First week of Advent

 After expressing some frustration at November being much warmer than usual, December is finally showing some signs of autumn, if not the beginnings of winter. We still haven't had our central heating boiler serviced, but perhaps this coming week we should...

My only gesture towards Christmas before December was to make our Christmas cake, as mentioned in the previous post. I still have half of last year's mincemeat in the fridge, and since I can't find suet (veggie or otherwise) in the supermarkets, I'm researching different suet-free Christmas puddings. Recommendations welcome. It's probably a good thing, as I'm pretty sure our usual veggie suet is one of those ultra-processed products that we're supposed to avoid. 

But November 30th was the first Sunday in Advent. I made soup for the first time since March, to share with our friends who have a meal with us every other Sunday. I wasn't sure if it was really cold enough for soup, but everyone appreciated it. 

I did also start reading a couple of different Advent 'plans' on the Bible app that I use. The 'plans' are quite variable in quality, so I tend to read more than one at a time. 

On Monday, I bought some stamps and Christmas cards. I also sent out one card (to a friend in the United States), and we collected the first card of the season from our PO Box. 

In the afternoon I went to the local reading group pre-Christmas gathering, where we all took food to share. 

In the evening, Richard and I walked along the sea-front and admired the lights:

Shopping at Lidl

 Lidl supermarket, an international chain, has been in Larnaka for ten years this month. When we first visited, lured by some enticing advertising, we weren't all that impressed. By that stage we had got into the habit of doing one major grocery shop per month, at Metro, and in between times I would pop to the local discount shop, or the fruit shop. And it was clear that while Lidl had some products at excellent prices, the range was too limited for our regular needs.

However, in the past ten years we've been there quite a few times. Their advertising brochures arrive most weeks on Saturday, and while I throw most junk mail straight into the paper recycling, we usually browse the Lidl one. Richard has bought some inexpensive and reasonable quality tools there, and we've bought a few appliances, too, when they're on offer.  

We like their coffee beans, although we haven't been able to find any for some months now. And there's the biggest problem: we understand that the 'special offer' products, often connected with a specific country or culture, are only available for a short period. But they also have regular products, which are sometimes there, sometimes not. They always have some basics - sugar, white flour, toilet paper etc - but there's no guarantee of any particular brand, nor of some products. 

This week's catalogue showed some silicon muffin pans, something I'd been thinking about for a while. I have plenty of small cake tins, but sometimes I want to make bigger cakes, the ones generally referred to as muffins (or American muffins, as the muffins I grew up with, known as 'English muffins' in America, are rather different). These muffins pans weren't going to be available until Thursday, so we knew from previous experience that we needed to go first thing on Thursday to have any chance of buying any.

Of course 'first thing' is actually mid-morning now, since we're under 65 and in good health, so we can't go to shops before 10am.  But shortly after that hour, we headed to Lidl, armed with a short shopping list of things we would be running out of in the next few weeks, and which we have previously bought there. 

I was pleased to find that there were still plenty of muffin pans, albeit at the bottom of a box with various other silicon cookware. We pondered buying four, but decided that two would be sufficient; it's not as if I make muffins all that often. I just like to have the option. 

I didn't hold out much hope of coffee beans, which is just as well as there weren't any. On the other hand, there was a good amount of a Columbian ground coffee that we tried a while ago, and which I liked very much. We can't find Fair Trade ground coffee here, but at least it has the symbol for Rainforest Alliance.  We bought three packets, which should keep us going for a while: 

I didn't hold out much hope of finding my current favourite peanut butter, as there wasn't any last time we were at Lidl, but I was pleased to find that they had it in again. It was even on special offer, reduced by quite an amount. So I picked up two jars:

Chocolate - thankfully the basic dark chocolate is usually excellent value, and is the one I use for cooking. It's dairy-free and UTZ certified, so we're happy to buy that regularly. Perhaps six bars was a tad extreme, but I doubt if we'll go to Lidl again before the New Year. 

