First week of August in Cyprus

Apparently my unexciting post with a few photos from July was appreciated by others, and of interest to some people who are not in Cyprus. So I thought I'd write a week-by-week summary of August. Assuming I remember to do so, that is. 

In that post, I spoke too soon about the lack of nasty insects. When I was getting ready for bed on the night of July 31st, I opened my closet and saw (shudder....) a roach sitting amid my tee shirts.  Thankfully Richard was close by, and he was able to get rid of it.

Saturday 1st August

August started, as so often happens, with increased humidity. I went out for a shortish walk first thing, around 6am. Although it was only around 26 degrees and I stayed mostly in the shade, I was dripping when I got home. I sat down and did a few puzzles, then - slowly - organised Richard's breakfast tray of fruit and nuts, squeezed oranges etc. I made some oat milk for his coffee and my frappé. Then I had my breakfast, hoping it would give me some energy.

It didn't.  

Summer in Cyprus: Sweltering, Spraying, and Staying Indoors

Holiday brochures advertise Cyprus with 'sun, sea and surf' (or similar). Which is all very well for visitors, staying in hotels by the beach for a week or two. But when one lives in Cyprus, it's not quite so simple... 

June this year was - by Cyprus standards - reasonably cool. Warm enough that we didn't need to wear anything other than tee shirts and shorts. I switched from trainers to sandals, too, or flip-flops... I much prefer wearing trainers and socks but strongly dislike having over-warm sweaty feet. 

By the end of May we had started using our bedroom ceiling fan at night, and some of the other ceiling fans in the daytime, as needed. But through the whole of June there was no need for air conditioning, even for the computers. With windows open, a pleasant breeze cooled the house through the day. 

Then we spent twelve days in the UK, as I wrote about in another post. It was busy, and productive, and - for me, at any rate - a wonderful break, seeing many of the people I love the most. We arrived back in Larnaka after 10pm on July 12th and while it was warm - I had removed my coat and sweater before leaving the plane - it wasn't unpleasantly so. I was particularly pleased that it didn't feel humid, since we had to spend about ten minutes standing on the steps of the plane waiting for the bus to the terminal. 

Sweltering...

Reality hit home in the morning. I didn't wake up until about 7.30am, and it was already thirty degrees outside, according to my phone's weather app. But although I was tired, I knew I had to get to the froutaria for some oranges and other fruit for our breakfast. So I went out, keeping mainly in the shade. It was probably good to get some fresh air and sunshine first thing, but I don't think I appreciated it much. 

That was the start of a heatwave that lasted two weeks, breaking all kinds of records. Most of the southern part of Europe experienced something similar. Then a couple of days that were more normal, for Cyprus in July, and then there was another high temperature warning for the next few days.

'How do you cope?' This is a question I'm asked regularly. I've never been good with hot temperatures, and I know from experience that if I'm outside in the sunshine, or if temperatures are more than about 30C at most, I really don't 'cope'. I become slow, lethargic, and often develop a migraine. 

So over the years in Cyprus I've developed a kind of summer routine. While I often try to be out of Cyprus for a few weeks, there are always some hot summer days when I'm here. I used to say that I do everything I need to do before 8am, then 'aestivate' until the evening. I don't actually go to sleep, but I don't leave the house, if at all possible. I shop locally first thing, and if we have to go to a bigger supermarket, we go in the evening rather than the daytime. 

Spraying

One of the things I like least about Cyprus summers is the increased insect population. Not mosquitoes - they are worse in the spring and autumn, and we mostly avoid those in the house by having netting over open windows. No, my 'bête noire' is, literally, a black beast whose name I still slightly shudder to mention.  (Whispering): Cockroaches.  

I had hoped that by having our house connected to the mains drainage there would be fewer - certainly we have fewer access chambers in our side yard, and the lids fit much better. But a neighbouring house was having a lot of major renovations and for the last couple of weeks of June, and most of July, we had at least one of these nasty beasties in the house every day.  Mostly deceased, I'm relieved to say. Some caught by the cats, and some stunned by the 'biokill' spray. I use that liberally around all possible entrances and as many hiding places as I can think of. 

I did this as soon as the first one appeared in June, and again just before we went away. Then I repeated the process at the end of July.  Thankfully there have been fewer since August started.  

Salads

One feature of the last few years has been eating a lot of salads; not just lettuce and tomatoes but a wide variety of different salads, inspired by both cookery books and online sites. This, for instance, is a sardine and lentil-based salad: 

From July 1st until at least August 31st, I don't turn on the oven. Originally I determined to do all the food preparation first thing in the morning, but that hasn't happened this year. It's mostly in the half hour or so before we eat. 

After lunch on Sundays we have, for a couple of years, eaten dark chocolate Bounty bars - not entirely dairy-free but low-enough in dairy that they're not a problem for Richard. 

