A new printer

Short version of this post: I bought a new printer:

Long version with historical context:

I thought I had probably had my last printer, an HP laserjet, for about twelve or thirteen years. I recalled my younger son buying it - or contributing to it, anyway - when he needed to do significant printing. It was in 2013 when he came back to Cyprus after five years in the UK, so I thought perhaps it was bought around then, although I couldn't work out what it was he needed to print. 

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.

Another Breadmaker

When we first moved to Cyprus, we regularly bought bread at an excellent bakery nearby. I knew that it would be less expensive and more healthy to make my own bread, but I didn't get around to it very often. Kneading by hand was hard work - exhausting in the summer! - and although I had a food processor with a kneading blade, I didn't like to use it too often as it felt as if the motor was struggling, sometimes.

Then just before Christmas 2005 we bought a breadmaker. After a couple of false starts, it began to make excellent bread, and we used it several times per week until the summer of 2012 when something went wrong with the motor. It had more than paid for itself in the savings on bread over six-and-a-half years, so we decided to buy a new breadmaker. It was a fairly inexpensive one, a shop's own brand:

Then it started going wrong. I don't remember what happened, or why we were unable to take it back, as I'm pretty sure it was still under warranty.  Or maybe it still worked, somewhat, but the bread was heavy. Perhaps we had it fixed under warranty, and it still didn't work properly.

I didn't blog about it.. and so have no reference point, other than in our accounts application, where I can see that we bought our next breadmaker in April 2014.  It was from Lidl, on special offer. I remember having a discussion about whether or not it was a good idea to buy another inexpensive shop-brand one, and deciding that we'd try just one more time.

It was a good breadmaker. It had various functions, although as with most appliances I used just a couple of them probably 99% of the time.  I wasn't making bread nearly as often as I did when we had our sons living here, but every couple of weeks our friends with several children come over for a kind of high tea on Sunday afternoons, and I usually make two loaves then, slicing and freezing any leftovers. I sometimes make a loaf at other times, too.

All was well until just over a week ago when we were hosting a birthday party for a visiting friend. I decided to make a loaf of bread for the evening buffet, so put the breadmaker on, only to realise that only one paddle was working.  I tried turning the tin around, so the dough would mix at both ends, and it made some unpleasant graunching noises.  Eventually I took it out, mixed and kneaded it by hand, then put the dough back in the breadmaker, without the paddles, on 'dough' setting so that it would rise.  I made some bread rolls which I cooked in the oven, and they were fine. But I didn't want to do that every time.

Nor did I want to go back to buying all our bread from a bakery. We like home-made bread, and I love the convenience of a breadmaker. Perhaps this one could have been mended, but it was over four years old, and didn't owe us anything; we worked out that using a breadmaker for about six months means it pays for itself in the savings on buying bread.  We hate the fact that so many modern appliances are 'disposable' - getting it mended would probably cost almost as much as a new one, and with no guarantee of continuing to work.

So I went to the website of George Theodorou, where we usually buy large appliances/white goods. Relationships are important in Cyprus, as is customer loyalty.  And they've always given us good service. However they only had one breadmaker listed; it was over 100 euros, and when we checked against Amazon, it was evidently somewhat over-priced and not very highly reviewed.

Last Friday we decided to see what else we could find in Larnaka. Lidl didn't have any on offer, although they probably will at some point. But I didn't want to wait, possibly months. I looked at the website of another shop that sells appliances, but they didn't have any breadmakers at all.  We went to a couple of big DIY shops that sell electrical appliances: Leroy Merlin didn't have any breadmakers. Super Home Centre had one, but it was even more expensive than the one I had seen online, and looked a bit flimsy. We went over the road to Debenhams, but although they have some kitchen things, they don't appear to have any electrical appliances.

We were almost ready to give up, but I suggested we go to the 1st April Street thrift shop, where we've occasionally bought appliances in the past.  And there, in the corner, was a breadmaker. Phillips brand, twenty-five euros.

It looked almost new, so we thought we would try it. It's not a design I would have chosen:

Nor did it have an instruction guide or recipe book included. I was able to find them online, though - the advantage of an unusual looking breadmaker with a purple stripe is that it was easy to find the model via an image search - but decided that I would try, first of all, my normal recipe which has worked in all my other breadmakers.

It worked.

We've got used to longer loaves with our previous two-paddle breadmakers, but this one has the advantage that the bread comes out very easily, rather than getting stuck (which was the worst problem with the Lidl one).

So we're very pleased with this new (to us) breadmaker, and hope it will last us at least as long as the previous ones. 

Buying cars in Cyprus

When we moved to Cyprus, almost nineteen years ago, we didn't think we would need a car. None of Richard's colleagues owned one, and the organisation had a few cars which could be borrowed, when necessary; we had to pay a mileage rate, but it wasn't too steep. For shopping trips locally, or even the occasional visit to another town, it was far better value than having to pay running expenses of a car ourselves.

But then we started attending regular meetings of home educators in Limassol, and wanted to explore the island when visitors came. When Richard's official secondment to the organisation here came to an end, we could still use their cars, but the mileage rate was higher. Then we were given a generous gift by a relative... and it seemed like a good idea to look into buying a car of our own. There were few, if any car dealers in Cyprus in the late 1990s, nor much available online. But there was a large classified ads section of the local paper, which we perused regularly.

