due to books, once again, overflowing their shelves. Perhaps they were breeding when we weren't looking. And then we had another divine appointment: friends were getting rid of three bookcases, one of which was a Billy. It wasn't a dark wood one, but that didn't worry us. We did some major re-sorting of books and DVDs, as explained in detail in this post so that the light wood Billy took our DVDs, and the resulting arrangement looked like this:

There was still plenty of space for more books and DVDs, and we also acquired two non-Billy bookcases that we used elsewhere. 

Time passed, as it usually does. 

At some point we bought another tall black Billy, so we could move the light coloured one upstairs to a bedroom, and use one of the original - wider - Billies to house our growing DVD collection. 

We had a slightly annoying gap for a while, due to lack of planning on my behalf, which remained for some years. 

Although the books were mostly under control - the rate of acquiring new ones slowed, and I even managed to give a few away to the local church book sale - our DVD collection didn't stop. It's not that we watch all that many, but we aim to see one film per week, and an episode or two from a classic sitcom or a more modern tenser or heavier television show (most recently Father Brown; we're about to embark on the 13th Doctor Who series). And Richard has a growing collection of DVDs which are thrillers or political dramas that don't interest me at all, but which he sometimes sees on his own if I'm away, or if he is up late. 

So, in 2019, we looked at the Ikea catalogue again. To our joy, they were selling a narrow (20cm wide) Billy, the same height as our bookcases, but with a lot more shelves, intended for CDs or DVDs. We did ponder buying two, but were pretty sure that just one would last us a good long time. 

And in the process of re-organising the DVDs, we decided to move the second older Billy to the kitchen to house the recipe books (and also some of my children's fiction) meaning that the three matching black ones could sit in a row, without any annoying gap.  

We were pleased with the result.

In the corner was a gap of just over 20cm, where we were pretty sure that, one day, we would need a second narrow Billy. But not just yet...

And, indeed, four years later the DVDs were still fitting in the available space. Well, mostly. I had moved all the younger children's DVDs to the bottom shelf of the nearest bookcase. We also had a drawer under the television crammed full with our Christmas DVDs and the ones we haven't yet watched, and the series we are currently watching...

Then, a few weeks ago, we received a couple of Christmas parcels from one of our sons and his family, containing, among other things, a new and rather large DVD series. So that sat on a shelf under our television for a while, and we began to think seriously about a new narrow Billy. 

The decision was cemented when a friend, moving from one flat to another, decided to get rid of her DVD collection since she mostly watches online now. She gave us the first refusal, and since she had a lot of older classics which we hadn't seen, we selected a few. And a few more... and ended up adding another 25 DVDs to our household.

But where could we put them...?  The drawer was choc-a-bloc, the shelf also crammed with DVDs. It was starting to look rather untidy and we're pretty sure we'll acquire more DVDs in future.

So I went online and searched the Ikea site. I read that Billy bookcases had been discontinued for a while, but were back, better than ever. 

But there were no 20cm ones. The narrowest was 40cm, and that was clearly meant to be a bookcase rather than a DVD case, as it didn't have extra shelves. DVD shelving seems to have gone out of fashion, possibly because more and more people are using streaming services rather than physical DVDs. 

Then, due to an inner prompting - you can call it intuition, or the voice of God - I looked on Facebook marketplace. It's not somewhere I normally look, but I thought someone might have some kind of DVD storage that they were getting rid of.

I found someone just outside Nicosia who was selling TWO 20cm black Billy CD/DVD cases. They weren't advertised as Billy, but I was certain they were. Richard made contact, and a couple of days later we took his van and drove to collect them. I wasn't at all sure that we needed two, but since they might be the last two available narrow Billies in Cyprus, we bought them both. One of them is fitted where we planned, the other behind the TV where it's housing Richard's thrillers and other series that I have no wish to see. 

We moved the rest of the TV series DVD sets and the Christmas ones to the side cases, and there's now, once again, plenty of room for more.  

That corner looks much better without the gap:

As well as the two narrow Billies, the folk in Nicosia were also selling 18 children's DVDs, very inexpensively, some of them modern classics that we didn't have... 

...so we acquired another fourteen. So I'm now a tad concerned that we have almost filled up the shelf of children's DVDs. 

But that's a problem for another day.

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.