We used to buy these in airports before flying back to Cyprus, then for a while they were available here. Nearly two years ago, we mentioned this to some friends who were soon to fly out, and they scoured their neighbourhood, bringing out over 40 of these bars, enough to last nearly a year. Here are just a few of them:

Alas, they were discontinued nearly a year ago. We didn't realise this, but were disappointed not to find any during our UK trip in January. We did look again earlier this month, but were not surprised to find them still unavailable. 

On the Sunday after we returned, we ate the last of our stash. Possibly the last dark chocolate Bounty in Cyprus... 

Celebration

A week after our return, we celebrated our anniversary. The heatwave was intense, and I didn't even want to go out in the evening. So we ordered a Lebanese takeaway, which was delicious: 

It was excellent value, too  Supposedly a vegetarian meze for two, it was twice as much as we could eat in one sitting, so it provided a second main meal the following day.  To make it even better value Richard had just been sent a seven euro discount voucher from Foody. 

Staying indoors

My aestivation might sound like a kind of lockdown, but it's not the same at all as the restrictions we were under three-and-a-half years ago. The main theoretical difference is that it's my decision, rather than being enforced by anyone else. Richard, who deals much better than I do with heat, has been out by car in the daytime many times to see people, or visit his boat, or pick something up at one of the DIY stores.

A major practical difference between my self-enforced aestivation and a lockdown is that there's no restriction on the people we see. A few weeks ago, we were invited to a young friend's 18th birthday dinner; it was the first time I'd been out in an evening since we returned from the UK, and the outside temperature was 36 degrees even at 5.30pm. I struggled to walk the short distance from the car to our friend's home, and was thankful it was not at lunchtime (as in previous years). 

However it was a very enjoyable evening, spent in our friends' air conditioned living room. 

Our friends continue to come for games mornings on Tuesdays, though during the summer we play in my study with the air conditioning on, sitting on the floor, rather than at the dining room table:

And another young friend, far more able to deal with the heat than I am, has been doing some repairs on the side of our house, where the surface spritz had been crumbling away. 

Steps

I don't want to lose the habit of daily walking. So I still aim to get out almost every morning at about 6am, if only to walk the 500 metres or so to the froutaria and back. On mornings when the temperature shows 30 degrees or more by 6am (and that's happened three or four times) that's more than enough. 

On mornings when it is only 24-25 degrees, I walk a couple of kilometres around the local neighbourhood. It's not a lot, but it gives me some fresh air and exercise, albeit limited. For the last few days our friends have been away and I've walked to their house shortly after 6am to feed their cats and (a couple of times) water their garden. Thankfully the temperature was only 26-28 by the time I was home again at around 7.30. 

During the less hot periods of the year - usually mid-September to late June - I walk an average of about 7,000 - 8,000 steps per day, or around 50,000 - 55,000 per week. When we were in London, walking all over the place, this continued. But at this time of year, I just about manage 30,000 in a week.  

I'm relieved to know, due to some recent research, that we only actually need around 2,500 steps per day (at a reasonable pace) to benefit our hearts and blood vessels, and around 4,000 to start reducing the risk of premature dying. More than that has a greater benefit, of course; but according to a Japanese study, the optimum number is around 5,000 - 7,000. That does talk about 'older people', and I'm not yet quite at the age they mention, but for me this is achievable. Much more is not. 

I'm trying to use my indoor air conditioned time productively: sorting and backing up photos, maintaining my websites, doing some filing, tidying up my folders, spending a bit longer at Duolingo. And reading a bit more than usual. August - so far - has been a tad cooler than July (which was apparently the hottest month ever recorded globally). The days are noticeably getting shorter and a month from now we might even be able to stop using the air conditioning.

As for the beach... we went there once with our grandchildren in April, It's been too hot to go there so far, this summer, and we haven't yet found a suitable evening to go with our friends. If we don't manage it this summer, I won't mind at all.  

Summer in Cyprus

 After over two decades, I am used to summers in Cyprus. I don't like them, but with ceiling fans, air conditioning, and somewhat cooler temperatures in the early mornings, I've learned to cope. Mostly. This year, despite excessive heat in various other parts of the world, we haven't had a major heatwave here yet. June was, if anything, cooler than normal. I kept walking the 4km trail with my friend Sheila three mornings per week almost until the end of June.

Facebook kept reminding me about the annual tradition Richard and I established a few years ago, where we go out for ice cream on the first day when it feels really hot. We decided to declare June 22nd as that day; and had a pleasant evening walk with some excellent ice creams.

We and our friends also decided that from July 1st we would move our Friday evening get-togethers from their home to the beach, as we usually do over the hottest months. 

I try to get out for a short walk around the neighbourhood each morning first thing, staying in the shade, and doing no more than about a kilometre; I know how difficult it is to establish a good habit and how easy to break it, so I do go out, if only for ten minutes, and generally feel better for it. 

And then I do whatever food preparation I need to do in the kitchen, before 8am. For the past few years I have managed to avoid turning on the oven for the whole of July and August. We mostly eat salads - and that doesn't mean lots of lettuce and tomatoes; I have discovered all kinds of excellent variations on salads, and usually make one or two new ones each morning. 

