Moving on from spring

 Towards the end of April I wrote about moving on from winter - packing away our warm clothes, duvet etc. In May, we enjoyed slightly cooler weather than usual, and a surprising amount of rain. According to the Cyprus mail, rainfall was more than twice as much as normal for the month. But still there's a potential water problem, and hose pipes are still banned, other than for watering plants.

By the end of May, the temperatures were increasing, though the humidity was still low. It was time to start getting ready for the summer. By July I won't want to do anything much during the daytime. On the last Saturday of May, I did some extra laundry, so I could put away even our thinner jackets, as well as stray gloves and hats that were still out. 

We hang things on lines here, and they were all dry within a couple of hours. 

Moving on from winter

 It's usually some time in April when we start to feel a bit warmer, and as if winter has finally come to an end. Not that we experience 'real' winter here; there's no snow, rarely any ice, and the sun usually shines at some point. But the houses feel cold, with the high ceilings and tiled floors. 

At the end of March I was still wearing two warm layers in the house, sometimes three. I wore a knitted hat and sometimes gloves when going out for a walk, morning or evening. We were using our microwave wheat bags every night, the heating was coming on when the temperature dropped too low, and we were snuggling under our double thickness duvets at night. 

Then we spent just over two weeks in the UK, where it was chillier but mostly sunny. The houses, with carpets and better insulated walls, are rather warmer than those in Cyprus. We had heard that Cyprus had had a major dust storm and a lot of rain while we were away. But when we came back, it felt significantly warmer than it had at the end of March.

The first night back, we threw off the thinner part of the duvet, just using the medium one. We didn't even think of using wheat bags. In the morning, I only wanted one warm layer, and when we went out for walks I had no need of hat or gloves. We had turned the heating off before we travelled: we've seen no reason to turn it on again since returning. 

Another week over...

 Wasn't New Year just a few days ago...? How can it be nearly half-way through January already? Time has a way of racing past, faster and faster and I really don't know where the last week has gone.

Part of that, I acknowledge, is that I've had quite a bad cold. Which I'll come to later... 

On Friday January 5th, we went for a walk along the sea-front to check our PO Box. And there, as so often happens at this time of year, we found ELEVEN Christmas cards. All from the UK, posted on different dates between the 5th and 17th December. 

So much for official 'last posting dates'. It all seems quite random. 

That nearly doubled the number of cards we received for the 2023 Christmas season, so I put them up along with those we had already received:

 

We do appreciate the cards that arrive. If you happen to be reading this and are one of the people who still sends us a card each year, then thank you very much. But we have been rather shocked at the amount of postage necessary to send a card to Cyprus from the UK. So please don't feel that you must! Electronic greetings are also welcome. It's rather sad that, even if folk post cards early in December, they can take a month to arrive. This is why I always keep the latest cards in an envelope along with our tree and decorations, and put them up the following year. 

So these, which we displayed right through December, are actually the cards we were sent for Christmas 2022 (many of which didn't arrive until early or even mid-January 2023)

The traditional times for taking down Christmas decorations range from January 5th (Twelfth Night) through to Candlemas (February 2nd). But having had ours up since December 1st, I felt that it was time to take them down on January 5th... so we made sure the knitted wise men arrived at the manger even though it was a day earlier than Epiphany:

In the evening, Richard helped me take everything down, and packed it away much more neatly and efficiently than I can manage when I'm doing the un-decorating alone.

And so, that was Christmas. 

Winding back a few hours, on that same Friday, which felt like a very long day, one way and another, I went to hang out the laundry I had done in the morning, only to find it still rather wet. I put it on to spin again, and nothing happened. Well, the washing machine made a lot of noise, but the drum did not turn at all. 

Uh-oh.

The washing machine, which was eight and a half years old, had been playing up for many months: I could no longer select the programme I used the most, and had to use a different one. Sometimes it was hard even to find that. We wondered about seeing if it could be fixed, but thought it (a) unlikely and (b) probably expensive. 

With a second major thing not working, we realised the time had come to buy a new washing machine.  Our previous one lasted nine years, and ended dramatically by boil-washing some clothes that never really recovered. Eight-and-a-half isn't significantly less. And whereas we were happy to buy a used (and probably elderly) steamer at the thrift store, just a day earlier, we didn't even look for a second-hand washing machine.  A steamer might be used ten or twelve times in a year, and we can manage quite well without it if we have to. A washing machine is used at least 150 times a year, with just the two of us, and I would find it extremely difficult to cope without it. 