The only pasta we generally buy is wholewheat spaghetti, and that's something Lidl usually has in;  one 500g pack lasts us around five months as we're not great pasta eaters. Lidl is also also a good place to buy dried chickpeas, which are useful for many things. Both products were on my list, and I was pleased that I managed to find them both, even though the store shelves regularly change, presumably to encourage people to look around the entire shop in the hope of finding what they want.

We also bought some battered cod and some salmon, but I put those straight in the freezer when we got home, so didn't take photos. But I couldn't find any mayonnaise; for several months Lidl stocked our favourite brand, but I couldn't find any this time.  Nor could I find raspberry jam, something I dislike having to buy, but since we can't get raspberries here, I can't make it.  

The other thing we bought was a pack of sharp knives. I managed to break the tip off my favourite sharp knife just over a week ago, so when I saw that there were some knives on special offer at Lidl this week, I thought we might look at them. I hadn't realised that they would be in a set of four, but at €6.99 for four, we thought them well worth getting. Ernesto seems to be a reasonable brand, and they're guaranteed for three years. 

The other thing we bought was a small poinsettia plant. We like to have one each year, coming up to Christmas; our living room table by the window seems to be an ideal place for poinsettias, and they last, usually, at least until Easter. November is a bit early, but we know from experience that they can be harder to find, higher priced and less attractive looking if we wait until December. 

So, once again our visit to Lidl was something of a mixed experience. A couple of very useful non-food purchases, a few random food items that were good value... but we'll still need to go to Metro next week for groceries that we can't buy at Lidl. 

I know some people boycott Lidl; their policies for workers aren't great, and they don't score well on many of the ethical categories. However, we try to buy products with some kind of ethical labelling, and don't usually go there more than five or six times per year. 

Winter and Christmas preparation in Cyprus

I have evidently been neglecting this blog recently. I've been busy with various things, and somehow blogging has slipped off my radar. My last post was early November, when I was writing about October. Since then, winter (such as it is in Cyprus) has appeared, and Christmas will be here very soon. So here's a brief summary of the past six weeks or so:

The temperature always takes a downward turn around the second week of November. So around that time I got out our two cat beds. I made one of them, a few years ago, and we bought the other one. To my surprise, the cats decided to sleep in them.  However, Alex, who is really quite a large cat, squashes into the smaller bed:

While Lady Jane, his petite sister, spreads out comfortably in the larger bed:

On November 20th, we went into the large and somewhat random shop Kleima. I forget what we were looking for, but we spotted some large poinsettia plants at just €4.99.  We usually pay more than that for much smaller ones.  It felt much too early for a plant we consider to be a Christmas decoration.  And I was dubious about buying it from Kleima; the shop isn't known for great quality. But somehow we decided to buy one anyway.  The pot was a little small, so I re-potted the plant:

In the process, a couple of the stems fell out. They didn't break off, or anything; they were stems that had apparently been pushed into the soil to bulk the plant out a bit. I trimmed them and put them in water.  Over the next few days, I noticed other stems starting to droop... and on gentle pulling, found that they, too, were just loose stems.

However, the actual plant, while considerably less voluptuous than it originally appeared, has survived well and is looking good.

Our closest friends here had been away for over two months, so although winter was approaching I hadn't done any early morning walks in October or November. But they returned at last, and I woke early enough to see a sunrise on November 25th:

A few days later, it was my turn to travel, though I was only away for a week.  My flight was quite early, though after sunrise; as I looked out of the plane window I spotted part of a rainbow:

My trip was to the UK, in order to help my father celebrate a special birthday.  While there, visiting a garden centre, we saw this display of mechanical toys:

They were delightful to watch, but then we saw the boxes. Each one cost at least £30, some of them more, and one alone would be rather dull. They're not toys, and they're the kind of thing one would only get out at Christmas. They were a great display for the garden centre, but I did wonder who might buy one!

At the weekend there was a family party, with twenty of us in all, and a magnificent cake made by my father's wife:

Since I was seeing my siblings and their spouses, with whom we still exchange gifts at birthdays and Christmas, I did all my Christmas shopping online before I flew out. I then wrapped everything, and distributed appropriately.  I also wrote all the Christmas cards for UK friends and relatives, and got our newsletters printed and posted too.  I even made this year's Christmas puddings and mincemeat before my brief trip.  I don't think I have ever been so organised, and it was a good feeling.