I always ensure at least one salad contains protein (black beans, chickpeas, eggs, canned tuna or canned salmon, for instance), and we have some form of basic carbohydrate. That's often potatoes, cooked or reheated in the air fryer before eating. But I've also made rice salad with peas and corn, or rather a nice pasta salad with wholegrain farfalle pasta, sun dried tomatoes, pesto and some vegan parmesan.

Remembering something I was taught many decades ago in school domestic science, I use as many different coloured fruits and vegetables as possible: red and orange peppers, cucumber, avocado, mango, tomatoes, frozen peas, chopped onions, peaches, lightly steamed broccoli... no more than two or three of them per salad, with a little lemon juice and olive oil as dressing. 

Summer is when soft fruit is in season, and often very good value. A couple of weeks ago, I went out early on Saturday morning to the local fruit market, planning to buy a kilogram or so of apricots to stew for a Sunday afternoon get-together. The best value, however, was a crate for two euros, which contained nearly 4kg apricots. We ate a few raw, and they were very good but clearly needed to be used quickly. I didn't want to make more jam. So I stewed half of them, and then used the dehydrator for most of the rest:

I had been wary of using the dehydrator in the summer months, but it wasn't too unpleasant; it didn't seem to add much to the heat or humidity of the kitchen, and I mostly kept out of the room anyway, after setting it going.

At the weekends we do eat hot food: on Sundays I use the air fryer and stovetop some weeks; other weeks we buy a takeaway roast lunch from a local taverna, which has sufficient chicken and potatoes to last us at least three full meals, although the salad that comes with it is only enough for one meal. Still, at just over 14 euros, it's pretty good value, so I make other salads to go with it during the week. 

I usually have portions of previously-made curries in the freezer that I heat on Saturday evenings. Yesterday we were expecting friends from Limassol for the evening, so I used the slow cooker to make my favourite pinto bean curry, and a similar one with chicken. My three-pot slow cooker is excellent for allowing me to cook a variety of different things at the same time, and a slow cooker is perfect for the summer. All the preparation was done before 8am, and it simmered gently through the day, generating very little heat. 

Something else I make in the summer more than other times of year is ice cream. I hadn't tried using our ice cream churn for a couple of years, as it had been somewhat disappointing. I thought I would give it another chance this year - and it appears that the fridge freezer we bought a couple of years ago to replace our elderly and inefficient one gets the churn sufficiently cold that it actually works as intended! I'm very pleased with it, and have made not just my favourite coconut milk vanilla ice cream, but a chocolate sorbet which is easy to make, and very good:

All of which covers the mornings from around 5.30-6.00am up to about nine o'clock, by which time I've also squeezed fresh orange juice, had breakfast and a frappe, and set Dustin the Roomba off to clean the main floor area.  It's still getting a lot of cat hair every day, and has done, slightly to my embarrassment, over a thousand 'dirt events' since we starting using it less than three months ago. 

Then I might give the floor a quick mop, or put on laundry etc, and Richard and I usually chat - about the day, and what we might have read or heard on the news (or Facebook), and whatever else comes up. But usually I'm showered and ready to turn on the air conditioning by about 10am. We run it at 28-29C, in 'eco' mode in our studies, which means the computers don't overheat; the reduction in humidity means it feels significantly cooler than the rest of the house even though it's only 30-31C most of the time.

On Tuesdays my friends usually come over for board games, on Fridays we shop, and on other days I catch up with email, and Facebook, and forums, and DuoLingo on the computer. For a week or so I was doing some proof-reading for a book that's just been published. I try to keep up with photos, adding more to photobooks, although I haven't done as much as usual this year. In the past couple of weeks I have been re-organising and finalising my recipe folder, something I used to do every few years as I like to keep all my recipes in one place - but also like acquiring new ones, and trying variations.

The most recent folder has been a long time in production: our last family recipe folder was in 2014, but at last I have a completely revised 2022 version, containing everything I make, with adaptations and notes; nearly 100 pages in an A4 pocket folder, which opens almost flat and fits nicely in my perspex cookery book holder that sits on the microwave. 

Not that I use exact recipes, necessarily, but I like to have them to refer to, even if it's something I make so often that I don't actually need the recipe. Such a relief not to have to keep digging out scraps of paper with recipes scribbled on them, or my 2014 folder which had become quite tatty.  I know most people nowadays use their tablets or phones for recipes, but I still prefer them in print. 

As for the afternoons, when I'm not working on photos or recipes: I tend to read more in the summer than I do in the winter, and as ever I write book reviews for my book blog. I keep in touch with various people, and pay bills and keep track of finances... and play the daily Wordle and Worldle and Quordle, and of course Lexulous and Words With Friends and one or two others. Just once a day, usually for half an hour or so after lunch. 

