Christmas season wine and liquor sales still on, so while I go to the internet J walks over to Orphanides supermarket to stock up on our favourite of the local vins tres ordinaires, the ones that come in litre boxes - unexciting but perfectly drinkable, and, at the moment, going for 1.39 EU a litre (2.10 CAD or 1.54 GBP). We travel now with "the sticks" - small pieces of wooden dowling that enable one to hang the plastic grocery bags from them, thus grasping the dowels like handles instead of having the bags cut into one's fingers. A handy trick we learned a few years ago from Jim McGill.
We're reading Ingenious Pain, an astonishingly good first novel by Andrew Miller, set in the mid-18th century in England and Europe - rich enough it can only be read in moderate sized chunks. The reviewers have scarcely been able to find enough superlatives - "A true rarity: a debut novel which is original, memorable, engrossing and subtle" (the Guardian).
the evening news in English opens with a story about a Limassol taverna owner being killed by a car bomb. The interesting thing is that I do not immediately reach for my notebook. Car bomb killings, while not exactly common, are not unusual enough to excite much interest either. They are always related to underworld rivalries or - less frequently - family feuds - in other words nothing that would ever, except by the worst of bad luck, have affected a Cypriot family or foreign tourist innocently going about their business. All the same, it is an interesting cultural commentary. A car bomb is the essence of premeditated crime and doesn't seem to fall in the unthinkable category here. When did we last hear of one in Canada, or even in London?
JAWORSKI TRAVELS
We live our lives forever taking leave - Rilke
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Wednesday, 30 December 2009
Monday, December 28/2009
M&M stop by after their trip to Malta - good weather and hotel and the little buses running even on christmas Day. We have tea and catch up on the news. Maggi lends us a little booklet of tributes to Lydia by various church people which, she points out, says repeatedly, that L washed a great many church dishes.
Monday, 28 December 2009
Sunday, December 27/2009
Sunny, warm (21) and the town coming to life after two days' holiday. The supermarkets open again - smaller shops hit and miss. We come home past the bakery with a fresh loaf of the sesame studded dense rye bread that we love. Surprisingly, the barber shop on the next block is open - a shave in progress - but the "Hair Saloon" further along is shut. Until recently hair salon opening times were regulated by law - they all remained closed on a Thursday.
One of the happiest things about living in Cyprus is the provision of BBC radio - BBC World and periods of BBC 4 and 5 - by the British forces. The other places we could get this - Iraq, Afghanistan, the Falklands - are not nearly so inviting. There's Gibralter, but it's prett expensive. So we listen to a panel of foreign assignment reporters discussing their profession. Alan Johnston provides a particularly nice explanation of journalistic objectivity. If a reporter were to go into a abar and hear a fierce argument as to whether two and two make four, claimed by one, or six, as another insisted, the proper course would not be to assume that the truth was in the middle but to look for corroborating evidence. All the same, BBC reporters and others, do sometimes get caught accepting the frame of reference provied by one side or the other. Thus the optimistic "coalition" provided by the US and UK in the Iraq invasion suggested a much wider backing than had in fact been achieved, as well as having the happy connotation of "allies." US-UK, especially if pronounced U-suck - would have had a quite different effect.
One of the happiest things about living in Cyprus is the provision of BBC radio - BBC World and periods of BBC 4 and 5 - by the British forces. The other places we could get this - Iraq, Afghanistan, the Falklands - are not nearly so inviting. There's Gibralter, but it's prett expensive. So we listen to a panel of foreign assignment reporters discussing their profession. Alan Johnston provides a particularly nice explanation of journalistic objectivity. If a reporter were to go into a abar and hear a fierce argument as to whether two and two make four, claimed by one, or six, as another insisted, the proper course would not be to assume that the truth was in the middle but to look for corroborating evidence. All the same, BBC reporters and others, do sometimes get caught accepting the frame of reference provied by one side or the other. Thus the optimistic "coalition" provided by the US and UK in the Iraq invasion suggested a much wider backing than had in fact been achieved, as well as having the happy connotation of "allies." US-UK, especially if pronounced U-suck - would have had a quite different effect.
Saturday, December 26/2009
It's twenty years since the first Christmas we spent together, and this is our tenth Christmas in cyprus. There's sun when we wake up, but by eight o'clock the sky is overcast. Shops are open on a hit and miss basis, and there's no market, presumably because there was one Christmas Eve. Good leftovers though.
Friday, December 25/2009
Awake early and it's sunny. Christmas mass is full, though probably not as full as midnight mass last night. The nativity scene - a large, sprawling amalgam of several crib sets of differing scales, which somehow works - has been moved to a front corner. Is this to keep the cattle out of the hands ofthe small boy who used to take them to play with during mass? The usual enthusiastic Philippino choir, and the standard Christmas carols with a slight twist. The Philippino pronunciation never quite anticipates slurred joining of syllables - as in "th'incarnate deity" - leading to lines of music ending before all of the words have been fitted in. However, a line with "Emanuel" in it has the opposite problem. Every Philippino knows that this is three syllables, pronounced Spanish style as "E-Manuel" - thus the words finish before the melody. But iti's all heart - and pretty good melody too.
Afternoon walk along the waterfront. What we first take to be the three ships of Christmas song at anchor turns out to be a single three masted ship broadside at a distance. Some families and tourists, but fewer than most years. The man roasting chestnuts and corn on the cob to order is doing business, but an elaborate toy display attracts little attention. The crowds haven't moved to the square by the Eleonora, either. It has a giant christmas tree sheltering a large and remarkably ugly nativity scene - still always a creche to the Quebecker in me, but that's not a usage the Anglo world seems to recognise. But no crowds, no people at all.
J does a chicken whole in the large pot and makes very nice gravy, so a lovely little Christmas dinner a deux, with surprisingl good cabernet. Followed by Love, Actually on the Dubai chanel. I've seen it before, though J says he hasn't, but I'm a Hugh Grant fan. Interesting ads accompanying it, Middle East style: garnier cream makes your skin two degrees lighter.
The other Christmas treat acquired yesterday at the charity shop across the back road is Alan Bennett's novella, The Uncommon Reader - just the right length for a little gem of a Christmas read.
Afternoon walk along the waterfront. What we first take to be the three ships of Christmas song at anchor turns out to be a single three masted ship broadside at a distance. Some families and tourists, but fewer than most years. The man roasting chestnuts and corn on the cob to order is doing business, but an elaborate toy display attracts little attention. The crowds haven't moved to the square by the Eleonora, either. It has a giant christmas tree sheltering a large and remarkably ugly nativity scene - still always a creche to the Quebecker in me, but that's not a usage the Anglo world seems to recognise. But no crowds, no people at all.
J does a chicken whole in the large pot and makes very nice gravy, so a lovely little Christmas dinner a deux, with surprisingl good cabernet. Followed by Love, Actually on the Dubai chanel. I've seen it before, though J says he hasn't, but I'm a Hugh Grant fan. Interesting ads accompanying it, Middle East style: garnier cream makes your skin two degrees lighter.
The other Christmas treat acquired yesterday at the charity shop across the back road is Alan Bennett's novella, The Uncommon Reader - just the right length for a little gem of a Christmas read.
Thursday, December 24/2009
The bakery and then the supermarket. Fr. Wilhelm comes along as I'm sitting on the wall outside, waiting for J, so kisses - and yes, we will go to Christmas mass. The store is busy, especially the butcher's counter, but the chickens are pre-wrapped, so it doesn't take us too long. Not a cranberry in sight though.
Five o'clock and we get the nine lessons and carols live from King's College Chapel, Cambridge, courtesy of BBC World radio. It's become our marker for the beginning of Christmas. Then, after supper, the Dubai television chanel brings Gone With the Wind, not Christmassy but full scale romantic and the first time I've actually watched it start to finish, though J says he has, once.
Five o'clock and we get the nine lessons and carols live from King's College Chapel, Cambridge, courtesy of BBC World radio. It's become our marker for the beginning of Christmas. Then, after supper, the Dubai television chanel brings Gone With the Wind, not Christmassy but full scale romantic and the first time I've actually watched it start to finish, though J says he has, once.
Wednesday, December 23/2009
J has the flat all decorated for Christmas - the few baubles we picked up at St. Helena's a few years back, the strings of new decorations he made out of candy foils, the modernistic outline tree of tinsel with tiny foil ornaments, the silver and fold wrapped candles. he's also taken a couple of christmas cards and made 3 dimensional pop-up cards decorated with coloured foil. so we're all ready except for buying the chicken tomorrow.
Wednesday, 23 December 2009
Tuesday, December 22/2009
Very busy around the hotel as the cleaners prepare for new residents. They don't show up at our flat until after one and then only to take the rubbish and deliver toilet paper. Would have been a good time for clean floors as M&M are coming to dinner but it's a poor dinner party that focuses on the floor. In the interests of dinner, I head downstairs to try to scavenge a couple more coffee spoons as we seem to have only one, but on the way to the lift pass the manager pressed into service wheeling the cart of kitchen odds and ends from its usual hiding spot behind the stairs to a flat that's being cleaned. Not a good time for surreptitious acquisition.
So we dine with only one coffee spoon - but a beautiful leg of lamb with a mushroom wine sauce and little new potatoes. The lamb, surprisingly, is Irish, a whole leg whih the butcher has kindly cut in 2 so that it would fit in the pot. good company too. this is our pre-Christmas meal with M&M who are going to Malta for 4 days over Christmas.
So we dine with only one coffee spoon - but a beautiful leg of lamb with a mushroom wine sauce and little new potatoes. The lamb, surprisingly, is Irish, a whole leg whih the butcher has kindly cut in 2 so that it would fit in the pot. good company too. this is our pre-Christmas meal with M&M who are going to Malta for 4 days over Christmas.
Tuesday, 22 December 2009
Monday, December 21/2009
The translations continue to provide entertainment. Thus the sign outside the Avenue Apartments, professionally produced, offers office and apartment space for rent "SHORTOIL LONG TERM". One can imagine a Greek speaker hearing the translation thus, but it's hard to think of him writing it down for the sign maker with no further confirmation.
Monday, 21 December 2009
Sunday, December 20/2009
Fourth Sunday in Advent but we're up a little late for our regular Church. Will have to check later for Christmas times. so begin the day lazily with the Sunday Mail, and bacon and eggs.
Down to the waterfront in the afternoon. We're expecting the customary crowded promenade with touriss and local families out for a Sunday walk, cotton candy and ice creams and balloons everywhere and the cafes spilling out onto the pavement. there are some tourists and a few locals, a scattering of balloons and the odd ice cream, but the numbers are small and the cafes not full. What's happened? the chairs are still set up in front of the beach stage, so there will have been a concert this morning, but there aren't many booths and they're not busy.
We stop to look at the Athene - our old home of 3,4, and 5 years ago. It's been under construction for 3 years now, ever since we moved out. It's been resold and is now boasting six full floor flats for sale. They'd be huge, each comprising a previous four flats plus some hall space, and the view is stunning from the higher ones, but there hasn't been much progress. The building is still totally gutted, the floors open to the elements. Since we're close, we take a quick look at the Augusta. The views are good there, but it's not, as we knew, cheap. One bedrooms 900EU - studios 800EU and 850EU.
At 6:30 there is the nine lessons and carols at St. Helena's. We neet M&M there, Maggi bearing a sample of fruit from Chris's orchard. the parish is between priests and has a "resident locum", Rev. rajinder Daniel, retired, late of India and now of Birmingham. He chats with us afterward upstairs where the parish is hosting its usual generous refreshments - mulled wine and sausage rolls and minced pies - a cheerful, open, cosmopolitan man.