A week after my return to Cyprus, the Christmas season was well underway.  The Larnaka Christian Writers' group had our annual Christmas potluck lunch with lots of good food and enjoyable company:

Among other things, I took along some of my first batch of mince pies.

Then, the following day, Sheila's daughters helped me to decorate our Christmas tree, something which has become an annual tradition:

A couple of days after that, Richard and I celebrated the 40th anniversary of our first date.  We had a take-away lunch, had some professional photos taken, and saw some of the lights of Larnaka:

In the evening we went out to eat, and then - along with many other people - took photos of this rather strange giant bauble at the end of the small pier:

At the weekend, I hung up last year's Christmas cards, something else I do each year since so many don't arrive until January. And I sewed up another shepherd I had knitted for our Nativity scene:

I made the first of this season's lemonade on Saturday, after buying a crate of thirty lemons for a couple of euros. On Sunday I made the second batch of mince pies, and some veggie 'sausage' rolls for freezing.  On Monday I made some gingerbread and chocolate chip cake.  I also opened up and made up the sofa bed in Tim's room, which made Jane very happy:

Tim arrived last night and she was even happier. He has always been her human of preference.

Today I made marzipan and put that on the Christmas cake. I need to make some more mince pies, within the next few days, and ice the Christmas cake... but that's about all until we cook the turkey on Christmas Eve.

The house is not as warm as we'd like because one of our central heating pumps needs to be replaced. We've bought the new pump, but the central heating engineer recommended by the shop hasn't come to fit it, though he said he would do so yesterday evening or this morning. However it's not particularly cold out, so an extra jacket is sufficient, at least at present.

I hope to write another blog post on Christmas Eve, as I tend to each year, and will then make a 'resolution' to write at least one post per week in 2018. 

The best-made plans.... can sometimes be improved upon!

During November I took part in NaNoWriMo. Along with one of my sons and the daughter of a local friend, I succeeded in writing 50,000 words as the first draft of a novel. I did it a couple of years ago too and nothing ever came of it, but it was an interesting exercise - and quite time-consuming towards the end, when, inevitably, I fell behind on word count for a while.

November 30th was Advent Sunday, so I thought I might do as I did last year and allocate one 'task' per day in Christmas preparation. Possibly even two per day for the first two weeks of the month, since the rest of the family will be arriving on December 16th. I jotted down a list this morning: order presents, make mincemeat, write newsletter, post cards, decorate the tree, buy a poinsettia... that kind of thing. Perfectly manageable if I just plan to do one per day, starting now. The only thing I've done so far is to make our Christmas cake: I'm not one of those people who has Christmas sorted by the end of October.

Looking at the list, I thought that making mincemeat would be a simple, relaxing (and quick) job for today. I mentally checked the ingredients off in my mind.. then I realised I had no suet. Oh well, I thought, I'll pop around the corner later this morning and buy some at the local supermarket.

I was about to get out the feather duster and vacuum cleaner to start my usual Monday-morning blitz of the main floor of the house when I remembered... tomorrow morning, a workman is coming to repair some bubbled plaster in the ceiling and also by the stairs, where it got damp (about four years ago, if I recall correctly. We're really not very good at getting things done quickly). Any kind of cleaning right before plaster is being removed seemed like a pointless exercise.

So, the planned cleaning was abandoned, or at least postponed.

Then Richard said that perhaps we should start moving furniture out of the living room. That triggered some decisions we had been pondering for a while. We had talked about buying a futon or similar to go in what was Tim's bedroom. But we couldn't find anything appropriate. I pointed out that we had a perfectly good sofa bed in my study (I think it's only been used on three occasions since we moved here, as we have a separate guest flat downstairs, but it's good to have it just in case). I proposed moving it upstairs and putting one of our two-seat sofas in its place. Richard has been wanting a three-seat sofa and the only way we could fit one in our living room is to get rid of - or move - one of the two-seat sofas.

So we started to move the sofa bed. We got as far as the living room, but it's pretty heavy. No way could I move it up the stairs.