In the evenings, we might play games with friends, or watch a DVD, or just continue with what we were doing in the daytime. I usually put the computer to sleep by about 8pm and if we're not doing anything else, I read.

It probably all sounds quite dull to those who lead more active lives, but I'm learning that it's good for me to slow down, to rest when I'm tired. But I'm very much looking forward to over a month out of Cyprus, seeing relatives and taking a break from looking after the house.  The pandemic made that impossible for the past two years, although we did manage a week late summer last year. This time, I should have the opportunity to be a grandma in person rather than online, thankful though I am for the technology that enables us to keep in touch.

I'm relieved that I'm not going this weekend, however, since the UK is predicted to be significantly hotter than Cyprus, at least for the next couple of days... and without air conditioning, that is not going to be at all comfortable. 

Half-way through September

 I knew it was optimistic when I wrote, at the start of August, that we should be half-way through Summer. Cyprus Summers don't finish at the end of August. I knew it would still be hot at the start of September. What I didn't expect was another heatwave, temperatures up to 37 degrees in the shade (over 40 in Nicosia), and humidity worse than it was in July or August. 

It's been a strange year, and an unusual summer. Usually our younger son comes out for at least ten days or so. But with cancelled flights and the need for Covid testing, not to mention the way the Cyprus 'categories' changed almost by the day, it didn't make sense this year.  Two weeks of self-isolation is not so bad for someone arriving for a month or more. But it would be terrible for a short visit.  

We didn't leave the island, either, and don't expect we will until at least the spring. The pandemic is not over.  Numbers remain low in Cyprus, and we have a lot more freedom than many countries; but it could come back any time. Much of Europe is seeing a spike, possibly a second wave. Treatment for the worst cases is improving, and, at least in Europe, fewer people are dying. But until there's a reliable vaccine or a breakthrough in curing the disease, any travelling is going to be risky.

We didn't go to the beach this year, either. I think that's a first. In previous years we've gone on Friday evenings with our friends, and we've often gone there on other evenings, too, for a brief swim. But this year everything is different. We didn't want to risk a crowded beach, early in the summer, and somehow we never got around to it. The days passed slowly, but the weeks whizzed by. I could have gone to a friend's daughter's birthday party on a beach ten days ago, but the predicted temperature was about 35C and we had no idea if there would be any shade. So I didn't.  

I haven't used the oven since the end of June. I thought I might when September started, but it's remained too hot and sticky. We managed to eat salads in some form, albeit sometimes accompanied by hot potato wedges or slices, until the end of August. Since then we've had some cold food, some hot, but made in the air fryer or over the stove top, or a combination of the two.

Having said that, I've experimented a few times - with the kitchen air conditioning on - with different foods. I've been particularly pleased with some dairy-free vanilla ice cream, based on a recipe I found somewhere else, involving (among other things) a can of full-fat coconut milk and some whipped aquafaba. Gold syrup gives an almost caramel flavour, and canned coconut milk whips pretty well, after the more watery part is removed (and made into a custard to combine, when cold). 

I tried a couple of other recipes, but although I'm not, in general, a huge fan of vanilla ice cream, I did very much like this one. 

I made 'fake feta' a couple of times, too, after realising that the 'fasting' (dairy-free) version available here is a bit tasteless. Here is the recipe I used (approximately): https://honestcooking.com/baked-almond-feta/

Cooking in the air fryer worked well, and was much more efficient than using the oven. 

But on the whole I kept cooking to a minimum; we had plenty of leftover curry portions in the freezer to reheat and eat with salad and pittas for our Saturday night curry nights, which has been a 'tradition' in our household for many years. 

And so to September. It's the middle of the month already, and although I've been for short walks around the neighbourhood first thing, just to get a small amount of exercise, I haven't yet resumed walking along the Salt Lake trail. We thought about it for this week, but the humidity is about 85% at 6.00am. Some mornings I'm absolutely dripping after just twenty minutes or so walking locally, in sandals. It would be much worse in socks and trainers - and I would not want to walk along the rough ground that leads to the trail in sandals. 

I was uploading photos to Facebook earlier and realised that, for the first time in probably fifteen years (since we had our first digital camera) I have only taken two photographs this month. So far, anyway.  One is of our large white cat Alex, who really doesn't like the heat at all:

The other is of Lady Jane, our small grey cat. She, in contrast to her brother, seems to thrive in the heat. She objects when we turn on air conditioning, and doesn't even like ceiling fans very much. 

On the other hand, she has an odd affinity for shoes...

I'm still checking the pandemic statistics regularly, though not as obsessively as I was a few months ago. I'm checking the weather more often than usual, too, in the hope that we'll see some rain, or at least a hint that autumn might be coming. It does look as if the heatwave has passed, thankfully, but it's still warner than I like. Still, the 'low' temperatures are better than they were, and if the humidity drops the early mornings should be quite pleasant by the end of the month. 

Half-way through Summer...?