Down to the waterfront in the afternoon. We're expecting the customary crowded promenade with touriss and local families out for a Sunday walk, cotton candy and ice creams and balloons everywhere and the cafes spilling out onto the pavement. there are some tourists and a few locals, a scattering of balloons and the odd ice cream, but the numbers are small and the cafes not full. What's happened? the chairs are still set up in front of the beach stage, so there will have been a concert this morning, but there aren't many booths and they're not busy.
We stop to look at the Athene - our old home of 3,4, and 5 years ago. It's been under construction for 3 years now, ever since we moved out. It's been resold and is now boasting six full floor flats for sale. They'd be huge, each comprising a previous four flats plus some hall space, and the view is stunning from the higher ones, but there hasn't been much progress. The building is still totally gutted, the floors open to the elements. Since we're close, we take a quick look at the Augusta. The views are good there, but it's not, as we knew, cheap. One bedrooms 900EU - studios 800EU and 850EU.
At 6:30 there is the nine lessons and carols at St. Helena's. We neet M&M there, Maggi bearing a sample of fruit from Chris's orchard. the parish is between priests and has a "resident locum", Rev. rajinder Daniel, retired, late of India and now of Birmingham. He chats with us afterward upstairs where the parish is hosting its usual generous refreshments - mulled wine and sausage rolls and minced pies - a cheerful, open, cosmopolitan man.
Saturday, December 19/2009
Market morning. Start with Cypriot coffee with M&M. Maggi full of spillover news forgotten at our Wednesday night meeting, including the sad news that our hotel, the Kition, is apparently to be demolished. Prices seem up a bit - or is it just our fading memories? Buy 6 eggs from the egg lady's daughter, as well as broccoli, tomatoes, mushrooms, tiny potatoes, carrots and a large bag of oranges (53 actually!), the last for a euro seventy.
Still stocking up with basic supplies as well as for christmas, we go shopping in the afternoon as well. First stop the Polski sklep (shop). J finds a bottle of black currant syrup - though he would rather have had cherry. Smart Store for liquor. Unfortunately the liquor sales are all in the lead up to Christmas and New Year, so we have to guess what we're likely to use in the next 3 months in order to take advantage of the special prices. So we acquire a litre of Famous Grouse whiskey for nine euros ninety (15.15 CAD or 8.80 GB) as well as a local apricot liqueur and a domestic liqueur intriguingly entitled Scotish Legend. The spelling makes it clear that it's no Highland import, but it's cheap enough that we buy it hoping for a palatable Drambuie knock off. No such luck. It turns out later to be an undistinguished but drinkable Cypriot brandy style drink. Mark down a litre bottle of vodka at 6 euros for later collection when we're not carrying so much.
Still stocking up with basic supplies as well as for christmas, we go shopping in the afternoon as well. First stop the Polski sklep (shop). J finds a bottle of black currant syrup - though he would rather have had cherry. Smart Store for liquor. Unfortunately the liquor sales are all in the lead up to Christmas and New Year, so we have to guess what we're likely to use in the next 3 months in order to take advantage of the special prices. So we acquire a litre of Famous Grouse whiskey for nine euros ninety (15.15 CAD or 8.80 GB) as well as a local apricot liqueur and a domestic liqueur intriguingly entitled Scotish Legend. The spelling makes it clear that it's no Highland import, but it's cheap enough that we buy it hoping for a palatable Drambuie knock off. No such luck. It turns out later to be an undistinguished but drinkable Cypriot brandy style drink. Mark down a litre bottle of vodka at 6 euros for later collection when we're not carrying so much.
Friday, December 18/2009
We're right across from the main post office which is extremely busy as I go in. Two women seated at a table furiously addressing christmas cards, chinese girls sending a huge parcel home to china, and the usual business at the wickets. Busy at the student internet as well. The computers have been upgraded and not yet ruined by the users - though one of the four isn't running. My half hour is enough to read the email and get a bit of the blog online. I also take a quick look at the cyprus Weekly, as we're quite behind in Cypriot news. The "Cyprus problem" seems, like the poor, to be always with us. There is startling news though. The body of former president Papadopoulis has been stolen by modern day grave robbers and the police forced to let their 3 suspects go as all had alibis. Only in cyprus.
Text from Jenny saying that London is snowy and we had left just in time. In fact the radio has cited snowfalls of up to 8 inches in the southeast part of England. she also says that tesco has reissued Doug's washed vouchers.
Text from Jenny saying that London is snowy and we had left just in time. In fact the radio has cited snowfalls of up to 8 inches in the southeast part of England. she also says that tesco has reissued Doug's washed vouchers.
Thursday, December 17/2009
the cleaners open up the store room and we find the rest of our 'stores' - one box having been deliverd to our room before we arrived. The microwave is there and the folding rack for drying clothes, as well as a large box tied with a bungee cord and full of surprises. Well, some we remember leaving - like the radio, the large pot and the metal toasting rack for the cooker burner, and our black coffee cups. But there are plenty of other things - the table cloth, our candelabra (menorah style and made of wrought iron, salvaged by J on the street one year), the greek dictionary and the homemade christmas decorations which J soon has untangled for stringing from the lamps and in the archway.
Over to the cah point which (unlike last night) is working and then to Metro supermarket to begin stocking up. The pre-Christmas liquor sales are on, so we treat ourselves to a celebratory bottle of local brandy. The girl who works at the bakery remembers us and finds one of her few English words - welcome. After lunch we go to the shops north of us - Smart for wine, Elomas for almonds, and Prinos for fruit - clementines, bananas, apples and a lemon - and vegetables - onions, broccoli, courgettes, aubergines, carrots, peppers and mushrooms. So home to make a curry. It's all right, but much too soon after Jean's for us to think it's really good.
Eleven fifty-two p.m. receive a text from Maggi, dater 6:30 a.m. today, suggesting we all go to dinner. Lost in some telephoic limbo, as she no doubt wondered at our rudeness.
Over to the cah point which (unlike last night) is working and then to Metro supermarket to begin stocking up. The pre-Christmas liquor sales are on, so we treat ourselves to a celebratory bottle of local brandy. The girl who works at the bakery remembers us and finds one of her few English words - welcome. After lunch we go to the shops north of us - Smart for wine, Elomas for almonds, and Prinos for fruit - clementines, bananas, apples and a lemon - and vegetables - onions, broccoli, courgettes, aubergines, carrots, peppers and mushrooms. So home to make a curry. It's all right, but much too soon after Jean's for us to think it's really good.
Eleven fifty-two p.m. receive a text from Maggi, dater 6:30 a.m. today, suggesting we all go to dinner. Lost in some telephoic limbo, as she no doubt wondered at our rudeness.
Wednesday, December 16/2009
Alarm at 3:30 and we're out before 4. It's cold - though no minus 40 - and there's frost on the windscreens. And I'm grateful for the heavy tights which I had considered leaving in winnipeg until susan and Ian started talking about the possibility of moving during the winter. Swiss cottage bus stop is a bit of a surprise. for one thing, it's not truly dark: as with all of London, street lights and other light pollution see to that. And plenty of people are up - twenty-four hour buses, but also cars, taxis, and pedestrians. It's not, as I feared it might be, scary. And the bus, when it comes, isn't empty. Ending the night shift or beginning the day, people are on the move.
We change at charing Crosss to the Heathrow bus, N9, so busy that at times it's standing room only. a few air passengers but mostly the early workforce heading out. arrive at Heahrow 5 at about six o'clock and it's still early enough to be pretty relaxed, despite the strike vote that may have the cabin crews out next week.
Calm flight with huge carnivore breakfast. Fall asleep over wine and newspapers. The flight isn't full so J and I each get 2 seats - very relaxed. Fly in over the mountains and villages, then up the coast, and land at the "new" Larnaca airport - bigger if not better. Through immigration almost quicker than I can get the passports out of their pouch, but the luggage is slow despite extra new and improved carousels. Taxi to the Kition where our old semi-penthouse (2 slides glass and balcony) is waiting.
Text Maggi and she and Magne arrive for a glass of wine - stored from last year, so vin de maison tres ordinaire, but now vintage. M full of news of local updates and the death of old Lydia, who wandered away from the home in which her daughters had placed her in Nicosia, lost her way in a field and was found dead 3 weeks later. Very sad
We change at charing Crosss to the Heathrow bus, N9, so busy that at times it's standing room only. a few air passengers but mostly the early workforce heading out. arrive at Heahrow 5 at about six o'clock and it's still early enough to be pretty relaxed, despite the strike vote that may have the cabin crews out next week.
Calm flight with huge carnivore breakfast. Fall asleep over wine and newspapers. The flight isn't full so J and I each get 2 seats - very relaxed. Fly in over the mountains and villages, then up the coast, and land at the "new" Larnaca airport - bigger if not better. Through immigration almost quicker than I can get the passports out of their pouch, but the luggage is slow despite extra new and improved carousels. Taxi to the Kition where our old semi-penthouse (2 slides glass and balcony) is waiting.
Text Maggi and she and Magne arrive for a glass of wine - stored from last year, so vin de maison tres ordinaire, but now vintage. M full of news of local updates and the death of old Lydia, who wandered away from the home in which her daughters had placed her in Nicosia, lost her way in a field and was found dead 3 weeks later. Very sad
Monday, December 14/2009
By train from Waterloo to Thames Ditton to see Jenny and Doug and the family. Jenn's mum is here and Doug and Emma, with Jasmine, now 11 months rather than the 3 months she was when we last saw her, round faced and happy, beginnin now to talk. Jenny comes back with the grandsons, Sam and Kai, collected from school, and cody, a week older than Jasmine and as interested in everything.
We have tea around their huge dining room table with salads and sausages and a large gammon and dundee cake and custard tarts. The babies are curious about the taste of everything. Laura and Nathan arrive back from Nathan's grandfather's funeral - and Cody immediately lifts his arms to be picked up by Laura, athough he's been content if sleepy with us.
The others are packed off home and Doug is dismayed to find he has left his wallet in the pocket of his trousers when he was persuaded to add them - at the last minute - to the wash. Predictable jokes about money laundering as he lays the contents out on a towel in front of the fire. The real loss, though, would appear to be several pounds worth of Tesco vouchers which have vanished. As we leave for the train he is examining the interior of the washing machine with a flashlight.
We have tea around their huge dining room table with salads and sausages and a large gammon and dundee cake and custard tarts. The babies are curious about the taste of everything. Laura and Nathan arrive back from Nathan's grandfather's funeral - and Cody immediately lifts his arms to be picked up by Laura, athough he's been content if sleepy with us.
The others are packed off home and Doug is dismayed to find he has left his wallet in the pocket of his trousers when he was persuaded to add them - at the last minute - to the wash. Predictable jokes about money laundering as he lays the contents out on a towel in front of the fire. The real loss, though, would appear to be several pounds worth of Tesco vouchers which have vanished. As we leave for the train he is examining the interior of the washing machine with a flashlight.
Saturday, 19 December 2009
Tuesday, December 15
Down to Canada House. British Air lets flyers choose seats 24 hours before take off, so we plan to check the email and use the computer to check in. But when we arrive the place is closed, more or less. The rates are shut but a whey-faced man comes out to ask what we want. "We're closed. Emergencies only." Two men collecting passports are allowed in. We ask why they're closed. "It's an emergency." Well, clearly the place isn't on fire. Unfortunately the mumbling about emergencies is fairly unconvincing - rather like the implausible excuses of old East European functionaries - but there's nothing to be done but head for an internet cafe. Fifty p later we've booked the seats and had a quick glance at the email at a cafe near Finchley Road Station.