However, moving one of the two-seat sofas into my study was easy enough, and looked much better than the sofa-bed ever did. Joan of Arc approved: 

The problem was that now I had nowhere for the boxes of Lego that were tidily housed underneath the sofa bed. So we moved some other boxes in a study closet to Tim's old room, and the Lego then fit in the closet in the study. 

We moved the other sofa into our dining room, then started moving the (digital) piano. But that was really too heavy for me, too: 

So then Richard moved the television into the dining room, and I took a photo showing the sofa at the far end, the piano half-way, and the TV unit denuded of the TV: 

We did all this gradually, in between other things, and a friend came soon afterwards to help move the piano and the sofa-bed.  

When we were eating lunch, it felt as if we were in a second-hand furniture store that wasn't very well-organised...

After lunch we went into town to the furniture shop where we bought the two-seat sofas, nearly ten years ago. None of the furniture on display looked like the kind we wanted, but when we explained to a helpful assistant what we were looking for, he knew at once what we were describing, and found 'our' style of sofa in an ancient catalogue. They are made locally, he said, and we could certainly have a three-seater, in a covering of our choice. The price was even better than we had expected. 

We couldn't find the same material - since I had taken a photo earlier I could even show him what our sofas look like and he said he remembered the material, but it was no longer available. However, there was another one which was similar, which we liked, and when Richard asked about having one of the sofas re-covered (the cats pretty much destroyed the back of one of them) he gave us a good quote.

So we should have a three-seater sofa delivered in about a week. 

Just as I was thinking that the Christmas day-by-day tasks weren't even going to get started, we walked past a shop with some healthy looking poinsettias outside, at about half the price we would expect to pay elsewhere. 

So we bought one. 

I then remembered that they are supposed to be toxic to cats, and Alex is into everything.. but, happily, Snopes confirmed that poinsettias are fine. Just as well since Alex was indeed very interested: 

Next I decided to go to our local Micro supermarket to buy some veggie suet, and perhaps make mincemeat tomorrow.

There was no suet in the shop. 

Then I received a text from Tim, saying that as we had both completed NaNoWriMo, he would like to treat me - and perhaps Richard too - for ice cream. And when he heard that I was hunting, in vain, for suet, he said he was about to go to Metro supermarket and would get me some there. 

Half an hour later, Tim arrived with some suet.. and we went out, not just for ordinary ice cream, but for Haagen Dazs. Tim and Richard are dairy-free and Tim's extensive research into alternatives has led him to conclude that this company makes the best raspberry sorbet he has ever tried.  

I opted for the wonderful strawberry cheesecake... although I had a couple of tastes of the raspberry sorbet, too, and it was very good indeed. 

To sum up the day: 

• Plans:  cleaning, making mincemeat
• Actuality: moving furniture, ordering a new sofa, buying a poinsettia, eating Haagen Dazs ice cream

I'm not really into spontaneity, but it seems to me that the actuality was a vast improvement on the former...and since we now have a poinsettia, I've even done my first step towards Christmas. 

Over half way through December...

The weather was still pretty warm right up to the end of November, and even the first few days of December. It simply didn't feel as if Christmas was coming, despite decorations, of varying degrees of gaudiness, appearing in our neighbourhood and downtown.

The writers' group had our now traditional Christmas get-together followed by bring-and-share lunch on December 2nd, and one of our members was efficient enough to have printed newsletters and written Christmas cards to hand out.

I was not that member.

Still, I had sorted out almost all our family Christmas gifts at the end of October before our trip to the UK. I felt quite pleased about it, despite feeling that it was somehow too early. I made our Christmas cake at the start of November... and since we are not into partying, or wild decorations, it didn't seem as if there was much to do.

And yet, I have this uncomfortable memory of spending the last few days before previous Christmases desperately trying to bake, and getting stressed, and thinking of all the things I really wished I had got around to earlier...

So when my friend Sheila started telling me about her family's Advent 'calendar' idea, I wondered whether I could find ONE thing to do every day in December, in order to prepare for Christmas. Which, after all, is part of the point of Advent. I was slightly stymied by it being already December 5th before I heard about this, but I reckoned that I could write off the first four days since I had already bought AND wrapped the presents, and made the cake.