July passed, a day at a time, rather more quickly than I had anticipated. It was apparently the hottest July in Cyprus for nearly four decades. I was very thankful for our new, more efficient air conditioning units. We also bought a new fridge-freezer towards the end of May.  These were justified to some degree by our recent electricity bill. Despite using more air conditioning than we did last year, we used just over half the number of units. 

As I said in my last post, we should have flown to Scotland towards the end of the first week of July.  We were planning to celebrate our fortieth wedding anniversary with our sons, daughter-in-law and grandchildren at an AirBnB in St Andrews, the town where my family went on holiday every year when I was growing up. I was then going to stay with various relatives and stay out of Cyprus as long as possible during the heat and humidity of Summer. 

But the pandemic crisis ensured that didn't happen. We determined to celebrate next year, if at all possible, but in the event we had a very pleasant day.  It started the day before with a lovely basket of flowers sent by my sister:

Then on the day itself, several people at church congratulated us. Then we were surprised and delighted with a special cake afterwards (albeit with a minor spelling error - not unusual in Cyprus!) to share in the courtyard after the service:

We went out for lunch to our old standby Alexander's, as we could park not too far away.  In the afternoon our closest friends in Cyprus were coming over anyway. So in addition to thawing some more apricots and making some more ice cream, I made some tiffin [chocolate biscuit cake], to my grandmother's recipe, since I'm avoiding using the oven during the summer. 

We were given two anniversary cards on the day itself, and two more arrived in the post a week later. 

 

For a non-celebration, it was very enjoyable. Forty years feels like both a long time, and almost no time at all. Will we still be around in another forty...?  It's not impossible. 

Other than that, life has continued in aestivation mode. I've been for a few very short local walks, not even reaching 5,000 steps most days. I've watered the plants and looked after the house, and made a lot of salads. It's been interesting experimenting with different ingredients and combinations for salads, and we haven't yet become bored with cold food. 

Not that it's been entirely cold food. We had been talking about buying an air fryer for some time, having read some enthusiastic reviews. These aren't just a healthy version of a deep fat fryer, but can roast or bake smallish quantities of food too. For just two of us, it sounded ideal. 

We hadn't actually decided on anything, though I was looking at one from Lakeland in the UK.  Then we were in SuperHome Centre looking for something else, and saw that they were selling air fryers. I wanted to know what they looked like out of the box, and a very helpful assistant (masked, of course) showed us in some detail. 

The price was good. And it was ready to take home. And it was a reputable brand, with a two-year warranty - much easier to take back, if necessary, than one ordered from the UK. 

So this was our anniversary present to each other: 

I was a little anxious about using it at first, but tried it for re-frying potatoes in slices, and it was excellent.  I've made sweet potato fries in it, and baked potatoes. It's excellent for cooking frozen oven chips.  I've roasted a chicken breast to slice in a curried chicken, mango and cucumber salad, and yesterday cooked a small salmon fillet to flake for a lentil, pepper and salmon salad.  I've roasted peppers and even onions in the air fryer.  It doesn't heat up the kitchen like the oven does, and it's a great deal more efficient to use for just one or two items for two people. 

As for the salads... I've had to cook some ingredients over the hob, but again that's not really a problem. I've made - for instance - tomato/peach/fake feta salad, broccoli/leek/egg salad and avocado/mango/cashew salad.  We bought 500g farfalle pasta, something I wouldn't normally do as we eat very little pasta. A 500g pack of spaghetti usually lasts us around five months. But it's excellent in different salads to provide some carbs; 100g farfalle (cooked) gives us enough for two days' worth of salads. I made one with mushrooms, one with pesto and cherry tomatoes, and another which I've already forgotten.  Most days I make one new salad, and team it with at least one from the previous day, plus perhaps some extra lettuce or coleslaw or chopped cucumber. 

That's it for July, really.  

At least, it was until almost the end of the month, when the Cyprus numbers for Covid-19 positive tests suddenly went up from 0-3 per day to 10, then 13, then 25... big numbers, percentage-wise, for a small island.  

We breathed a sigh of relief when the numbers dropped to 5 over the weekend, but yesterday was another higher number.  Today they have just reported 15 cases.  Here's how the graph looks on the Worldometer site: 

It resembles what some countries are calling a second wave, although most of the cases are in Limassol and are being tracked with all contacts traced and tested.  Some are from airport tests of repatriations, too, not all of whom are self-isolating even when they come from 'high risk' countries.  But a few are appearing 'in the wild', which suggests that Cyprus hasn't eliminated the virus at all.

So as of last weekend, we must wear masks in all public indoor crowded spaces. They have spelled out what that means; the ones relevant to us are shops, banks, and churches. It refers to children over the age of six as well as adults. Limassol has had some extra restrictions and closures. 

I find masks unpleasant to wear, particularly in the heat and humidity. For ten minutes or so in a shop it's not a problem. For an hour in a church service last week, I found it increasingly difficult to breathe in properly and began to feel faint with the heat of my breath inside the mask. I will try sitting outside in the courtyard this coming Sunday, so long as we don't have another heatwave. And, of course, the church service will only happen if we're not back in lockdown mode.... 