Out to Jean's in the afternoon. The visit would have been Sunday but work on the lines would have meant two different replacement buses - awkward at night. We have a good chat and a lamb curry lunch. Jean's been very busy, mostly with a choir she belongs to that has just held its Christmas concert o Saturday evening. Short phone conversation with Jean's brother robert, who tells us that the temperature in Edmonton is minus 40 - with a windchill of minus 56!
On the way home (not that it is exactly) we stop at the travel centre at victoria Station to check the timing on the night bus toHeathrow. I'm hoping that we'll end up at a wicket staffed by a middle-aged man. They usually seem to know the timetables almost by heart and have a passion for detail and accuracy. We get a cavalier young chap with dreadlocks who says that the night bus takes "about 2 hours." We know this to be wildly inaccurate, which casts suspicion on the rest of his info - and is annoying as well. So through the queue again (going in the door past Dreadlocks who is now enjoying a smoke break). this time a middle-aged man who looks up the timing on a computer program and announces "73 minutes from Charing Cross."
Finish packing and set the alarms on both mobiles.
Out to Jean's in the afternoon. The visit would have been Sunday but work on the lines would have meant two different replacement buses - awkward at night. We have a good chat and a lamb curry lunch. Jean's been very busy, mostly with a choir she belongs to that has just held its Christmas concert o Saturday evening. Short phone conversation with Jean's brother robert, who tells us that the temperature in Edmonton is minus 40 - with a windchill of minus 56!
On the way home (not that it is exactly) we stop at the travel centre at victoria Station to check the timing on the night bus toHeathrow. I'm hoping that we'll end up at a wicket staffed by a middle-aged man. They usually seem to know the timetables almost by heart and have a passion for detail and accuracy. We get a cavalier young chap with dreadlocks who says that the night bus takes "about 2 hours." We know this to be wildly inaccurate, which casts suspicion on the rest of his info - and is annoying as well. So through the queue again (going in the door past Dreadlocks who is now enjoying a smoke break). this time a middle-aged man who looks up the timing on a computer program and announces "73 minutes from Charing Cross."
Finish packing and set the alarms on both mobiles.
Sunday, December 13/2009
Third Sunday of Advent. We head for Westminster Cathedral where the boys' choir is lovely as usual and we light the third candle on the Advent wreath. The parish Christmas bazaar follows and J scores a large beeswax candle from the Church candle ends on sale. A pound for the candle (J says they used to be much less) and another pound for 3 fat used paperbacks. They're 50p each, but the ladies, teetering between desire to raise more money and desire to sell all the books, say that they will sell 3 fiction books for a pound "if they're not the really big nice ones." Mine are quite big, but one (a Gabriel Garcia Marquez) is a bit water damaged they note, so the three are good for a pound. Pass up Edwina Currie's memoirs, presumably featuring her affair with John Major. Well it's not fiction anyway - is it?
A nice fat Sunday Times on the way home to go with yesterday's Saturday Guardian, not yet finished. It's a nippy day out, with a chill breeze and possible frost tonight - though not cold by Canadian standards!
A nice fat Sunday Times on the way home to go with yesterday's Saturday Guardian, not yet finished. It's a nippy day out, with a chill breeze and possible frost tonight - though not cold by Canadian standards!
Saturday, December 12/2009
Check out the options for leaving on tuesday. Heathrow Express is the only public transport possibility with any hope of getting to terminal 5 on time. The difficulty is getting to Paddington on time, and the extra distance to Termiinal 5. In the end we decide that a minicab would be as cheap and much simpler.
Over to Asda to get a top up for the mobile. Spot an ipod touch 32 gig for 227 pounds, tax included and refundable. We're planning on going downtown to admire the lights but acquire a cooked chicken and postpone our light tour.
Over to Asda to get a top up for the mobile. Spot an ipod touch 32 gig for 227 pounds, tax included and refundable. We're planning on going downtown to admire the lights but acquire a cooked chicken and postpone our light tour.
Friday, 18 December 2009
Friday, December 11/2009
London overground from West Hampstead to Hackney to Alexander and Flora's place where Dorothy is staying for Christmas. Off at Dalton and Kingsland and we walk south on Kingsland. It's rough and real in the way that Queensway used to be twenty years ago, shops spilling over into the street; fishmongers, butchers with whole chickens hanging, an outdoor market. Rather like Bethnal Green.
Alexander and Flora live in a square set back a couple of blocks west of Kingsland, a solid corner terrace house, formal and high-ceilinged on the ground flor (full of Alexander's pianos). Below stairs it's a different world, mostly enormous low-ceilinged kitchen with a long scrubbed wood table, all warmth and busyness. We have tea there and then leave A and F and their dogs and head up Kingsland.
The area is mainly Turkish, with turkish shops and signs. I recognise "eczane", the Turkish word for pharmacy, and we stop at another shop to look at Turkish spices. We're hoping to eat at a Turkish restaurant that flora has said is very good - a valuable opinion D points out, as F is a cordon bleu cook.
We stop first at a tiny pub which we share with the other non-Moslems on a street rather short on pubs. Most of the other drinkers are Caribbean in origin and clearly know each other, though they're friendly enough to us. I'm puzzled aby a sign on the door: PINTS ONLY SERVED DURING FOOTBALL MATCHES. But I want a pint now - why on earth should they object? Will I have to settle for a pint? But J returns with 2 pints of bitter and D's passion fruit drink (a request for soft drinks elicited a choice of orange, cranberry and mango, or passion fruit). The sign, of course, should read: ONLY PINTS SERVED DURING FOOTBALL MATCHES - a deterrent to cheap drinkers who might monopolise the telly.
There's intermittent entertainment from the Wurlitzer but lots of opportunity to talk in between. I get an old fashioned key for the loo (we keep it locked because of drugs - though J says the men's is open) but it's pretty peaceful, though not quiet. I step outside, pst the replica pages of newspaper featuring Edward VIII and Mrs. Simpson, to answer a phone call from Jean.
Dinner at Mangal, the award winning Turkish restaurant, is amazing, in quantity as well as quality. We've asked for the dinner for 2 to be made for 3, but needn't have, although it does give D a bag to take home. There is a basket of pita and 3 platters - large round ones of meze (after which we're moderately full) and salads, as well as a giant oval one with a variety of lamb, beef and chicken, rice and bulgur. Delicious. It's a good thing we were there by seven, because business is non-stop. There's rarely an empty table for more than a couple of minutes.
We walk D back and hop a bus to Liverpool Street station where we get the Metropolitan home.
Alexander and Flora live in a square set back a couple of blocks west of Kingsland, a solid corner terrace house, formal and high-ceilinged on the ground flor (full of Alexander's pianos). Below stairs it's a different world, mostly enormous low-ceilinged kitchen with a long scrubbed wood table, all warmth and busyness. We have tea there and then leave A and F and their dogs and head up Kingsland.
The area is mainly Turkish, with turkish shops and signs. I recognise "eczane", the Turkish word for pharmacy, and we stop at another shop to look at Turkish spices. We're hoping to eat at a Turkish restaurant that flora has said is very good - a valuable opinion D points out, as F is a cordon bleu cook.
We stop first at a tiny pub which we share with the other non-Moslems on a street rather short on pubs. Most of the other drinkers are Caribbean in origin and clearly know each other, though they're friendly enough to us. I'm puzzled aby a sign on the door: PINTS ONLY SERVED DURING FOOTBALL MATCHES. But I want a pint now - why on earth should they object? Will I have to settle for a pint? But J returns with 2 pints of bitter and D's passion fruit drink (a request for soft drinks elicited a choice of orange, cranberry and mango, or passion fruit). The sign, of course, should read: ONLY PINTS SERVED DURING FOOTBALL MATCHES - a deterrent to cheap drinkers who might monopolise the telly.
There's intermittent entertainment from the Wurlitzer but lots of opportunity to talk in between. I get an old fashioned key for the loo (we keep it locked because of drugs - though J says the men's is open) but it's pretty peaceful, though not quiet. I step outside, pst the replica pages of newspaper featuring Edward VIII and Mrs. Simpson, to answer a phone call from Jean.
Dinner at Mangal, the award winning Turkish restaurant, is amazing, in quantity as well as quality. We've asked for the dinner for 2 to be made for 3, but needn't have, although it does give D a bag to take home. There is a basket of pita and 3 platters - large round ones of meze (after which we're moderately full) and salads, as well as a giant oval one with a variety of lamb, beef and chicken, rice and bulgur. Delicious. It's a good thing we were there by seven, because business is non-stop. There's rarely an empty table for more than a couple of minutes.
We walk D back and hop a bus to Liverpool Street station where we get the Metropolitan home.
Thursday, December 10/2009
Wake at 9:30. True, it's 3:30 a.m. Canadian central time, but a shocking waste of London time. Over to the Welby office to ask for plates, etc., J having made do with a pot lid for his fish last night. One lawn sports a single metal crutch abandoned near the pavement. A nearby beer bottle may provide a partial explanation - but how did he get home?
Bus to Westminster Cathedral for Christmas cards, then to Trafalgar Square where we do the banking and stop at Canada House to check the email. British Air informs us that our country of destination wishes to have passport information. Emulating the Americans or admitting to their immigration problems? Then to Camden High Street and Inverness Street market. Iit's mild and the streets are full of life. Already growing dark before four, but Christmassy.
Dorothy calls in the evening and we arrange to meet tomorrow at Alexander and Flora's.
Bus to Westminster Cathedral for Christmas cards, then to Trafalgar Square where we do the banking and stop at Canada House to check the email. British Air informs us that our country of destination wishes to have passport information. Emulating the Americans or admitting to their immigration problems? Then to Camden High Street and Inverness Street market. Iit's mild and the streets are full of life. Already growing dark before four, but Christmassy.
Dorothy calls in the evening and we arrange to meet tomorrow at Alexander and Flora's.
Wednesday, December 9/2009
Wake not long after going to sleep it seems. Breakfast is a large, cold muffin which J declines. We fly in along the Thames, spotting the London Eye and other landmarks. Tube to Swiss Cottage. The lawns are bright green and not only the roses but even the fuschia are still blooming, as well as winter pansies and holly. No need for coats- light jackets are fine. We stash our things at the bedsit. They (the bedsits) are always an odd mixture of assets and non. On the pro side, there are plenty of pots, a microwave, and an iron (not that I intend to waste London time ironing), a clothes drying rack and (this is unprecedented) a toaster. And the place is very clean. But there's only one plate, no bowls, and one glass (though there are three mismatched cups).
So down to Sainsbury's to find something for dinner, and home with fresh fish, bread, tinned beans, cherry tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, clementines and peanut butter. But not the toilet paper, so we'll be heading back tomorrow. We'd thought of going out again in the evening as we're here for such a short time, but jetlag wins.
So down to Sainsbury's to find something for dinner, and home with fresh fish, bread, tinned beans, cherry tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, clementines and peanut butter. But not the toilet paper, so we'll be heading back tomorrow. We'd thought of going out again in the evening as we're here for such a short time, but jetlag wins.
Tuesday, December 8/2009
Phone Janet to say goodbye and she offers to take us to the airport so we can have a brief visit. She and Dave are just back from Mexico - in time for the deep freeze.
We're not together on the plane - J has the window seat behind mine - because of the late booking. So I have the pleasure of sitting next to a man who sneezes -twice- into his hand and then is all over the touch screen in front of him. We haven't remembered the headphones for ours. They do sell them on domestic flights (and give them away on international ones) but I've lost my enthusiasm.
Four hours wait in Toronto. There's a storm coming in but we're off before it arrives. Was that really -34 on the airport weather screen as Regina's temperature tomorrow?
Dinner close to midnight. Fortunately we'd taken cheese and ham sandwiches with us to eat in Toronto because the dinner is horrible. Probably the worst we've had on Air Canada. Chicken with dried out pasta protruding from a bland tomato sauce. And a salad combining peas with diced fruit that I can't identify.