In September 2000, we finally bought a car. A Lancer Estate, at first known as 'the car', but in recent years referred to as the old white car. It was around ten years old when we bought it, in good condition, and at a good price. I wrote in detail about it at the end of my September 2000 diary page of our family website.

We bought it from someone at the British army base who was leaving the island. In those days, there was a complex system of taxation, and while the vendor assured us that the appropriate duty had been paid, it turned out he was mistaken. Eventually, we were able to register for a duty-free car; and then, when Cyprus went into the EU, the distinction vanished.

It's been an excellent car. We drove it through Europe to the UK back in 2001, and there were no problems at all.  At some point - I forget when - we had a reconditioned engine put in, after some problems... but it kept going. We had a towbar fitted so it could be used for Richard's dinghy:

In May 2005 it started overheating when we took it any distance. Our mechanic fixed that problem, but it kept recurring. We realised that we could no longer trust it for trips further afield than the outskirts of Larnaka.

So in the summer of 2006, shortly after we moved house (and had 'change' from selling our UK house) we bought another ten-year-old car.

This was a Sang-Yong, a make we had not previously heard of, but at the time there were quite a few of them in Cyprus. We referred to it as the 'big white car'.  Richard bought it from a dealer in Nicosia, and it had a guarantee - of sorts. It was a comfortable and spacious car which had two extra flip-up seats at the back, which was useful when we had more than three visitors.  So, for a couple of years we used this as our 'main' car, and the old white one for the occasional short trip locally. We made the old white one available for guests, too, to get them around Larnaka - to the beach and back on a hot day, for instance.

Unfortunately, the big white car was very expensive to tax and insure. And then the Cyprus dealer for this car closed down, so it became almost impossible to get spare parts when there was a problem. We tried in vain to sell it at the end of 2008, and began using the old white car again, with the occasional car rental if we needed to go anywhere further.  Eventually, over a year later, we sold it for parts.

Then, in the summer of 2009, the car rental guy was selling one of his cars, another Lancer ('the grey car') for a good price. It was newer than our previous cars, but quite high mileage, for a Cyprus car, as it had been used by renters to tour the island.

We were given a good guarantee on the car, and it proved very reliable indeed, although Richard never really enjoyed driving it.

A couple of years ago, when our son Tim was living and working in Cyprus, he realised that a former leg injury meant that he was unlikely to pass his driving test with a manual car, and his instructor suggested using an automatic. So he trawled the local adverts, mostly online now, and looked at several inexpensive automatic cars. He wanted one that would take his keyboard, which narrowed the choice down rather, but eventually he found a small car in a private sale.

They took a friend, who was working as a car mechanic at the time, to look at it, and he said it was sound, and that it wouldn't be too difficult to solve the few problems that we knew about. The make was Toyota Raum, and it was built in 1997.  It became known as the small grey car, or the grey automatic car. Richard didn't much like that one either, but it provided useful driving practice for Tim.

However it seemed ridiculous to run THREE cars. The old white car was still proving useful, with its towbar and spacious boot, and although the seats were falling apart and the air conditioning no longer worked, local friends borrowed it occasionally, and several visitors drove it locally. It was inexpensive to tax and insure, and we felt quite attached to it.

We needed the small grey automatic car for Tim, so the logical thing was for us to use that, until such time as he passed his test and wanted a car himself, and to sell the grey car. Friends took that off our hands almost a year ago, and (to our relief) it has continued working reliably for them.

Unfortunately the grey automatic car (of which we never even thought of taking photos) has not proved very reliable, nor easy to maintain. And a couple of weeks ago, both it and the old white car developed battery problems. Richard took them both to our friendly local mechanic, who told us that they would both cost quite a bit to put right, and even more to get through the MOTs, which are due in the spring.

The time had come to look at another car. Richard wanted one that he would enjoy driving, and started scouring the local adverts and dealers for his favourite kind of car, a VW Golf.

After test-driving several cars a week ago, from a local dealer, he decided that the VW Golf on offer, although very nice to drive, had too high mileage to consider. So - needing a car rather urgently, and not wanting to spend more hours searching and test-driving - we decided to choose his second favourite, a Renault Megane.

It's known, unsurprisingly, as 'the blue car'. It's about twelve years old but has only around 50,000 miles on the clock, and the condition is excellent. There's a year's warranty from the dealer, too.

We're a bit sad to say goodbye to the old white car, which can only be sold for parts/scrap now, but don't really have any attachment to the automatic grey car.

To summarise for those looking at buying used cars in Cyprus: over 17 years, we have bought two cars from private individuals, two from car dealers, and one from a car rental company.  One of the private sales, the old white car, proved excellent value, once the tax problems were solved. The other, the grey automatic, was never great. We don't think the vendor was trying to cheat us, but there's no warranty of any kind with a private sale, and since we're not at all mechanically minded, we'd probably avoid private sales in future.

Buying from the car rental firm worked well; but that's not an option that's available very often, and the choice is non-existent. They're not usually advertised at all.

Buying the big white car from the firm in Nicosia wasn't ideal, as it was a long way to go to get problems sorted, and they weren't great at doing them.  But buying locally, from a company whom our mechanic knows and recommends, with a year's written warranty, seems - at least so far - to be the best option.  We probably paid over the odds for a 12-year-old car, but think it's worth it. The body is in almost perfect condition, the engine as-new, and if any problems crop up in the first year, they should be covered.