Every time we see our friends, now, we wonder if it will be the last time for a while. The government had said there would be another lockdown if the cases rise too much. So far the experts seem to think it's under control, and that if everyone wears masks in public indoor spaces, it should gradually ease off again. But we're not taking that for granted.

We also know how well off we are in this country. It might be hot and humid but we have inexpensive and efficient air conditioning, with electricity that works all the time (barring very occasional power cuts).  There's plenty of food in the shops, it's safe to go out and about, albeit with masks on, and we have reliable, fast Internet. Cases of Covid-19 are rising, but they're mostly affecting younger people now so many are asymptomatic. Only four people are in hospital with it, none of them in Intensive Care. 

We have friends in Lebanon where there seems to be crisis after crisis. They aren't doing too well with Covid-19 either, and the whole country has been in financial chaos for weeks, getting increasingly worse.  Their electricity is off more than it's on.  Yesterday we heard - and felt - a loud bang which we quickly learned was from a huge explosion in Beirut, leaving devastation, serious injuries and over 100 people killed. 

Aestivation...

At the end of May I wrote about Summer arriving in Cyprus.  But, thankfully, it was just a temporary heatwave. Longer than typical for the time of year, but by June 1st we were seeing more seasonally normal weather. I had put my jeans and jackets away in our overflow closet and packed up the duvets, so we didn't return to pre-summer mode, although we stopped using the air conditioning.

I'm not entirely sure what happened to June. Perhaps it just seemed short by comparison to the exceptionally long time April and May seemed to take, in different phases of lockdown.  In June life started to feel more-or-less normal, albeit a new variation on the theme. Marks indicating two metre physical distancing are commonplace inside shops, and on the pavement outside. Mask-wearing is expected for shop and restaurant staff (though less and less apparent in shops, as it becomes clearer that the virus is not at large in the community). Hand sanitising is normal going into shops, though nobody enforces it and I sometimes forget.

The anxiety we had at the start of lockdown is gone. I no longer wipe down everything I buy, or worry about other people in the shops. Our friends have been in our home, we've been to theirs, and we don't keep to any kind of distancing. At church services we sit two metres from anyone else, and don't have any physical contact with the other congregation members during the service... then we all hang out and chat in the courtyard afterwards.

Perhaps we're becoming blasé. The only new coronavirus cases in Cyprus in the past couple of weeks have been in people who have travelled, either repatriations or tourists from supposedly 'safe' countries, or their close contacts. Maybe it will become a problem when the island opens up to the UK and other less 'safe' countries, probably at the start of August,. But right now it's pretty safe to be out and about. 

So it's a tad ironic that July and August are, for me, months of aestivation. Not that I sleep for two months; it's not exactly the summer equivalent of hibernation.  Wikipedia tells me that aestivation is 'characterised by inactivity and a lowered metabolic rate'. I don't know about the latter, but I'm certainly much less active than I am the rest of the year.

We had to cancel our proposed visit to the UK. We were going to stay at an AirBnB in Scotland with our sons, daughter-in-law and grandchildren for a week, and I was then going to spend time with other relatives, away from the heat and humidity.  But with no flights at all to and from the UK (apart from repatriations) until at least the end of July, we had to cancel. 

So I attempted to get ready for the Cyprus summer... as far as that's possible. Towards the end of June, I had a burst of food preparation:  I found crates of avocados and peaches at the local fruit stall, three or four kilograms of each for about a euro per crate.  They were a little squashy, so I lightly stewed most of the peaches:

Then froze them in 450g portions, ready to pull out to eat with ice cream when we have visitors:

I kept a couple of avocados in the fridge then lightly mashed and froze the insides of all the others for future guacamole:

I made a batch of ketchup and another of granola that same weekend, sufficient to last, probably, until the end of July.  I knew I wouldn't feel like much cooking in the hotter weather, so when we went to a supermarket, I bought a bottle of  ketchup and a couple of packs of granola that were on special offer.  They won't be as good as the home made equivalents, but in August I probably won't much care.

I normally cook a hot meal six evenings per week, and Sunday lunchtime. But our oven produces a lot of heat, and even cooking for more than a few minutes over the stovetop is exhausting at this time of year. So we decided, as of July 1st, that we would eat different kinds of salad all summer. Or at least until we get fed up of cold food.  I have a book of different salad recipes that I hadn't really explored, so I went through it thoroughly and made a note of all the ones I plan to try.

So far it has been very easy. Last Wednesday evening I made a chickpea, red pepper and green bean salad (for protein), accompanied by one of our standard favourites: red onions, tomatoes, peaches and fake (vegan) feta, dressed in lemon juice, honey and olive oil.  I microwaved a couple of potatoes to provide a bit of starch.