So I did a bit of brainstorming and came up with about twenty things I wanted to do. Some were very quick (like 'feed the cake' or 'order the turkey') and some slower ('write the newsletter'). One or two were not precisely related to Christmas (such as 'clean all the windows').

One of them was to buy a poinsettia, something we forgot to do last year. But then a friend visited and brought us a lovely specimen:

So that was very easy.

On December 5th I made our Christmas puddings, which steamed all day and are now in the fridge.

On December 6th I made our mincemeat:

Then the weather took a very cold turn. Cold enough that it was actually a degree or two warmer in the UK than in Cyprus. Richard serviced our central heating and the gas man came last Monday.. but the radiators did not come on. And in a house with big rooms, high ceilings and tiled floors, it was COLD. We piled on layers of clothes, and actually went out to buy a couple of electric heaters, but they had limited effectiveness.

Then a wonderful, wonderful man came and fixed the heating. And we started to feel as if our bones were beginning to thaw out.

I spent the next couple of days writing a family newsletter; never an easy task, but some people appreciate it, so we keep up the tradition. It was a particularly difficult one this year and I played around with several possible formats.

Then I had to wait for a day or two as we needed a new cartridge for the colour printer. So by that stage already I had lost the impetus of doing one thing each day, and never regained it. I did manage to write all the cards - two days later than planned - and post them the following morning, although I'm not certain if they will arrive in time.

Six cards have arrived for us, so - as has now become a tradition in our home - I found last year's cards, most of which arrived late December or early January, and hung those up instead.

Last weekend I made our first batch of mince pies:

And then, because we all like it, and often used to make it at Christmas, I made some gingerbread.

Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo until after I had cut it into several parts and frozen most of it, but here's a picture of a small slab that I kept out:

The thing I jotted down for today - and actually DID today - was to put up our Christmas tree.

Or rather, I delegated it to my enthusiastic small friends, one of whom had asked me about a week ago if she could help put it up again. Sheila is much better than I am at putting things together anyway so I sat and took a few photos, happy to have delegated this task once again:

The two older girls had fun decorating the tree with as many ornaments as they could pile on, but Elisabeth, who is now three-and-a-half, was more interested in setting candles out on a bookshelf, and playing with the Nativity set. Here she is, with the finished tree in the background:

I thought I might make a chocolate yule log, something I haven't done before.. but am still pondering that one. Tomorrow we're going to go out and order our turkey (something I had intended doing a few days ago), and I'll also make the marzipan and do that layer of the cake tomorrow. If I get around to it, anyway. At some point I'll put the newsletter online and link to it, and of course I still have to ice the cake. I might make some fudge, although I think Tim will probably do that. And I will ice the cake on top of the marzipan early next week.

But it really does seem as if quite a bit has been done.

Happy Christmas, one and all (with link to our annual newsletter)

It's been quite a long day. Before 9.00am I made more batches of almond milk, granola, and lemonade because I didn't want to have to do so tomorrow. I put a loaf in the breadmaker for lunch, too. 

Then we went to Metro pick up the turkey we had ordered, and some sausagemeat, and some potatoes and veg... and various other bits and pieces that had appeared on my list. It wasn't anywhere near as crowded as I had expected, so that was good. 

Tim has made two sorts of stuffings, and he and Richard organised the turkey to go into our guest flat oven, to be carved later this evening and re-heated in a roasting pan tomorrow. They've just peeled what looks like half a ton of potatoes, and Tim is preparing other vegetables. 

Meanwhile I've made some bread rolls for tomorrow afternoon, and will do some more mince pies when Tim's finished in the kitchen. One of us will probably make cranberry sauce this evening, and I need to prepare an alternative dessert for those who don't like Christmas pudding. And then clean the kitchen and mop the floors. 

Oh, and I have a few presents to wrap.