We're not together on the plane - J has the window seat behind mine - because of the late booking. So I have the pleasure of sitting next to a man who sneezes -twice- into his hand and then is all over the touch screen in front of him. We haven't remembered the headphones for ours. They do sell them on domestic flights (and give them away on international ones) but I've lost my enthusiasm.
Four hours wait in Toronto. There's a storm coming in but we're off before it arrives. Was that really -34 on the airport weather screen as Regina's temperature tomorrow?
Dinner close to midnight. Fortunately we'd taken cheese and ham sandwiches with us to eat in Toronto because the dinner is horrible. Probably the worst we've had on Air Canada. Chicken with dried out pasta protruding from a bland tomato sauce. And a salad combining peas with diced fruit that I can't identify.
Monday, December 8/2009
Technically it is Monday morning, although it still feels like Sunday night as we take the truck in to catch the midnight express - well, VIA 1:16 - to Winnipeg. And we're lucky it's only to Winnipeg, as a derailed freight train is still smouldering on the Saskatchewan/Manitoba border and those going farther are dispatched to buses - a slow and uncomfortable way to reach Vancouver.
Portage and Main is not, according to Ian, the windiest spot in the city - honours go to Portage and Memorial - but it's still enough of a contender that, with a -20 Celsius temperature, we know why we're heading for the Mediterranean. But the house, and later the welcome, are warm.
Portage and Main is not, according to Ian, the windiest spot in the city - honours go to Portage and Memorial - but it's still enough of a contender that, with a -20 Celsius temperature, we know why we're heading for the Mediterranean. But the house, and later the welcome, are warm.
Sunday, 28 June 2009
Sunday, June 28/2009
Don and Patty have spent the night on the way up to their cabin for the season. The weather has been horrible - rainy and not warm - but it has given us a little longer to chat and to play with their new puppy, Maggi, as we wait for it to clear enough to take the ATV in to the cabin.
Advertisements on the BBC news home page look amazingly tailored to have been designed for a general audience. For example:
Winnipeg Downtown. Competent therapists a short walk from the office - help is close by.
This is the international version of the page, but it seems rather close to home. Do the same messages appear on the screens of viewers in South Africa of Finland? Even worse, have "they" been observing my viewing history and concluding that therapy is in order? But if that is the case, they have failed to note that I am retired and not at the office. Perhaps it is random after all.
Advertisements on the BBC news home page look amazingly tailored to have been designed for a general audience. For example:
Winnipeg Downtown. Competent therapists a short walk from the office - help is close by.
This is the international version of the page, but it seems rather close to home. Do the same messages appear on the screens of viewers in South Africa of Finland? Even worse, have "they" been observing my viewing history and concluding that therapy is in order? But if that is the case, they have failed to note that I am retired and not at the office. Perhaps it is random after all.
Monday, June 22/2009
Dinner at Skip and Caryl's. Their son Kurt is up visiting for a few days' fishing so we get to visit with him as well. We eat on their porch facing the lake - and see a beaver swimming purposefully toward our house - where he has already felled a tree, damaging the roof of the pump house.
Saturday, 20 June 2009
Saturday, June 21/2009
Awake early to watch qualifying for the British Grand Prix. This year, of course, the political juggling as the series threatens to split in two (so some sportscasters put it, though the reality is more like a hijacking than a split, as the majority of teams are threatening to leave, with some justification).
Stop in town at the drugstore to pick up some tinned salmon, on sale in this week's flyers. No, none left. And the sale was last week. I protest that I'm certain I saw them earlier this week. But it turns out that the fiscal cum flyer week begins on Saturday. So it's now next week. J is waiting outside in the car, chatting with friends. A young man joins the group and admires our car. The car, though, is only an excuse to begin conversation. What he really wants to tell us, his speech a little slurred, is that he has been learning the art of sell-leb-acy. Accent on the second syllable. Tough going, it seems, as he adds "but I still want a woman."
Stop in town at the drugstore to pick up some tinned salmon, on sale in this week's flyers. No, none left. And the sale was last week. I protest that I'm certain I saw them earlier this week. But it turns out that the fiscal cum flyer week begins on Saturday. So it's now next week. J is waiting outside in the car, chatting with friends. A young man joins the group and admires our car. The car, though, is only an excuse to begin conversation. What he really wants to tell us, his speech a little slurred, is that he has been learning the art of sell-leb-acy. Accent on the second syllable. Tough going, it seems, as he adds "but I still want a woman."
Friday, July 19/2009
We have a second free dump pass, so off with the half ton loaded with everything from the old kitchen stove from the rental (from which J has carefully removed everything of value from burners to fuses) to broken window glass and miscellaneous packing foam. It was all covered with a large blue tarp tied down tightly yesterday to protect it from rain, so today all we have to do is drive off - after stopping for coffee at Robin's with Caryl and Skip. The ten mile drive from town is usually not busy but there's fairly steady traffic today as the free passes end tomorrow. Strange smell in the truck - did some small animal die in the ventilation system? Ugly thought.
Dump, of course, is not what it's called as I've noted before. Nor tip, nor garbage disposal. It does appear in the town directory under waste management, fairly enough I suppose. The actual place itself being Hidden Lake Landfill Site. In the age of politically correct wording, it's become almost impossible to look up facilities. And sometimes there doesn't seem to be much actual change. Thus the term "retarded" has become so thoroughly offensive to many people that I haven't heard it in years. Yet literally all that it means is slow or delayed. As in the French "en retard." Which sounds a great deal like the currently acceptable "developmentally delayed." Both of them implying an optimistic assumption that the development will eventually occur. Then there's the replacement of disabled with "differently abled." That makes a fair point, perhaps, but at the cost of a fair bit of awkwardness.
But I digress. We reach the dump, and the expected queue is down to one small truck. There's a spectator gallery of gulls lining the peak of the roof of a storage garage, hoping, no doubt, for smellier and more interesting goods than one is allowed to bring here on the free pass. On the left is an enormous collection of blue and clear bags full of recycling. All the containers that we put out on alternate Wednesdays cheerfully assuming that they are being reprocessed for a guilt free existence. And some year this may happen. The centre mountain is "general," with a separate, slightly smaller white mountain of appliances. And spots for wood, used batteries, etc. The cathartic effect of disposing of a truckful of refuse somewhat diminished by seeing it added to the enormity of everyone else's grubby mattresses, dented fridges, broken bicycles and plastic toys.
Dump, of course, is not what it's called as I've noted before. Nor tip, nor garbage disposal. It does appear in the town directory under waste management, fairly enough I suppose. The actual place itself being Hidden Lake Landfill Site. In the age of politically correct wording, it's become almost impossible to look up facilities. And sometimes there doesn't seem to be much actual change. Thus the term "retarded" has become so thoroughly offensive to many people that I haven't heard it in years. Yet literally all that it means is slow or delayed. As in the French "en retard." Which sounds a great deal like the currently acceptable "developmentally delayed." Both of them implying an optimistic assumption that the development will eventually occur. Then there's the replacement of disabled with "differently abled." That makes a fair point, perhaps, but at the cost of a fair bit of awkwardness.
But I digress. We reach the dump, and the expected queue is down to one small truck. There's a spectator gallery of gulls lining the peak of the roof of a storage garage, hoping, no doubt, for smellier and more interesting goods than one is allowed to bring here on the free pass. On the left is an enormous collection of blue and clear bags full of recycling. All the containers that we put out on alternate Wednesdays cheerfully assuming that they are being reprocessed for a guilt free existence. And some year this may happen. The centre mountain is "general," with a separate, slightly smaller white mountain of appliances. And spots for wood, used batteries, etc. The cathartic effect of disposing of a truckful of refuse somewhat diminished by seeing it added to the enormity of everyone else's grubby mattresses, dented fridges, broken bicycles and plastic toys.
Monday, 8 June 2009
June 8/2009
Funeral of M.E. today, and exactly what a small town funeral should be. Standing room only, which in Sacred Heart Church means well over 300 people. A wife, four children, seven grandchildren, and dozens of friends, relatives, and former colleagues. Interesting that a former conservation officer (read game warden) should be beloved of so many people. But then he wore many other hats - from volunteer fireman to credit union board member, and at the reception after the service the hats themselves with their various logos are on a table next to the photographs recording a lifetime.
Cremation had taken place before the memorial Mass, and the priest uses, more than once, the term cremains. The meaning is obvious enough, but the word itself unfamiliar. At home I check it on the internet and find, as well as the expected definition, the following:
Carbon copies: Pencils made from the carbon of human cremains. 240 pencils can be made from an average body of ash - a lifetime supply of pencils for those left behind.
It seems it's a bit more than waste not, want not. More of a memento, or even memento mori, with the name of the deceased stamped on each pencil.
Cremation had taken place before the memorial Mass, and the priest uses, more than once, the term cremains. The meaning is obvious enough, but the word itself unfamiliar. At home I check it on the internet and find, as well as the expected definition, the following:
Carbon copies: Pencils made from the carbon of human cremains. 240 pencils can be made from an average body of ash - a lifetime supply of pencils for those left behind.
It seems it's a bit more than waste not, want not. More of a memento, or even memento mori, with the name of the deceased stamped on each pencil.
Thursday, 28 May 2009
May 23/2009
Drive to Kenora to visit with Susan and Ian. It's finally starting to look like spring, especially toward Lake of the Woods, where the trees are in bud. We're crossing the second bridge on Storm Bay Road when I spot what looks like swans and persuade J to stop. They're not swans, of course. They're pelicans. Nearly the size of swans, though with less neck and more bill, but almost as magnificent. Six of them sailing white against the dark blue water. In the afternoon the four of us go fishing, trolling through silent bays and listening to the white throated sparrows calling. We hear loons, but don't see them. We do see the beautiful pelicans again, taking off, landing, and sailing proudly by.
Thursday, 14 May 2009
Wednesday, May 13/2009
Perhaps non-travel time should be a separate blog, but I can't be bothered, and, existentially, I'm not sure that the summers here are any less a part of our travels than the winters when we are on the move.
Right now it seems unlikely that we will ever see spring, let alone summer. The ice is, as of this week, gone from the lake. We had been hoping to take a load of general clean-up rubbish to the dump (conveniently located only 25 km away, following a five year study of where, on this bit of northern shield wilderness, a garbage dump might appropriately be situated). I check online to see when the dump is open - a task made somewhat more difficult by trying to guess what name it is likely to go under. Sanitation? Waste management? Rubbish disposal? Environmental engineering? Landfill? Obviously not simply garbage dump. Eventually it transpires that the information on the town website is wrong. Yes, they know it's wrong but the correct information is to be found elsewhere. The town's website is not easy to change, but they're working on it. All of which reminds us of the time when John D borrowed a friend's half ton to do a major clean-up and haul the lot to the local dump, then normally open on Sundays. When he arrived there was a sign on the gate saying "Dump closed today - open yesterday." But today the dump is open, and J and Klaus manage to dispose of our junk between showers, rather than having to wait for Friday, when snow is forecast.
Right now it seems unlikely that we will ever see spring, let alone summer. The ice is, as of this week, gone from the lake. We had been hoping to take a load of general clean-up rubbish to the dump (conveniently located only 25 km away, following a five year study of where, on this bit of northern shield wilderness, a garbage dump might appropriately be situated). I check online to see when the dump is open - a task made somewhat more difficult by trying to guess what name it is likely to go under. Sanitation? Waste management? Rubbish disposal? Environmental engineering? Landfill? Obviously not simply garbage dump. Eventually it transpires that the information on the town website is wrong. Yes, they know it's wrong but the correct information is to be found elsewhere. The town's website is not easy to change, but they're working on it. All of which reminds us of the time when John D borrowed a friend's half ton to do a major clean-up and haul the lot to the local dump, then normally open on Sundays. When he arrived there was a sign on the gate saying "Dump closed today - open yesterday." But today the dump is open, and J and Klaus manage to dispose of our junk between showers, rather than having to wait for Friday, when snow is forecast.
