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.  

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. 

Where is Autumn....?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That's not what the forecast suggests:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Preparations for the Cyprus Summer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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.