It's 7.20pm, and has all felt quite relaxing so far. I don't know why we tend to make such a big thing of Christmas food; I try and simplify as much as possible, and do what I can in advance, but still there seems to be a mammoth amount of preparation. This year Tim will not be playing at any church services, nor going to a midnight one, so we'll just go to a short service at ten o'clock tomorrow morning. I will put a Christmas pudding or two on to steam when I get up; after we get back from the church service, it will be over to Tim to get everything organised so that lunch all comes together for about one o'clock. 

So, since I haven't yet posted one so far this year, here's a photo of the poinsettia we bought a couple of weeks ago:

.. and here's a link to our 2011 Christmas newsletter. 

Wishing anyone who reads this a peaceful and blessed day, with much love from family and friends, and time to think about the reason we celebrate Christmas.

Poinsettia in Cyprus

Once again, our Christmas poinsettia is still thriving despite the fact that Lent begins (for Protestants) tomorrow, and (for the Orthodox) yesterday.

Here's how it looked when we first brought it home in December:


Each year since we've been in this house we've been given or bought a poinsettia shortly before Christmas. I don't know what made us put it on a table in front of a window in the living room the first time. We're not good with house plants in general, but I suppose I saw a space and plonked it down. And we didn't think of a better place, so there it stayed... and stayed... and, to our amazement, was still looking attractive in March.

So, having found what is apparently the ideal spot for Cyprus poinsettias, we've used exactly the same place each year.

Here's how the current one looked about a month ago:


And here's now it looks now:


The newer leaves are coming in green, and some of the red leaves have curled up and dropped off. It's decidedly past its brightest and best. But still an attractive plant, which I hope will last at least until the summer, based on previous experience.

Plants and other random bits and pieces

The week has rushed by, as ever. We have our friend Alison staying for a 'working holiday': sorting out accounts at the office, and also spending time sitting in the sun and reading. Richard's had quite a nasty cold and cough, but has continued working many hours including spending most of the weekend, as usual, painting and doing other work on King Malu. The weather has been fine, and mostly sunny although not particularly warm.

A couple of months ago I realised that some of the planters on our front porch were looking a bit bare. Well, actually they were full of weeds, and one of them had rather a lot of tiny geranium seedlings which had evidently planted themselves, aided by the rain. I'm really not much of a gardener. I'm more than happy not to have to do any gardening any more; it used to be quite a hassle at our old house and I don't miss that at all. But I do like to see a few pots at the front of the house.

So we went to the local place, and bought a few petunias and antirrhinums, both of which do well in Cyprus.


Then I spent half an hour getting rid of weeds, transplanting geraniums into other pots. I'm not at all sure what we'll do with these little ones:


- but these ones are doing quite nicely on top of the posts by the gate.


I haven't even needed to do any watering so far - other than one day when I suddenly realised we'd had a warm and dry spell for nearly a week - but no doubt I will have to get back into the habit of regular watering when the weather starts to warm up.

Oh, and our Christmas poinsettia, as usual, is still thriving and looking colourful on the windowsill by our front door:

Christmas season comes to a close

We're not really into traditions in our household. We don't make a big thing of decorating the house for Christmas, although I suppose we do it much the same way each year. And we usually take the decorations down again on January 5th. I'm not sure why, other than that it IS traditional... and if we didn't take them down then, they'd probably hang around for weeks longer, while we stopped even noticing them.

So, on Monday evening, we took down the cards, even though a couple of them had only arrived that morning. They're sitting in a pile on a little table in my study, and will no doubt stay there until one of the cats knocks them over. I like to look through them once more, and I always hate throwing them away. But we are trying to cut down on clutter, and really don't want to keep an ever-increasing pile of cards in the house. Nobody seems to want used Christmas cards for crafts any more, and we don't even have paper recycling in Cyprus. So, while I hesitate about throwing them away, they'll sit collecting dust in a pile.

I removed the tree decorations, and Richard put away the lights and dismantled the tree, helped - or rather, hindered - by Sophia. Then I gathered up the other bits and pieces - mostly candles - and we put them all away. The whole process took about twenty minutes, and the living room looked a bit empty at the end.

I washed our two Christmas tablecloths today. When I've ironed them, they too can go away until next year. This morning I took apart the two jigsaw puzzles we did on Christmas afternoon, too.