Wednesday, 13 May 2009
Monday, April 20/2009
Heathrow by tube. The return trip is perfectly set up with early afternoon departure and supper time arrival, but that is dependent on an hour to make the connection in Ottawa, so when we leave the tarmac 45 minutes late, we know it's plan B. Landing cards have got bigger - but warn that they're not to be folded. As everyone is carrying coats and hand luggage it seems to leave little option but the teeth. And they seem to be primarily obsessed with what food we might be importing. Never mind the gold, laundered money, even drugs. I confess to chocolate bars and they let us through - to wait for a later flight to Toronto and thence to Winnipeg.
I try to phone Susan and Ian to let them know that we'll be late, afraid that they might simply go to the airport straight from work. I'm quite pleased with myself for having prepared months earlier for this eventuality by buying a phone card, supposedly good for six months from first use. I find a pay phone and dial the number on the card, in order to be told that the number is not good - complain to the seller of the card. A helpful young woman in hijab is in charge of the information desk and I ask about pay internet terminals. She shows me one that she has discovered in a corner, and I later decide that well might they wish to hide in a corner. Two dollars for ten minutes. Sounds not unreasonable. In ten minutes I should be able to send the same message to both Ian and Susan, at home as well as at work to be on the safe side. Think again. In slightly over ten minutes - therefore slightly over two dollars - the computer has failed to make any kind of contact with the outside world at all. It won't even load google - which I finally try as a test. In fact the only thing it does at all well is process the credit card. With no real hope, I try the Air Canada desk. As the plane failed to make its connection, could I possibly telephone? Terribly sorry, they're not allowed to make long distance calls, but they do sell phone cards at the little shop. They don't, actually, but what they sell, the shop assistant explains, is receipts. She has to explain it more than once, as the receipt seems to me to be what one receives after a purchase, not instead of one. But essentially it's a cardless card. You pay for the number that you are to use to make the phone call - printed on the receipt. Fine. Five dollars - though I've forgotten that in Canada that means five dollars plus tax. All right, $5.65. I go to make the call, using the number provided. The recorded message on the phone says smugly "This card is not valid. Goodbye." Back to the shop, where the girl is horrified and tries the number herself. On her phone - possibly not Bell - it works, so I quickly take the phone from her before she can feel obliged to say that it's not a public phone, dial Ian and Susan's number and leave the message, and thank the girl profusely. Done.
Flights to Toronto and then Winnipeg. Not sure whether S&I will meet us at the airport or never speak to us again. Fortunately they got the message and all is well. We're home.
I try to phone Susan and Ian to let them know that we'll be late, afraid that they might simply go to the airport straight from work. I'm quite pleased with myself for having prepared months earlier for this eventuality by buying a phone card, supposedly good for six months from first use. I find a pay phone and dial the number on the card, in order to be told that the number is not good - complain to the seller of the card. A helpful young woman in hijab is in charge of the information desk and I ask about pay internet terminals. She shows me one that she has discovered in a corner, and I later decide that well might they wish to hide in a corner. Two dollars for ten minutes. Sounds not unreasonable. In ten minutes I should be able to send the same message to both Ian and Susan, at home as well as at work to be on the safe side. Think again. In slightly over ten minutes - therefore slightly over two dollars - the computer has failed to make any kind of contact with the outside world at all. It won't even load google - which I finally try as a test. In fact the only thing it does at all well is process the credit card. With no real hope, I try the Air Canada desk. As the plane failed to make its connection, could I possibly telephone? Terribly sorry, they're not allowed to make long distance calls, but they do sell phone cards at the little shop. They don't, actually, but what they sell, the shop assistant explains, is receipts. She has to explain it more than once, as the receipt seems to me to be what one receives after a purchase, not instead of one. But essentially it's a cardless card. You pay for the number that you are to use to make the phone call - printed on the receipt. Fine. Five dollars - though I've forgotten that in Canada that means five dollars plus tax. All right, $5.65. I go to make the call, using the number provided. The recorded message on the phone says smugly "This card is not valid. Goodbye." Back to the shop, where the girl is horrified and tries the number herself. On her phone - possibly not Bell - it works, so I quickly take the phone from her before she can feel obliged to say that it's not a public phone, dial Ian and Susan's number and leave the message, and thank the girl profusely. Done.
Flights to Toronto and then Winnipeg. Not sure whether S&I will meet us at the airport or never speak to us again. Fortunately they got the message and all is well. We're home.
Sunday, April 19/2009
Awake early - more or less awake that is - to watch the race, and it's a good one. And out to bring back a fat Times to spend the day with. Fighting off a cold and have decided that it's a sedentary day, wasteful though this is in London. But it's also packing day, and, one way and another that seems to take all day. Mostly because it's a weeding process, disposing of all the things that cannot possibly fit in the little suitcases.
Telephone call from Alexander, friend of Dorothy, saying that Flora has just pointed out it's our last day, and can we go out for a meal. We'd been hoping to meet them, and had spoken on the phone earlier. So they pick us up and we stop on Haverstock Hill at a pizza place. Nice thin crust pizza - ours with caramelised red onion, spinach and fetta. The onion is a definite keeper. A bottle of red, and getting to know each other. They both went to music school at the old Regina Campus of the University of Saskatchewan, where they met D. Flora originally from BC, but having spent more than half her life in England now, and Alexander originally English. Promises to meet again next time - in fact they're insistant that we should stay with them!
Telephone call from Alexander, friend of Dorothy, saying that Flora has just pointed out it's our last day, and can we go out for a meal. We'd been hoping to meet them, and had spoken on the phone earlier. So they pick us up and we stop on Haverstock Hill at a pizza place. Nice thin crust pizza - ours with caramelised red onion, spinach and fetta. The onion is a definite keeper. A bottle of red, and getting to know each other. They both went to music school at the old Regina Campus of the University of Saskatchewan, where they met D. Flora originally from BC, but having spent more than half her life in England now, and Alexander originally English. Promises to meet again next time - in fact they're insistant that we should stay with them!
Saturday, April 18/2009
Try to find THE Abbey Road location, which I have assumed is just off Belsize Road. But when we walk over, the address simply doesn't exist, and, worse than that, the spot where it should be doesn't have the right sort of street number - should be much lower. More research required. Meanwhile hop on a bus headed to West Hampstead. Poke about a bit, but not much going on. Pass a Chinese medical clinic, San Ling, advertising cures for:
Impotence
Stiff Neck
Insomnia
Frozen Shoulder
Indigestion
Stress
Anxiety
Arthritis
All listed on the same large sign. An impressive offering.
Afternoon we take the tube out to Jean's, where we visit until Shanthi arrives to share supper. A nice visit and lovely food. We couldn't pass up the final opportunity, but probably should have done, as Jean has been under the weather all week and really isn't feeling well now.
Impotence
Stiff Neck
Insomnia
Frozen Shoulder
Indigestion
Stress
Anxiety
Arthritis
All listed on the same large sign. An impressive offering.
Afternoon we take the tube out to Jean's, where we visit until Shanthi arrives to share supper. A nice visit and lovely food. We couldn't pass up the final opportunity, but probably should have done, as Jean has been under the weather all week and really isn't feeling well now.
Friday, April 17/2009
Heading into the last weekend. We stop at Canada House to check the mail. Most of the computers are in use, and they try to speed people up by providing only two computers that can be used while seated. The other four are stand-up for the user. I take a stand-up computer and am not particularly annoyed until I notice that the man next to me, who seems to have been sent to amuse hiimself while his wife does the family business on another screen, has given up whining that he can't find AOL and is now playing solitaire. I refrain from pointing out, accurately enough, that he is doing nothing while there is a queue! Cardinal sin. His wife finishes and tells him that he has been talking about. He complains that it's over now. "Well you did want me to check about the tickets, didn't you?"
Friday, 17 April 2009
Thursday, April 16/2009
National Theatre releases some ten pound seats each day for that day's performance, so we head over for 10 a.m. and get 2 front row seats for England People Very Nice. This leaves us over 3 hours until curtain time so we put up our umbrellas and go over to the Barbican library.
The play itself is a sellout and quite funny. It looks, as promised, at centuries of immigration in successive waves to Londons Bethnal Green neighourhood. The point, of course, is that immigrants have always arrived, been resented, and eventually integrated and been replaced by other nationalities. It's sensitive material potentially, but the playwright has taken the modus used in the Simpsons - use outrageous caricature bvut be fair and satirise all groups with equal ruthlessness. And there are the running jokes: periodically a character says that there is no hell and this is all the heaven we'll ever get, to which the answer is "what, Bethnal Green?!" It's a long play, but fun.
The play itself is a sellout and quite funny. It looks, as promised, at centuries of immigration in successive waves to Londons Bethnal Green neighourhood. The point, of course, is that immigrants have always arrived, been resented, and eventually integrated and been replaced by other nationalities. It's sensitive material potentially, but the playwright has taken the modus used in the Simpsons - use outrageous caricature bvut be fair and satirise all groups with equal ruthlessness. And there are the running jokes: periodically a character says that there is no hell and this is all the heaven we'll ever get, to which the answer is "what, Bethnal Green?!" It's a long play, but fun.
Wednesday, April 15/2009
Warmest day so far predicted so we're off for the old city. Off the tube at Chancery Lane and with some difficulty we find Barnard's Inn Hall for the free Gresham lecture at 1. Pass first Staples Inn and a magnificent tudor lookiing building, not quite straight with age, with a tobacconist on the ground floor. They're both 16th century and we imagine Shakespeare walking down the road when they were new.
The lecture is full. The hall only holds about a hundred and we've been warned to be early to get a seat. The topic is interesting - is mental illness all in the genes - and there is some interesting research, but iti's a bit flat. (the genetic answer to the question is "mostly.") The questions are intelligent though and the answers competent.
It's warm (21) and sunny and we wander in the area. beautiful period buildings mixed with some of the monstrosities Prince Charles complains about. across from the royal Courts of Justice is a little pub, the Seven Stars. It claims to date from 602 and to have survived the Great Fire. Hard to say how much of the building is original but it's charming and old and friendly, a long narrow place with flowers outside and a resident black cat with a white ruffled collar.
Quick visit to St. clement Danes and we hop a number 13 bus home. Unlucky 13. Part way its in aminor accident with a small van. Not the fault of the bus driver. Switch buses and home via Finchley Road Sainsbury's.
The lecture is full. The hall only holds about a hundred and we've been warned to be early to get a seat. The topic is interesting - is mental illness all in the genes - and there is some interesting research, but iti's a bit flat. (the genetic answer to the question is "mostly.") The questions are intelligent though and the answers competent.
It's warm (21) and sunny and we wander in the area. beautiful period buildings mixed with some of the monstrosities Prince Charles complains about. across from the royal Courts of Justice is a little pub, the Seven Stars. It claims to date from 602 and to have survived the Great Fire. Hard to say how much of the building is original but it's charming and old and friendly, a long narrow place with flowers outside and a resident black cat with a white ruffled collar.
Quick visit to St. clement Danes and we hop a number 13 bus home. Unlucky 13. Part way its in aminor accident with a small van. Not the fault of the bus driver. Switch buses and home via Finchley Road Sainsbury's.
Tuesday, April 14/2009
A bit of electronic research at John Lewis. Ipods, notebooks, ebook readers. Lots of toys and a quiet atmosphere unlike the chaos on Tottenham Court road. On the way back J spots a mouse on the underground track.