On Thursday I added a basic tuna salad  to the leftovers, and forgot to think about any extra starch/carbs - but we didn't really notice.  On Friday I made a big green salad and some sliced tomatoes with fresh basil to take to our friends' house, where they are still cooking hot food.  On Saturday Richard and some friends sailed all day, so I ate salad leftovers.

For Sunday lunch Richard went to a takeaway place around the corner that does roast chicken, lightly roasted potatoes and salad for just 13.60 euros. That might sound like a lot for one takeaway lunch, but it was a huge amount of food:

Although the salad was only enough for one meal, the chicken and potatoes will be plenty for two of us for at least four meals.  We froze the two pittas that were also included.  On Monday night we ate out at a taverna with the reading group I joined earlier in the year. Last night we ate cold leftover chicken, fried onions with leftover potatoes, green salad left from Friday, and a broccoli/leek salad from my book. Tonight I will repeat the fried potatoes, and make a new salad with lettuce and mango, in a yogurt/curry paste dressing.

Which is more than enough about food.

As for the aestivation schedule, such as it is: I usually wake between 5.30am and 6.00am, when the weather is cooler (around 23-25C, usually). I stopped going for 5km walks with my friend almost at the end of June, when the humidity started.  I'm trying to do a short 2km walk locally most mornings, though I've felt too tired or it's been too humid a couple of times. I water all our plants three times a week, and on a couple of days I take my shopping trolley to the fruitaria to buy more fruit and whatever vegetables we're going to need for the salads.

Then I sit on the garden swing, and read, and think, and pray... and usually go inside around 7.15am when the sun starts to hit the swing and the temperatures increase.  I feed the cats, and squeeze orange juice, and have breakfast, then take Richard's to him. I have a frappe, and read, and think about the day, then we usually spend anything from five minutes to half an hour or more together, before he starts work and I shower and turn on my study air conditioning.

Then I spend most of the time between about 10.00am and 6.00pm in my study, reading, or writing, or working on a blog or website, or doing something else online.  I emerge for meals and other random things, but always return to cool down.

I do laundry usually three times per week, and aim to clean the whole house on Saturday mornings, though that doesn't always happen. Last Saturday I turned on air conditioning in several rooms which made it possible to clean them, although it was still quite tiring.  I've made dairy-free ice cream a couple of times, although with the ambient temperature so high the churn doesn't do much to freeze the ice cream, even when I put it inside a cool bag with ice packs:

Still, the taste is good even if it has to be thawed and then sliced rather than scooped.

It's not as hot as it was at the end of May, so my forays into the rest of the house aren't too unpleasant, and so far the humidity is mostly bearable. 

One of our cats (Alex) doesn't like the heat at all, and will spend all day in one of the rooms with air conditioning if he can.  The other one (Jane) does NOT like air conditioning, and will leave my study when it's turned on. She doesn't even like ceiling fans, preferring to spend her time in one of the much warmer rooms.

In the evenings, we play games with friends usually twice a week, we watch a film once a week, and an episode of something like Doctor Who once a week. We go to our friends' house, usually, once a week.  And on the other evenings Richard often works, and I read.  Until the end of June we were going out for walks two or three evenings per week, but it's too hot for that now.

So the first week of aestivation has passed.  If lockdown had happened in July, I would hardly have noticed any difference.

Installing air conditioning in Cyprus

Two months ago, I wrote a post about having our air conditioners cleaned. I mentioned that the one in the guest flat front bedroom no longer worked, so we had to have it replaced.  This wasn't difficult; after a little online research, we went to our favourite white goods shop George Theodorou.

We bought the least expensive one whose brand we recognised, and which was recommended by the shop owner. A few days later it arrived and was installed, with minimal difficulty.  It's on the ground floor, and there was already a hole in the wall, wiring in place, and a suitable place for the outside part. Since the old one was at least fifteen years old, the new one should be far more efficient, and also quieter.

About a month later, I was sitting outside in our side garden after walking with my friend Sheila. We had guests in the flat, and they were using the air conditioning.  There was just a gentle purr, rather than the rather obvious noise that the older one had used. I commented that it would have been nice to have a new, quiet and more efficient one in our bedroom.  But we certainly didn't want to have to pay two installation fees, to have a new one upstairs, and then to relocate our current one in the guest flat.

Besides, we didn't know how long our upstairs one would last. It was also at least fifteen years old, probably more. But it was working fine...

.. or so we thought.  Until one morning when I woke up and it was on, although I was certain I had set it to go off after an hour. The following night, I was awake when it went off... and then it came on again.  And refused to take any notice of the remote control. And it seemed to be getting colder... so eventually we turned it off at the wall.  

We changed the batteries in the remote; when that didn't help, we tried using a different remote (as there were three other identical air conditioners in the house).  The same pattern repeated. And unless we switched it off at the wall, it would turn itself on at random times.  

Evidently we needed a new one - and it wasn't a difficult decision to return to George Theodorou, where the same product we had bought in May was ten euros cheaper.  