So we went out to our favourite local white goods store, George Theodorou, after perusing their website, and ordered a new machine. To be delivered on Monday. And while many things have become more expensive in the past decade, I was slightly surprised to realise that our new washing machine was forty euros cheaper than the one we bought in 2015. And it comes with a five-year guarantee.

Our washing machine is located on an outside utility balcony, inside a biggish metal cupboard.  It works well; it's right by the washing lines, and it's not taking up space in the kitchen. 

But also in the cupboard, next to the machine, we tend to accumulate things like old cardboard boxes, ends of cans of paint - particularly when they're still in use - and unused cat litter trays. I also had a large bag of polystyrene beads for beanbags. At one point we had four beanbags, but one of them was damaged by one of the cats, and we didn't really think we needed four.. so I rescued the filling, and thought it would be useful for topping up the three remaining beanbags. The fillings tend to get squashed, so the bags become less comfortable with time.

It was, I think, a good idea. But I did that probably five or six years ago, and had not done any topping up. I also hadn't realised that the large bin bag in which I put the spare beads was a biodegradable one. And it started to biodegrade. I had noticed a few beans leaking out but hadn't done anything about it... and the slight leak, just a week or two earlier, had turned into a major cascade...

I might have left this for weeks, even months longer, although a high wind could have caused beans to go flying all over the place. But knowing that a new washing machine was coming on Monday was an excellent motivator. So on Sunday I set to work with a jug and a new bin liner... 

Richard helped, and between us we managed to tidy up the inside of the cupboard effectively, getting rid of some almost empty (and dried up) paint containers, and throwing out some of the beans which had become very grubby. 

On Monday the new washing machine was delivered and installed, and the old one taken away. I hadn't realised that the door was so dark, I couldn't see the laundry going around inside. But I guess it doesn't matter. 

The programme names seem a bit random; I've tried three different ones so far, and they all work well. The cycles are rather quicker than those on the previous machine, which is a plus point. 

On Thursday, when I went out for a walk with Sheila first thing, the flamingoes were right on the shore. It had rained a bit, and evidently there were plenty of fresh little pink shrimp by the shore. 

We can't get too close, or they become frightened, and my phone zoom isn't great - but I was quite pleased with this picture. 

2023 broke all the records for warmth, at least in Cyprus, and December was no exception. As I said in a previous post, I don't think the overnight temperatures dropped below ten degrees (Celcius, of course) and the daytimes were mostly 20-23 in the shade. 

Early January remained warm, too. But on Friday, for the first time, my phone showed slightly cooler temperatures when I got up:

And, indeed, it rained - not much on Friday afternoon, but today has been very grey, with rain more than once. A report in the Cyprus Mail said that snow is falling in Troodos. 

Perhaps winter is, at last, arriving. 

Oh, and my cold...

I had a slight sniffle on Monday that barely affected me. I walked with Sheila as usual first thing on Tuesday, but felt exhausted when I got home and very 'coldy' for the rest of the day. It was  really quite bad on Wednesday, then started to improve. It's pretty much gone by now. I didn't test for Covid; mainly because most of our remaining free testing kits have dried up entirely. But I checked several sites to see if there were any clear differences. I was sneezing a lot (common with colds, very uncommon with Covid). However I didn't have a headache, other than slight pressure around my sinuses on Wednesday (headaches are very common with Covid), nor did I have any aches and pains anywhere else. I was a bit tired, but not in a debilitating way. And my coughs were productive.

All of which is probably far more information than anyone reading this cares to read, so I'll end here. 

Doing laundry in Cyprus, and the Eco-Egg

As a child, I was mostly unaware of how clothes were washed. I put things in the dirty linen basket, and at some point they appeared, clean, in my room. Or possibly in the airing cupboard. I did know that my mother put things in the washing machine, but took little notice of the process.