Monday, April 13/2009
Two lovely walks. In the morning we go with Jenny to take the dogs to Telegraph Hill for a run. It's woodland near Claygate village, quite natural and a great place for the dogs to follow scents. In the afternoon we pick up Jenny's mum and go to Richmond Park. It's one of the oroiginal royal hunting parks and a huge park even for a city that is over a quarter green space. We head for the Isabella Plantation, some flowering trees over a hundred years old and fragrant with azaleas and heather as well as brilliant with camellias, oleander and rhododendrons as well. There are little streams and plenty of paths to wander and get lost on, which we do for a bit. Still full light after 6 and Jenny drops us at Wimbledon Station where we get a replacement coach to Clapham Jct - then Waterloo by train and Northern line home by eight.
Sunday, april 12/2009
Easter Sunday. Julia and Neil have coloured eggs and there is traditional Palestinian baking. Emma and Giles arrive with Jenny's mother and baby Jasmine, and then Laura and Nathan with Sam and Kai and baby Cody. Easter brunch is fun. the Clarkes have a traditional game involving the finding of the strongest egg by doing battle conker style and seeing which egg survives uncracked. Sam and Kai have great fun with quite convincing fake eggs.
Jenny's Palestinian aunts arrive for tea. Doug's sister and brother-in-law with son Graham and two granddaughters in tow as well, so by then there are 23 of us including the babies. A lovely time.
Jenny's Palestinian aunts arrive for tea. Doug's sister and brother-in-law with son Graham and two granddaughters in tow as well, so by then there are 23 of us including the babies. A lovely time.
Saturday, April 11/2009
Afternoon over to Jenny and Doug's. It's a bit chaotic transportation because of long weekend maintenance, so Jubilee line not running and coac replaces train between Clapham Junction and Surbiton and everything takes a bit longer. Drizzle as we arrive but sunny welcome. Weather improves and we go for a walk round Thames Ditton with Jenny. Doug back fore dinner and we're joined by Jenny's niece Julia, soon to be studying medicine at Kings college, and Julia's boyfriend Neil. Lovely stew for dinner.
Friday, April 10/2009
A bit drizzly off and on as befits a Good Friday, but quite warm. All kinds of disruption to the transport system but still ppossible to work out alternate routes. Thus we take the Northern to Bank and then Dockland Light Railway to West India Quay to visit the Museum of London Docklands. It's free this weekend so a good time to go. It's much smaller than the Museum of London proper but quite interesting in its own right, covering the history of the Thames and London as a port from pre-Roman times. The history of the bridges is of interest and there are lots of drawings and ship models and a pretty realistic recreation of a slightly sinister dockside area and buildings.
Thursday. April 9/2009
At Barbican check that our return flight to Canada is still at the same time as originally ticketed, mindful of the time the snippy air Canada rep at Heathrow said that departure times changed after daylight savings time began. And this was a consideration they had been unable to anticipate at time of sale? But no cha ge this year it seems.
Holy Thursday Mass at Westminster Cathedral, the last Easter for Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor who is retiring. As we walk from Victoria to the cathedral we see an old man bent over and slowly feeling his way along the wall of a tempporary walkway diverting us around construction. It's quite a distressing sight and I'm hoping he's finds his way to wherever he's going - which he evidently does as J sees him later in the front of the cathedral. It's standing room only and one of the most moving liturgies of the year, in Latin with full choir. The 12 men having their feet washed by Cathedral tradition are 12 pensioners from the Royal Chelsea Hospital of our yesterday's visit, resplendent in their brilliant red uniforms. The church remains open for prayer until midnight when there will be compline and the stripping of the altar, but we leave for home.
Holy Thursday Mass at Westminster Cathedral, the last Easter for Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor who is retiring. As we walk from Victoria to the cathedral we see an old man bent over and slowly feeling his way along the wall of a tempporary walkway diverting us around construction. It's quite a distressing sight and I'm hoping he's finds his way to wherever he's going - which he evidently does as J sees him later in the front of the cathedral. It's standing room only and one of the most moving liturgies of the year, in Latin with full choir. The 12 men having their feet washed by Cathedral tradition are 12 pensioners from the Royal Chelsea Hospital of our yesterday's visit, resplendent in their brilliant red uniforms. The church remains open for prayer until midnight when there will be compline and the stripping of the altar, but we leave for home.
Thursday, 9 April 2009
Wednesday, April 8/2009
Wake to hoofbeats - about 60 police horses being ridden and led past our flat.
Chelsea afternoon. We start at Sloan Square and pay a visit to the Saatchi Gallery. Interesting and often witty works, mostly by young artist from the Middle East. a fascinating display with several very convincing life sized men of various ethnic and cultural backgrounds all in motorized wheelchairs circulating in a room - their chairs changing direction as they encounter obstacles. There's a Greek Orthodox priest, a man in Arab headdress and a number of other characters. J tells a small child that only one is real and the boy is sure he's spotted which one.
Then to the Royal Chelsea Hospital grounds, home of the red-coated army pensiones. The grounds are lovely - a mini village with beautiful gardens, though not many pensioners in sight. After this we stop at the Army Museum next door. It's small and a bit randomly organised but there are some high points. There are a number of very good military paintings and a small display examining James Wolfe in images.
The walk down to the Thames is dotted with historic blue plaques - many notables have lived in the neighbourhood, including Oscar Wilde and George Eliot. We're supposed to finish at the King's Head and Eight Bells, drinking spot of Henry VIII, but, though we were once there before, no joy in finding it. Eventually the appalling reason emerges - it's been changed into a restaurant, a Brasserie, complete with a dreadful poodle sign outside. Unbelievable! Still, it has been a good afternoon.
Chelsea afternoon. We start at Sloan Square and pay a visit to the Saatchi Gallery. Interesting and often witty works, mostly by young artist from the Middle East. a fascinating display with several very convincing life sized men of various ethnic and cultural backgrounds all in motorized wheelchairs circulating in a room - their chairs changing direction as they encounter obstacles. There's a Greek Orthodox priest, a man in Arab headdress and a number of other characters. J tells a small child that only one is real and the boy is sure he's spotted which one.
Then to the Royal Chelsea Hospital grounds, home of the red-coated army pensiones. The grounds are lovely - a mini village with beautiful gardens, though not many pensioners in sight. After this we stop at the Army Museum next door. It's small and a bit randomly organised but there are some high points. There are a number of very good military paintings and a small display examining James Wolfe in images.
The walk down to the Thames is dotted with historic blue plaques - many notables have lived in the neighbourhood, including Oscar Wilde and George Eliot. We're supposed to finish at the King's Head and Eight Bells, drinking spot of Henry VIII, but, though we were once there before, no joy in finding it. Eventually the appalling reason emerges - it's been changed into a restaurant, a Brasserie, complete with a dreadful poodle sign outside. Unbelievable! Still, it has been a good afternoon.
Tuesday, April 7/2009
Over to Asda by tube and DLR. Then in the pm we go separate ways - J downtown to see the sights, the Tamil protest in Parliament Square and the character in Trafalgar Square who allows himself to b chained and locked up to demonstrate his escape artist flair. I go out to spend the afternoon with Jean, and as usual the talk flows. Back to J's homemade chicken soup.
Monday, April 6/2009
A lovely day and rain predicted for the rest of the week so we set off for outdoor explorations. First down to holborn Viaduct to look at the oldest publid drinking supply in London, in a wall by St. Sepulcher's. Tiny, and the hose doesn't work, but the original cups are still chained there.
We're near the Old Bailey and walk past but the pub we one ate at is gone - or at least upgraded into less interesting etablishments. North of St. Paul's we come to the tiny Postman's Park. It's by a Methodist Church with tributes to John and Charles Wesley. the sight we've come for is a wll with ceramic plaques commemorating the sacrifices of various people, some of them children, who gave their lives in attempts to save others from fates as diverse as drowning, death in housefires or runaway horses. It's simple and very moving. By now we're up against the original city wall and we resolve some day to follow its path - but not today.
In the afternoon it's still warm and sunny so we walk up to Hampstead Heath. Past the Magdala pub, where Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain, shot her unfaithful lover. Bullet holes still visible. On Parliament Hill children are flying kites with considerable success - one boy barely remains on the ground as his kite catches the wind. We wander past the ponds where the coots are nesting and a duck demurely allows herself to be courted by to drakes and exit on the Highgate side. Bus back to Finchley Road.
We're near the Old Bailey and walk past but the pub we one ate at is gone - or at least upgraded into less interesting etablishments. North of St. Paul's we come to the tiny Postman's Park. It's by a Methodist Church with tributes to John and Charles Wesley. the sight we've come for is a wll with ceramic plaques commemorating the sacrifices of various people, some of them children, who gave their lives in attempts to save others from fates as diverse as drowning, death in housefires or runaway horses. It's simple and very moving. By now we're up against the original city wall and we resolve some day to follow its path - but not today.
In the afternoon it's still warm and sunny so we walk up to Hampstead Heath. Past the Magdala pub, where Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain, shot her unfaithful lover. Bullet holes still visible. On Parliament Hill children are flying kites with considerable success - one boy barely remains on the ground as his kite catches the wind. We wander past the ponds where the coots are nesting and a duck demurely allows herself to be courted by to drakes and exit on the Highgate side. Bus back to Finchley Road.
Sunday, April 5/2009
We are marking the first anniversary of Siva's death and go, therefore, with Jean and Shanthi, to the Tamil temple in Ealing. Jean takes the traditional gifts of rice, lentils, fruit and milk, as well as a garment for the priest. The temple is in a former church, the outer room today garlanded in preparation for a wedding, the wedding, the wedding dais on a platform at one end of the hall. The main sanctuary area has a number of shrines, elaborate with brightly painted statues and flowers.
People come and go, including families with small children. we have all removed our shoes and left them outside. There is incense in the air and people praying at different shrines. shanthi explains things for us and when it's our turn the priest is very kind, shepherding us through the ritual in front of the shrine of Shiva, the giver and taker of life. We put ashes on our foreheads, much as on Ash Wednesday, and Jean presents the fruit. There are chanted prayers in Tamil and times for circling the shrine. The praers are for the wellbeing of Siva's soul. The gifts of rice are cooked for anyone who is at the temple to enjoy, and after the ceremony we go through to the hall and eat a lovely savoury lemon rice dish and a white rice that is both hot and sweet, as well as fruit and Indian sweets. Very nice end to am oving ceremony.
Shanthi invites us back for tea before her tutoring student arrives, and provides sausage rolls and little Singapore pineapple tarts as well. Priya is there, taking a short break from studying, light in her eyes when she talks about plans for graduating events. Back for a glass of wine with Jean and then home by tube.
People come and go, including families with small children. we have all removed our shoes and left them outside. There is incense in the air and people praying at different shrines. shanthi explains things for us and when it's our turn the priest is very kind, shepherding us through the ritual in front of the shrine of Shiva, the giver and taker of life. We put ashes on our foreheads, much as on Ash Wednesday, and Jean presents the fruit. There are chanted prayers in Tamil and times for circling the shrine. The praers are for the wellbeing of Siva's soul. The gifts of rice are cooked for anyone who is at the temple to enjoy, and after the ceremony we go through to the hall and eat a lovely savoury lemon rice dish and a white rice that is both hot and sweet, as well as fruit and Indian sweets. Very nice end to am oving ceremony.
Shanthi invites us back for tea before her tutoring student arrives, and provides sausage rolls and little Singapore pineapple tarts as well. Priya is there, taking a short break from studying, light in her eyes when she talks about plans for graduating events. Back for a glass of wine with Jean and then home by tube.