The one thing that remains is our poinsettia. Two years ago, Richard brought this poinsettia home from the office. And it survived all year. In December 2007, just when it was beginning to look tired and straggly, some friends came to lunch and gave us this magnificent poinsettia. It, too, survived all year, and was beginning to look tired and straggly a week or two before Christmas.

Many years ago, a friend told us that in Anglican churches, when something happens two years in a row, it's immediately dubbed a tradition. Being good Anglicans, at least before we came to Cyprus, it is evidently now traditional in our household to have a new poinsettia during December. So about a week before Christmas, we went out to our local plant shop, and bought one:



Of course, it's no longer a Christmas decoration. As of Monday night, it's just a house plant. And if it follows the traditions of its predecessors, it will continue to bloom red bracts until at least March, and will then stay green and flourishing until some time in December.

Yesterday was Epiphany, an important feast in the life of traditional church congregations, including the Greek Orthodox majority of Cyprus. It's also a public holiday. In Larnaka, there's a special ceremony in the morning, where a heavy and valuable cross is thrown into the sea, and several young men dive for it. The one who finds it is (in a strange mixture of folklore and religion) supposed to have good luck for the rest of the year. We went to see this, several years ago, but there wasn't much to see from a spectator point of view, so we haven't been again. Besides, it's a bit chilly.

Today, most of the schools returned after the Christmas break. Although in some countries, including Egypt, today is the one celebrated as Christmas Day. For them, the Christmas season goes on another couple of weeks, while for us it feels as if the New Year is starting properly. Regular activities will resume next week.

December in Cyprus

Although the evenings are chilly, the weather is really very pleasant at the moment. I'm sure it's usually cooler than this by now, but it's been around 20C for the past week, during the daytime, with sunshine most of the time. Today it did cloud over in the early afternon, and then poured with rain for about ten minutes.. but that's the first rain in a couple of weeks.

Of course, we do still need rain desperately. But water is coming in tankers from Greece, and a new de-salination plant is being built. In the meantime, it really doesn't seem too hard to cope with mains water only being switched on for about ten hours, every other day.

The plants are doing well, enjoying the cooler weather. Right outside our front door I have three plants, all of which were given to me as house plants. But we don't do very well with plants indoors - other than our poinsettias, they all start to droop and look miserable after a few weeks. But moving them outside seems to give them a new lease of life. Here's a kalanchoe that Richard bought me about a year ago. The pink flowers died fairly quickly, but it stayed alive through the summer, and now is a mass of pink again:



More surprising, at least to me, is a chrysanthemum plant that we were given, also around a year ago. It flowered nicely for about a week, then started looking very tired and sad. I've never had a chrysanthemum last for very long, but I put it outside, and cut off the dead-heads, and kept it watered through the summer... and around the beginning of November, it rewarded us with the most amazing yellow blooms which are still going strong:



I can't quite believe it's already a week into December. I never do much in preparation for Christmas before the end of November, and then always feel caught out when the first week of December races past, almost unnoticed. I was going to buy various presents online today, until I read that it's apparently the most popular online shopping day of the year. I don't want to overwhelm the online shop servers, or get my orders confused with other people's, so I'm going to leave it until tomorrow.

I've bought a load of Christmas cards, but haven't yet written any. That will take almost an entire day, quite apart from the hour or two necessary to stick the stamps on and post them. I've jotted down notes for our family newsletter, but haven't yet found relevant photos or even typed it. We decided that if we're going to put up a tree and do some decorations, we should do them before Wednesday when Richard's colleagues and their families are coming for a festive lunch, but we haven't done it yet. Perhaps tomorrow...

It's been a busy few days, for someone like me who's an Introvert and needs a lot of time alone. On Friday, our house group met here for about 45 minutes, to eat bread and cheese, and a lentil soup I'd had simmering in the slow-cooker all day. Then we went on to the inter-church youth group 'variety night' fund-raiser, where there were mince pies and other goodies for sale. On Saturday, I baked my first 24 mince pies, since we were invited to a 'tea' in the afternoon, with more cake and other goodies. On Sunday we were out for lunch with friends.