When we visited my grandparents in Scotland in the summer, one of our special treats was helping my grandmother with her weekly laundry: she had an elderly twin-tub machine, where we had to use something like a rounders bat to lift clothes from one section into the other, and then a hose to put rinsing water in. She could never understand why we found it so enjoyable to help; I'm sure if we'd had to do it every week, it would quickly have lost its appeal.

But I never had any conception of what detergent was used. I'm not sure I knew what detergent was, other than some magical substance that cleaned clothes. As a teenager I vaguely remember adverts, telling us this powder would wash whiter, or brighter, or remove the worst stains... but as far as I could tell, they were all much of a muchness.

Fast forward several years...  

I was newly married and had to choose a laundry detergent from among the large number available. We probably chose the one that was best value, or that was on special offer.  Richard wanted me to use fabric conditioner, something that was new to me, but when I did so, my clothes became unbearably itchy. Strange, because they felt softer, but evidently I reacted against something in the conditioner.

When our first son was born, his skin was very sensitive. So after a few false starts - and a lot of nappy rash -  I started using a detergent advertised as gentle on a baby's skin.  I learned that the 'biological' powders, excellent on difficult stains (like blood or ketchup) were not at all kind to sensitive skins. So I would carefully select the non-bio powders, or liquids, and (occasionally) soak a difficult stain first in a stronger solution.

Fast forward again... 

My sons were older, their skins less sensitive, and I was less obsessive about finding non-bio detergent. So when we moved to Cyprus, more than two decades ago, I bought detergent in a brand I recognised.  I always used less than the recommended amount, and as far as I recall we didn't have any problems.

But in the last few years, I gradually became aware of two things. Firstly, that standard detergents are not good for the environment, and not particularly good for clothes. Secondly, that I was feeling itchy in a low-key way rather more often than I liked, and - in the winter - developed a rash in places where my skin rubbed against my clothes. Not bad enough to worry me, but a minor irritation now and again.

I l switched to a different washing powder, but that didn't help.  I looked for non-bio washing powder in three different shops, but could not find any.  I started using less and less detergent.  That probably helped the environmental problem slightly, but made no difference to the itching and rashes.

Then - yes, I have finally reached the point of this post - just over a month ago, we were in the UK for a few days. The main reason was my nephew's wedding, a wonderful occasion (and thankfully the weather was considerably milder than it might have been). In our extra days, we did some shopping, including going to one of my absolute favourite shops, Lakeland.

And there, I saw - on a promotional stand - the 'eco-egg'.  I had heard of these alternatives to detergents many years ago, but reviews had been mixed and I had been cynical. But these eggs come with special little pellets or granules. Apparently they produce a couple of chemical reactions that cause dirt to be removed from clothes gently and washed away without the need for detergents. They were advertised as ecologically sound. When I asked the assistant if they worked, she said they had sold a lot and nobody, so far, had complained or returned one .

The box said that the eco-egg was good for up to 70 washes. It cost £9.99 so was not much more expensive than the equivalent bag of detergent in Cyprus. Refill packs for the eco-egg are available at half that price for up to 50 washes, so I decided I had little to lose.  At worst it would do nothing more than washing with water alone.

I have to admit to a minor annoyance when I opened the box, hoping I could squash the contents into my over-full case.  The egg was much smaller than I had expected: the packaging was excessive:

But at least it was cardboard, and thus easily recyclable. And there was no problem fitting the egg into our luggage!

I have used it, now, for four weeks.  In that time, I suppose I've done about fifteen loads of laundry.  I've followed the instructions carefully: I don't over-fill the machine, as there needs to be room for the egg to move around. I make sure it has a chance to dry out in between loads.  And the one time I had a 'difficult' stain, I first soaked the item in a little regular detergent, then rinsed it, then put it in a load with the eco-egg.

I don't always separate light from dark clothes; I prefer to separate different kinds of washing, doing one load a week of towels and tea-towels (60 degrees), one of socks, underwear and some other darker clothes (40 degrees), and one of sweaters, lightly-used shirts etc (30 degrees).

Conclusions

Is the eco-egg better for the environment than normal detergent? I don't think there's any doubt about that one. It has to be better.

Is it better for my skin?  Yes!  Within days I became aware that I was no longer feeling itchy.  And at moments when I suddenly felt an itch again, I realised a moment later that I was wearing something that had not yet been washed by the eco-egg.  The rash has almost entirely vanished.