Saturday, April 4/2009
Basic grocery shop in the morning - everything looks cheap after Dublin. then in the afternoon out to Jean's in West Harrow. Chat time and a curry supper. Then Jean to a choral concert previously booked while we make ourselves at home with tea and telly.
Friday, april 3/2009
Suddenly realise we have to leave for the airport and there isn't even time for postcards. Forty euro more to ryanair for not having checked in online - well last time with them. The flight numbers for Ryanair all begin with FR - f...Ryanair. Back at Gatwick half an hour late we still catch a train that gets us in in time to pick up the keys for the bedsit before 6. The flat is at 57 Belsize Park. It needs a frying pan, kettle and corkscrew, but that can come later. We're home.
Thursday, April 2/2009
Attempt to get boarding pass online at internet cafe to avoid repeat penalty tomorrow. Repeated inapplicable explanations of why we are being refused. The nice young man running the cafe is so indignant on our behalf that he insists on phoning ryanair. No joy and no contact.
So cut our losses and take an order of chips from the fish and chip shop down to the benches on Bachelor's Walk on the north side of the Liffe to enjoy. Good thing we split an order as it's huge.
Crossing streets is unnerving in Dublin. There are walk lights but with sound effects. Various Morse code beeps which may help the blind but disorient us foreigners. Then the brief walk light - run would be more appropriate - announced by a shriek like a canary being swallowed followed by a tatoo like a heart attack. And we run for the other side.
A visit to the museum at the old army barracks. A very interesting exhibit on the Easter 1916 uprising and Irish independence. Then back across the river via the James Joyce Bridge and through the oldest section of the city, past christ Church Cathedral and Dublin Castle. Stop for a Guinness at the Bleeding Horse, now on the southern end of our city centre map but probably at its genesis in 1649 in country fields. It's quiet and a pleasant Romanian girl serves us. Only a few customers, several of whom appear to be Romanian as well. By the time we finish we decide against evensong at christ church and go back to Trinity for dinner.
So cut our losses and take an order of chips from the fish and chip shop down to the benches on Bachelor's Walk on the north side of the Liffe to enjoy. Good thing we split an order as it's huge.
Crossing streets is unnerving in Dublin. There are walk lights but with sound effects. Various Morse code beeps which may help the blind but disorient us foreigners. Then the brief walk light - run would be more appropriate - announced by a shriek like a canary being swallowed followed by a tatoo like a heart attack. And we run for the other side.
A visit to the museum at the old army barracks. A very interesting exhibit on the Easter 1916 uprising and Irish independence. Then back across the river via the James Joyce Bridge and through the oldest section of the city, past christ Church Cathedral and Dublin Castle. Stop for a Guinness at the Bleeding Horse, now on the southern end of our city centre map but probably at its genesis in 1649 in country fields. It's quiet and a pleasant Romanian girl serves us. Only a few customers, several of whom appear to be Romanian as well. By the time we finish we decide against evensong at christ church and go back to Trinity for dinner.
Saturday, 4 April 2009
Wednesday, April 1/2009
Look round the lovely inner courtyard of Trinity College - all old grey stone and green lawns. More exploring. Check out Merrion Square, former home to Yeats, Oscar Wilde and others, and a charming park in its own right. Nearby is the National Gallery and we spend longer than we expect there, especially in the Portrait Gallery. It's a mini Irish history course with full sized illustrations. We also have the advantage of a longish chat with Antony, a cheerful docent who is full of information and anecdote. For example, George Bernard Shaw, a thin vegetarian, once met Lord Beaverbrook Beaverbrook looked at Shaw and said that when he saw Shaw he could believe the stories of the starving masses, to which Shaw replied that when he looked at the portly Beaverbrook he could belioeve the Beaver was responsible for them starving. And Shaw is responsible for the free admission to the National Gallery. He willed it a third of his estate, including continuing royalties from Pygmalion and My Fair Lady.
Through Temple Bar - pretty touristy. Back to Trinity College for an excellent stirfry at the Buttery. Youu choose your vegetables and the cook adds chicken or tofu and a sauce and stir fries as you watch. A big plateful with rice, and very good. Over O'Connell Bridge and a walk along the north side of the Liffey and back to Lynam's.
Through Temple Bar - pretty touristy. Back to Trinity College for an excellent stirfry at the Buttery. Youu choose your vegetables and the cook adds chicken or tofu and a sauce and stir fries as you watch. A big plateful with rice, and very good. Over O'Connell Bridge and a walk along the north side of the Liffey and back to Lynam's.
Tuesday, March 31/2009
Leave at 6 a.m. and take the train from London Bridge to Gatwick, so we're early enough - but then the shock effect. The penalty for not having checked in online - which I've somehow missed - is twenty quid each. And the same coming back? Yes, if you don't find a computer to check in on. Actually it's not quite as bad - or even worse - than that sounds. The cost of checking in is either £10 each online or £20 each at the airport. The cheap fare is getting less so. Especially as there was already a "handling fee" of £10 each, plus taxes, plus fees.
Pleasant enough flight - absolutely no frills, and relatively inoffensive speaker-announced advertisements - and we arrive early. Ryanair is proud to announce that they're #1 for no lost luggage. Quite probably - they sharply discourage anyone from checking in anything with extra fees. Rumours re charging for loo on board as yet unfounded. They have more effective mans than that of squeezing cash out of you.
The bus in stops at the O'Connell St. bus station - two doors from our hotel, Lynam's, a Georgian buildikng with small rooms but with a kettle, tea and coffee and a hairdryer, as well as a very clean loo. The area is historic as well as central. We're a block north of the post office building, seized and defended by the rebels in the Easter 1916 uprising. There are still bullet marks on the building.
A happy day wandering the streets. Central Dublin is really quite small. We sit in St. Stephen's Green watching the ducks, and chat with a man who shows us his Sony electronic bookreader. It's really quite impressive, both in terms of the numberf of books it holds and for its anti-glare screen and compact size.
Finish at St. Patrick's Cathedral, where Jonathan Swift was dean, for evensong - a lovely combination of vespers and compline in the ancient cathedral.
Dublin is showing signs of the recession - quite a lot of office space vacant and a surprpising number of people begging. It's a very expensive city as well, especially food prpices and the cost of newspapers, both noticeably higher than in London. We've done well enough on weekday accommodation though.
Pleasant enough flight - absolutely no frills, and relatively inoffensive speaker-announced advertisements - and we arrive early. Ryanair is proud to announce that they're #1 for no lost luggage. Quite probably - they sharply discourage anyone from checking in anything with extra fees. Rumours re charging for loo on board as yet unfounded. They have more effective mans than that of squeezing cash out of you.
The bus in stops at the O'Connell St. bus station - two doors from our hotel, Lynam's, a Georgian buildikng with small rooms but with a kettle, tea and coffee and a hairdryer, as well as a very clean loo. The area is historic as well as central. We're a block north of the post office building, seized and defended by the rebels in the Easter 1916 uprising. There are still bullet marks on the building.
A happy day wandering the streets. Central Dublin is really quite small. We sit in St. Stephen's Green watching the ducks, and chat with a man who shows us his Sony electronic bookreader. It's really quite impressive, both in terms of the numberf of books it holds and for its anti-glare screen and compact size.
Finish at St. Patrick's Cathedral, where Jonathan Swift was dean, for evensong - a lovely combination of vespers and compline in the ancient cathedral.
Dublin is showing signs of the recession - quite a lot of office space vacant and a surprpising number of people begging. It's a very expensive city as well, especially food prpices and the cost of newspapers, both noticeably higher than in London. We've done well enough on weekday accommodation though.
Sunday, March 29/2009
Wake for the Australian Grand Prix, though not early enough. By the time my watch says 6:15 it's actually 7:15 as the time change occured in the night. Get to see most of the race though.
Go to the sung Latin Mass at the Jesuit church on Farm Street - of various literary references. A lovely church. The choice of music - Hassler, Purcell - is as good as Westminster Cathedral's, and the choir is quite good, though small and without the boy sopranos.
After brunch we abandon the Sunday Times and head off to a meeting of the Socialist Party, having been given a paper yesterday at Hyde Park advertising a talk today on Global Capitalism. It's at an address on Red ion Square which proves to be a little north of Bond St. tube station. One side of the square boasts a house where Dante Gabriel Rossetti once lived.
We're on the other side, across a tiny park, at Conway Hall - the Bertrand kRussell Room. It's a curious gathering. Thirteen of us in all, nine men and four women, including a male chairman and a female speaker. We're about the average age but most of the others seem to know each other, sometimes prefacing a first name with "Comrade." They are an uncompromisingly Marxist lot and seem to feel that other organisations rejoicing in the name of socialist have made unforgiveable compromises. Hence Tony Benn, for example, is dismissed as a Labour Party member when the Labour Party has sanctioned war - not only in Afghanistan, but also World War II.
In some ways they are a curiously innocent group. Hence the high level of idealism that sees capitalists as the evil and workers as the should-be inheritors of the earth, despite a sad recognition that neither war nor plague nor environmental disaster seems likely to cause any withering away of the state.
Actually, they resemble nothing so much as a religious gathering of courteous and decent folk, from polite welcome to a collection toward the end to cover expenses as they have had to pay for the hall. The £84.80 is reasonably impressive, as ity means the other 11 people present contributed £83.80. After the presentation there are questions and then "discussion." Harry, who handed us the original invitation yesterday, is particularly eager to move to the discussion, everyone having their say. He's been making notes during the speech and has a number of things to say, mostly not directly related to the presentation. For example, he doesn't believe in global warming and insists that capitalist countries with arctic coasts are deliberately melting ice to aid in the search for oil. Interestingly, though, these contributions do not, in fact, lead to discussion at all. Rather, somewhat like religious testimonials, they are accepted politely at fact value rather than as spurs to debate, and there is some feeling that points of disagreement should be ignored as distractions from shared ideology. It is as if at a Church meeting someone were to say that beautiful sunsets proved the existence of God and the others were too polite or too aware of the damage attendant on dissent to debate the quality of the suggested proof. There is a deliberate avoidance of how a world would actually function after the workers had acquired the mans of production. It would work somehow and the workers would be the ones to decide. It seems God is not the only one to work in mysterious ways beyond our undersetanding.
It's been interesting and a little sad. As the only true, uncompromised socialists they seem a little like the Christians willing to die over the issue of using three rather than two fingers to cross themselves - and their cause quite hopeless. Communism, they say has not failed; it has never been tried. The same point has been made about Christianity.
Go to the sung Latin Mass at the Jesuit church on Farm Street - of various literary references. A lovely church. The choice of music - Hassler, Purcell - is as good as Westminster Cathedral's, and the choir is quite good, though small and without the boy sopranos.
After brunch we abandon the Sunday Times and head off to a meeting of the Socialist Party, having been given a paper yesterday at Hyde Park advertising a talk today on Global Capitalism. It's at an address on Red ion Square which proves to be a little north of Bond St. tube station. One side of the square boasts a house where Dante Gabriel Rossetti once lived.
We're on the other side, across a tiny park, at Conway Hall - the Bertrand kRussell Room. It's a curious gathering. Thirteen of us in all, nine men and four women, including a male chairman and a female speaker. We're about the average age but most of the others seem to know each other, sometimes prefacing a first name with "Comrade." They are an uncompromisingly Marxist lot and seem to feel that other organisations rejoicing in the name of socialist have made unforgiveable compromises. Hence Tony Benn, for example, is dismissed as a Labour Party member when the Labour Party has sanctioned war - not only in Afghanistan, but also World War II.
In some ways they are a curiously innocent group. Hence the high level of idealism that sees capitalists as the evil and workers as the should-be inheritors of the earth, despite a sad recognition that neither war nor plague nor environmental disaster seems likely to cause any withering away of the state.