In addition, the German lady I mentioned in my previous post stayed in our guest flat until Sunday evening; I took her out to the local supermarket a couple of times, and helped her find things - communicating with sign language, and the few words of English that she knows, and some references to her English/German dictionary. Then I took her to church on Sunday morning.

This morning was the monthly meeting of the Larnaka Christian Writers' Association; rather than meeting in the home of the group founder, we met at the Craft and Hobby Centre in Ayia Eleni Street for a couple of hours, and then had lunch together. Good value sandwiches or salads, and excellent quality!

Tomorrow I help at the Toddler group run by one of the churches, and on Wednesday is the work lunch...

I really should remember how December seems to get full of meetings and gatherings, and get everything organised for Christmas before the end of November. But somehow, it never happens.

Eleventh Day of Christmas...

.. but we decided to take down the tree and other decorations anyway. They'd been up three weeks, after all, and I thought it was about time.

I'm pleased to say it took us all of forty minutes. Tim, being the tallest, took down all the Christmas cards. I collected up all the candles and tinsel and so on (having already washed and even ironed the two Christmas tablecloths) and un-decorated the tree. Then Richard did the very difficult job of putting the lights back in their box, while I took the tree apart. Then he piled all the boxes in a high cupboard in the study.

I thought it would take at least an hour.

We do still have the magnificent poinsettia we were given a few weeks before Christmas, but I shall just consider that as a house plant from now on. I know from last year's experience that it will probably live all year, this being Cyprus.

Tomorrow is Twelfth Night, and the Feast of the Epiphany, if anyone's interested. It doesn't often fall on a Sunday.

Decorating for Christmas in Cyprus

We don't make a huge deal of Christmas - for us, it's primarily a time to relax, to remember Jesus' birth in Bethlehem, and to spend time with family and friends. And to eat lots of special home-baked goodies that we don't eat the rest of the year.

But still, we do make a few small festive efforts. My mother is staying for two weeks over Christmas, and at least four friends will be joining us for Christmas Day, when Tim will produce a full turkey roast lunch for us all.

Moreover, we're hosting a lunch on Thursday for Richard's colleagues and their families - I think it will be 19 of us in all. And I do like to air our small collection of Christmas decorations once a year..

This is what we have outside our front door. Not a huge and ornate wreath, just a simple one:


Here's our tree, which we bought about 19 years ago and brought out with us from the UK two years ago. The lights don't show up as I took it in daylight, but they're there. A few pieces of tinsel, a few baubles, and some bits and pieces that we've been given, or have bought, over the years. That cats want to take some of the baubles, of course, but so far they haven't succeeded. They haven't even knocked the tree over, which is good.


No presents around the tree yet, because they're sitting in a cupboard waiting to be wrapped.

Then there are candles. I don't like lots of glitzy chains or garlands, but I do like these tiny candle-holder wreaths, and festive coloured candles, some of which we'll burn at mealtimes, others of which will go back in the box at Epiphany, awaiting next year's outing.

This gold-coloured candle, is placed on our bookcase of Christian books. There's a matching one on our bookcase of non-fiction general books.


This red one, and others like it, are sitting on some of our bookcases of general fiction:


Ah, and Sophia wanted to get in on the photo-shoot, so here she is posing next to another of the red candles:


Oh, and there's this blue candle, too. Someone decorated it, and another like it, and gave them to us a few years back. Someone else gave us this china candle-holder about a year ago. It only occurred to me this year to put them together.


We've now burned the other blue candle, since they were beginning to get a little frayed around the edges. We may use this one on Christmas Day.

We usually get about forty or fifty Christmas cards, many of them sent from the UK. Those that arrive first get hung along the pelmets above our sliding doors and windows, like this:



(If you click on the image to enlarge it, and have a fairly sharp screen, you may spot something unusual about the clock above the row of cards!)

And finally... we were given these rather stylised Nativity characters when we first moved here. We haven't always put them out, as we couldn't find anywhere that looked right. But this year, we were given this beautiful (and huge) poinsettia, and it occurred to me that our little Nativity scene would look quite good right in front of it:



(This post was inspired by Boomama's festive tour of bloggy homes)