Does it actually DO anything?  I have to admit, this is much more difficult to evaluate.  Would I have exactly the same results if I simply washed the clothes with water and nothing else?  There is no real way to test this. I would need two identical machines, and two identical loads of dirty clothes to be able to perform a fair trial. But as far as I can tell, yes, it does do something.  The clothes emerge from the machine smelling fresh and clean.  That's not necessarily the case when washing with water alone.

The smell isn't the artificially fresh one that comes with detergents. It's far more subtle. By the time the clothes have dried on the line, the scent of the clothes is more of outdoors than anything else. But I'm pretty sure my load of socks and manky jeans would still smell a bit stale if I had only washed them in water.  Perhaps clothes washed with the egg would be stale, too, if I left them, damp, in the machine. But I usually hang everything out within minutes of the load ending; no more than half an hour later.

The clothes are undoubtedly softer than they used to be, which is probably because there's no build-up of detergent in them.  The only slight disadvantage - if it is one - is that the whites are not quite as brilliantly white as they used to be. Sunshine helps, although we haven't had a whole lot of that in the past month.  But I don't think it actually matters too much.  Besides, if detergent was whitening our whites, what was it doing to clothes that were not white...?

And if you were wondering how it works...  

The product description at the Lakeland site states,

The two types of unique powerful cleaning pellet activate in water, working together to produce a powerful foam that gets right into the fibres of your clothing to lift off dirt and grime with ease. Here’s the science bit – the ceramic pellets weaken the adhesion between the dirt and fibres, while the mineral pellets naturally ionise the oxygen molecules in the water, which then penetrate deep into fabrics to lift dirt away without fading colours or damaging your clothes.

(https://www.lakeland.co.uk/53232/ecoegg-Laundry-Egg-Refill-50-Washes---Fresh-Linen)

I don't know if that is scientifically sound, but then I never really understood how traditional detergents work. I can't say I've noticed much 'foam' in my eco-egg washes, though sometimes I see a small amount.

Maybe I'm gullible and the eco-egg doesn't actually do anything other than bounce around inside my washing machine.  But, so far, I'm pleased with it.  I haven't seen anything like this in Cyprus, but with increasing environmental awareness, perhaps they will start to appear.

In the meantime, I'll buy refills from Lakeland. 

Summer in Cyprus. Approaching yet again.

Once again, the inevitable is happening. A chillier-than-usual winter in Cyprus gave way to a pleasant spring. I very much like March and April here. The sun shines, but it's still cool overnight. I have the energy to get things done, and the landscape is green with a wide variety of wild flowers, and cultivated ones too for those who go to the trouble of growing them in their front gardens.

It's been a pleasant 20-23 C in the daytime for much of the past few weeks. Now, as April draws to a close, the predictions are for hotter weather ahead. Here's what the Weather Channel site is showing for the next couple of weeks:

Yesterday, for the first time since about November, I spent most of the day without any sweatshirt or jacket of any kind. We went into town for various errands, and I found it was too hot in the sun, though still pleasant in the shade. Last night we ran our bedroom ceiling fan. It was only on the slowest speed, and we're still using a duvet... but the air felt still, and my face was too warm without the fan.

Today we realised that we haven't used our warm jackets for a week or two, and are unlikely to do so for the next few months. This is what our coat rack looked like:

Two scarves, and about five warm fleeces and coats. I removed them all, and put most of the jackets in the washing machine.  A few hours on the line and they were dry, so they're now hung up in our landing closet upstairs. I took the opportunity to put more of my winter clothes there, and extract my shorts... which I expect I'll start wearing soon, if the forecasts are correct.

I found my sandals, too, looking rather grubby, so washed them as well, in preparation for needing them all too soon.

Then I collected our surprisingly large collection of sun hats and put them on the now empty coat rack:

If Murphy's law holds, now I've made these preparations for Summer, we could be due for some unexpected and extra chilly weather meaning I need to get the jackets out again.  I won't mind in the least if that happens, but it's unlikely in May.

In the next few weeks I shall wash all our curtains, and we'll clean the air conditioners which we try to avoid using until at least June.  We'll switch to our very light-weight duvet, too, and then - probably only a couple of weeks later - just a duvet cover or flat sheet to cover us at night.