Unfortunately, there was no way to get the external unit out of the window and secured into the brackets - or, indeed, to remove the old one.  So the installers had to rent a fork-lift truck for an hour, which cost us an extra forty euros. But there was no alternative:  

Sheila took this photo; if she hadn't, we would have no record. I was trying to look after our nervous cat Lady Jane who dislikes workmen of any kind.

Eventually it was installed.  It's smaller than the older unit, so at some point we'll have to touch up the paintwork on the surrounding wall.  But that can wait until the Autumn. 

The remote control has many more options than the old one.  The temperature setting is obvious. We use it at 28 or 29 degrees Celcius, to remove the humidity and cool slightly; too much cooling isn't healthy and can also be very expensive.  When coming into the room from 30 degrees and humidity in the bathroom, 29 degrees and dryer feels wonderful, particularly when the ceiling fan is circulating the air too. 

We knew about 'swing' too.  That moves the air more effectively than having it just pointing in one direction.  And we were relieved to see a 'lamp' option which allowed us to turn off the large LED light at the front of the air conditioner, when it's on. 

But the other controls were a little confusing.  

The instructions were only in Greek, and we could not find this particular brand online in any other language. We haven't yet used Air Flow, Turbo, Short Cut, Clean, or Follow Me.  We decided to use the ioniser, which apparently should help to clean the air and reduce the dust, though we haven't noticed any particular effect.  We tried 'Sleep', one night, assuming it would turn itself off. It didn't. It seemed to get warmer - not turning itself off when it reached the set temperature, but (apparently) blowing warm air out. We definitely didn't want that!

On our older air conditioner, there was a 'timer' button which let us tell it what time we wanted it to turn off (or on, although we never used that option).  We assumed this one would be similar.  It is... but rather more complicated. And with an odd quirk that if I set it to go off (for instance) at 11.45 pm tonight, then tomorrow I will have to adjust it by at least one minute, making it turn off at 11.44 (or 11.46).  If I try to keep it at the same time, it refuses to take it.  

I don't know if our electricity bill will be a lot lower due to this more efficient air conditioner; but it should be considerably better for the environment.  We're wondering, now, about replacing some of the other older ones before next summer, and possibly using them more often than we do to keep the house less humid during the worst of the Cyprus summer. 

Summer heat-wave and forest fires in Cyprus

I mentioned at the end of my last post that we started using our air conditioners on Friday, very thankful that we had them cleaned in advance. It's not unusual to become warm enough for air conditioning towards the end of June (anything over 30C counts) and occasionally we've had heatwaves this early in the year, but they're not usually as lengthy as the one which the island is still coping with.

This brief article about Cyprus in summer, written nearly a week ago, explains that the usual temperatures for this time of year are around 35C inland, and just over 30C at the coast. However there was a low pressure system, and it was a great deal hotter already, with predictions of 41C inland by Tuesday.

All of which is inconvenient, but I am very grateful for the ability - mostly - to keep cool. Far worse are the horrendous forest fires which are blazing in parts of the mountains of Cyprus. Started by careless people burning rubbish, over 15 square km of land has been destroyed, and at least two fire-fighters have lost their lives.

Fires are still raging, and volunteers are being asked to help, as it spreads towards some of the villages. Aeroplanes from Cyprus and several other countries are using sea-water to quench the flames; inevitably the salt will damage the forests further.

Back to everyday life... I didn't get my walk by the Salt Lake last Saturday, due to Alex being stuck on a neighbouring balcony, and yesterday I didn't wake until nearly 6.00. It already felt warm by then; but I wanted to see how empty the lake had become, so suggested Sheila and I walk at least a little way.

Last year was cooler overall with quite a wet winter, but we haven't had nearly so much rain this year, and Summer has come earlier. So this is what we saw:

There's still a little water some way out, but if this heat continues, it will have dried out entirely by the end of June.

I was struck by how very tall some of the weeds had become. Sheila kindly agreed to be in the photo too, to give an idea of scale:

They're already looking brown, however, as is much of the other foliage.

We walked less than a kilometre, and I was already feeling too hot. We still had to go and feed my son's cat, as he was in the UK, so we made our way back; it was probably a bad idea to go at all as I felt very headachey by lunch-time, and unbelievably tired.

Our house is much cooler than outside but the thermometer on the kitchen scales was showing 32C by 8.00 in the morning.  I realised that although the humidity is still relatively low, it's a problem that the heatwave has come early, as it's the Summer Solstice period, meaning it's light before 5am, so the sun warms everything up much earlier than it does in August, when we expect higher temperatures.

The heatwave is predicted to continue for at least another week. The humidity is 'only' at around 39% at present, which means that evenings and nights are not as unpleasant as they can feel in July. But even 39% humidity means that the temperatures feel hotter than they actually are. According to this chart, we're at 'yellow' alert (great discomfort) as far as heatstroke and other dangers are concerned. Inland, where the temperatures are due to rise to 40C or higher, it will be 'orange' alert, defined as dangerous.

So as far as possible I am estivating.