In other unexciting but typically Cyprus fashion, we went to Lidl just over a week ago. The shop has grown on us since our first unimpressed visit several years ago when it was new to the island.

This time,  I wanted to get some of their cat litter, which is about half the price of our usual brand and seems to work just as well. I also wanted a 2-litre bottle of olive oil, as our current one was running low, and theirs is usually the best value.  We didn't even look at the weekly brochure telling us what the special offers were, because we were only going in for these two items...

This is what we ended up with (plus two bags of cat litter) :

When we arrived, we remembered that our digital kitchen scales had recently gone faulty.  They were consistently weighing everything at about 75% of its correct weight, which was irritating and I didn't always think about the adjustment.  Happily, Lidl were offering good value kitchen scales with a bowl.

Then we saw a digital medical thermometer. I'd had what was probably a sinus infection the week before, and one day felt very shivery. We realised we had no thermometer, so no way of knowing if I was running a fever. Not that it mattered much, but at 2.99 euro it seemed like a good idea to have one.

Richard needed new crocs/clogs for casual use when sailing. We know the controversies about them, and that they're a bad idea for anything other than use on the beach or as slippers in the house, but he found just ONE pair in his size, in a colour he liked. So those were added to the basket. Along with our usual Lidl dark chocolate, and a new fresh basil plant, and a couple of jars of honey, and a couple or rolls of duct tape... and some seeded bread rolls for lunch.

A nicely eclectic mixture, not atypical for our Lidl visits. We still can't find most things we want there, and their fruit/veg are over-priced (in our view) but their special offers are often very good. 

Last few days in the UK...

Our last couple of weeks in the UK went by very quickly.  We didn't manage to get to see many friends in Birmingham, although we very much enjoyed meals with a few families who we've been close to for many years now.  All too quickly it was our final Sunday... and Tim was playing in the music group at Christ Church: 

As well as interviewing Richard about his work, they prayed with Tim and said an official goodbye to him, since he's moving back to Cyprus for a year or two.  

We had a new experience in our final week; the washing machine in my mother's house stopped working. It was quite old, and good timing in one sense... but we had only taken a week's worth of clothes with us. I tried doing some washing by hand but it wasn't very effective, and was decidedly messy. Then as there's no washing line, it was remarkably difficult to get things dry and I was worried about overloading the tumble drier. 

So we found a launderette  They're not all that common, apparently, but right by 'studentville' (the popular area for Birmingham University students) we discovered a small and friendly one, with a very helpful man who explained how the machines worked and estimated how many we would need.   We had taken several carrier bags of dirty clothes, bedding, and so on...  and ended up using three machines: 

It wasn't particularly expensive, but suddenly we could quite see why students are renowned for taking piles of laundry home to their parents.  I would have done too, if the only alternative was to use a launderette. Not that it was a problem once - it was quite an interesting experience.  But it would work out quite pricy and time-consuming to go there every week. 

It was while our clothes were churning away that we thought of a new problem: how we were going to transport the clean laundry back to the car?  There was nowhere to park nearby, so we were probably a couple of hundred metres away.  We could hardly walk through the streets carrying huge piles of wet washing... and we certainly didn't want to pile it back in the carriers we had used for the dirty stuff. 

So while Richard waited, I wandered around the local shops in the hope of picking up some useful 'bags for life'.

I had no luck at all. There were only small 'express' style supermarkets nearby, and none of them seemed to sell strong bags. 

Then finally I went into an art/craft shop.  And I found them. Possibly the ugliest carrier bags I have ever seen, not something I would wish to be seen carrying... but sometimes, as it's said, 'needs must'.  The bags were plastic, and looked pretty sturdy.  I bought four of them....

 They did make it easier to carry the wet laundry back. Since it had spun, we decided to use the tumble drier at my mother's house, rather than paying - and waiting longer - at the launderette.  And we also decided that this was an experience we did not particularly wish to repeat.

We spent a lot of time in our last couple of weeks clearing more of my mother's house, sorting paperwork for her, and had a major blitz day on our final Saturday, when all my siblings and their spouses came for the day. It was good to be all together again, albeit briefly.

Happily the bags had another use on our final Saturday, enabling my siblings to transport various small items home with them.