Actually, they resemble nothing so much as a religious gathering of courteous and decent folk, from polite welcome to a collection toward the end to cover expenses as they have had to pay for the hall. The £84.80 is reasonably impressive, as ity means the other 11 people present contributed £83.80. After the presentation there are questions and then "discussion." Harry, who handed us the original invitation yesterday, is particularly eager to move to the discussion, everyone having their say. He's been making notes during the speech and has a number of things to say, mostly not directly related to the presentation. For example, he doesn't believe in global warming and insists that capitalist countries with arctic coasts are deliberately melting ice to aid in the search for oil. Interestingly, though, these contributions do not, in fact, lead to discussion at all. Rather, somewhat like religious testimonials, they are accepted politely at fact value rather than as spurs to debate, and there is some feeling that points of disagreement should be ignored as distractions from shared ideology. It is as if at a Church meeting someone were to say that beautiful sunsets proved the existence of God and the others were too polite or too aware of the damage attendant on dissent to debate the quality of the suggested proof. There is a deliberate avoidance of how a world would actually function after the workers had acquired the mans of production. It would work somehow and the workers would be the ones to decide. It seems God is not the only one to work in mysterious ways beyond our undersetanding.
It's been interesting and a little sad. As the only true, uncompromised socialists they seem a little like the Christians willing to die over the issue of using three rather than two fingers to cross themselves - and their cause quite hopeless. Communism, they say has not failed; it has never been tried. The same point has been made about Christianity.
Saturday, March 25/2009
Wake at 5 to watch qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix, F1 season opener. Well, semi wake, anyway, but enough to enjoy seeing the formula 1 world turned on its head as the season shapes up with no certainties at all.
Join the Put People First demo in central London, a broad and loose coalition of Churches, trades unions, Greens, anti-war movements and, more darkly, anarchists, all of whom want G20 leaders to focus less on business and banks and more on common people and underdeveloped countries. There's an amazingly broad range of sponsors, from Quakers to journalists, and an equally eclectic looking group of marchers of all ages, long white beards to babies in pushchairs. Even a few dogs along. We walk from Parliament Square to Hyde Park, led by a small band. Quite a lot of police at the beginning but we're a pretty tame lot. As we leave Hyde Park we see them paying closer attention to some anarchists gathering with red and black flags by the Marble Arch end. A construction area with bits of rubble suitable for projectiles has been prudently fenced off.
Join the Put People First demo in central London, a broad and loose coalition of Churches, trades unions, Greens, anti-war movements and, more darkly, anarchists, all of whom want G20 leaders to focus less on business and banks and more on common people and underdeveloped countries. There's an amazingly broad range of sponsors, from Quakers to journalists, and an equally eclectic looking group of marchers of all ages, long white beards to babies in pushchairs. Even a few dogs along. We walk from Parliament Square to Hyde Park, led by a small band. Quite a lot of police at the beginning but we're a pretty tame lot. As we leave Hyde Park we see them paying closer attention to some anarchists gathering with red and black flags by the Marble Arch end. A construction area with bits of rubble suitable for projectiles has been prudently fenced off.
Fridach 27/2009
Threats of rain so we take umbrellas and head for a museum day. Start at the Science Museum, which is alive with small children. A disproportionate number of the exhibits are child-oriented as well, some of them with unnecessarily low lighting and explanatory material posted about knee level. Interesting early steam engine that beat out its early 19th century competitors to set a record of 29 mph, reminding us of James saying that the steam engine was the first thing to go faster than a Roman chariot.
Happy time at the Victoria and Albert across the road, poking about the gallery covering Britain from 1500 to the mid 18th century. Interesting fact: marriages did not require either Church or witnesses to be valid until well into the 18th century, which must make life more difficult for genealogists.
Then by tube to Bethnal Green where we check out pie shop #2 in our search for a replacement for Goddard's. Kelly's is a small and local shop. We don't actually try its wares because it looks depressingly inadequate compared to Goddard's but mark it for later. Home for spinach salad and pasta with shrimp sauce.
Happy time at the Victoria and Albert across the road, poking about the gallery covering Britain from 1500 to the mid 18th century. Interesting fact: marriages did not require either Church or witnesses to be valid until well into the 18th century, which must make life more difficult for genealogists.
Then by tube to Bethnal Green where we check out pie shop #2 in our search for a replacement for Goddard's. Kelly's is a small and local shop. We don't actually try its wares because it looks depressingly inadequate compared to Goddard's but mark it for later. Home for spinach salad and pasta with shrimp sauce.
Thursday, March 26/2009
Graffiti on HSBC advertisement on the tube: "banker - rhymes with...."
Research for day trips. On average coach is cheaper but train is quicker. Surprisingly prices to Bedford much higher than those to Stratford or Bath, though it's only an hour by train.
Find a shop in Kentish Town opposite the tube station which sells embroidery needs and will order what they don't have in stock - a shop kindly recommended by a woman working at Liberty's, where stock and even floor space seem greatly reduced.
Check out Castle's Eel and Pie Shop on Royal College in Camden Town. We're looking for a successor to Goddard's in Greenwich. It's friendly and the tiny space is serving locals from workmen to old ladies, but the pies look small and pancake flat, so we only sample the puddings - plenty of custard from a large pail of same but the puddings are not homemade and not a meal in themselves. It's not Goddard's.
Research for day trips. On average coach is cheaper but train is quicker. Surprisingly prices to Bedford much higher than those to Stratford or Bath, though it's only an hour by train.
Find a shop in Kentish Town opposite the tube station which sells embroidery needs and will order what they don't have in stock - a shop kindly recommended by a woman working at Liberty's, where stock and even floor space seem greatly reduced.
Check out Castle's Eel and Pie Shop on Royal College in Camden Town. We're looking for a successor to Goddard's in Greenwich. It's friendly and the tiny space is serving locals from workmen to old ladies, but the pies look small and pancake flat, so we only sample the puddings - plenty of custard from a large pail of same but the puddings are not homemade and not a meal in themselves. It's not Goddard's.
Thursday, 26 March 2009
Wednesday, March 25/2009
Concession tickets to Alan Bennet's Enjoy - revival from 1980. It has some excellent moments - the very funny worrying about whether the husband is actually dead as they begin to lay him out as there appears to be "evidence both ways" - and some interesting questions re authenticity, but overall it's not nearly as good as the more recent plays. Encouraging, I suppose, to think someone writes better in his 60's and 70's than in his 40's.
Tuesday, March 24/2009
Repeat of Thursday night's fire alarm - this time at 8 a.m. and fewer tenants on show. The others at work or just too cynically blase to show? No fire.
We've been here a week but the time always goes so fast in London - there's so much to see and do. We stop and arrange with Marty for an extra 3 days from when we get bac from Dublin.
In the afternoon J goes to see Jersey Boys while I head out to West Harrow to see Jean and help play with her new computer. Computer's fun but so is the tea and chat. J says Jersey Boys great - Frankie Valli bio and songs - and a full theatre of grey heads!
We've been here a week but the time always goes so fast in London - there's so much to see and do. We stop and arrange with Marty for an extra 3 days from when we get bac from Dublin.
In the afternoon J goes to see Jersey Boys while I head out to West Harrow to see Jean and help play with her new computer. Computer's fun but so is the tea and chat. J says Jersey Boys great - Frankie Valli bio and songs - and a full theatre of grey heads!
Monday, March 23/2009
Down to the Barbican and a couple of hours with the library internet but no great joy looking for the missing 3 dahys. Back to Camden Town and a minimal shop. There's an eel and pie shop we want to check out but it starts to rain a little so we decide to look another day.
Shrimp and salmon chowder for supper.
Shrimp and salmon chowder for supper.
Sunday, March 22/2009
Mass at Westminster Cathedral with the usual beautiful boys choir. Still sunny though not quit so warm - but the tiny park by Victoria Station has young people sleeping on the grass near the student travel agency. Sunday lunch and a happy read of fat Sunday papers.
Saturday, March 21/2009
Is this the first day of spring? Certainly feels like it. We check out the plays at the National Theatre, then off by train to Thames Ditton. Jenny and her other are there and Doug comes back for lunch. Then Emma joins us with baby Jasmine, born in January. She's bright eyed and absolutely lovely. After lunch a walk in the area minus Doug who has gone back to renovations. Gloriously full camellias, violets, cherry blossoms, and magnolias. It's a beautiful town and day. Jasmine sleeps in her pram.
Use their computer to book 3 days in Dublin - a maddening procedure but done now.
We take the train back to Waterloo, but get halfway there (New Malden) before J says that's as far as he goes without a loo. New Malden has a toilet opening onto the platform - or rather not opening as it's locked in the evening. J disappears down the path and I make no inquiries. Ten minutes later another train to Waterloo.
Use their computer to book 3 days in Dublin - a maddening procedure but done now.
We take the train back to Waterloo, but get halfway there (New Malden) before J says that's as far as he goes without a loo. New Malden has a toilet opening onto the platform - or rather not opening as it's locked in the evening. J disappears down the path and I make no inquiries. Ten minutes later another train to Waterloo.
Friday, March 20/2009
Another stunningly beautiful day. It's been warm and sunny all week - shirtsleeves and daffodils, magnoilias, cherry blossoms everywhere. We walk from Trafalgar Square down the Mall along the park and work our way over to the Thomas Cook near Green Park where we look into possible spots for our 6 day gap. Nothing really clicks though.
Thursday, March 19/2009
Jean's in the afternoon. Lots of talk time and we get to see the new laptop. Beautiful wide screen but a bit intimidating in its complexity. Lovely meal with curry and the beautiful smoky aubergine as well as apple crumble with custard. Thoroughly spoiled we are.
A paralyzingly loud fire alarm sounds in the night for about 20 minutes. No signs of smoke or fire but we do meet a couple of the neighbours - are the rest justwaiting it out? A young man in red sweat pants explains the problem. He has some kind of position (for reduced rent?) with the Welby and could call the fire department but they charge management 7000 pounds if there's no fire and "Ii'd have to find somewhere else to live."
A paralyzingly loud fire alarm sounds in the night for about 20 minutes. No signs of smoke or fire but we do meet a couple of the neighbours - are the rest justwaiting it out? A young man in red sweat pants explains the problem. He has some kind of position (for reduced rent?) with the Welby and could call the fire department but they charge management 7000 pounds if there's no fire and "Ii'd have to find somewhere else to live."
Wednesday, March 18/2009
Stock up day - Sainsbury's as well as the 99p store and Inverness St. market so we've got the basics. Coronation Street in the evening - with characters and plotlines we can't place after 3 months.
March 17/2009
Most packing done yesterday, but still enough for busy morning. Maggi picks us up at noon (boxes and microwave left in room for storage). Lovely sunny lunch on M&M's balcony and last view of the Med, but hopes for all of us next year in cyprus.
Happily there are British newspapers for the plane so we get to sate ourselves with news and crosswords. Very nice lamb stew and creme caramel as well - and we're early in at Heathrow. Tube t Swiss Cottage and J collects the key to number 20 Belsize Park from its spot taped to the oor of the Welby. He's some time about it as it's taped so well that better fingernails are required. The flat is OK - pretty basic but clean and a good location.
Happily there are British newspapers for the plane so we get to sate ourselves with news and crosswords. Very nice lamb stew and creme caramel as well - and we're early in at Heathrow. Tube t Swiss Cottage and J collects the key to number 20 Belsize Park from its spot taped to the oor of the Welby. He's some time about it as it's taped so well that better fingernails are required. The flat is OK - pretty basic but clean and a good location.
Monday, 16 March 2009
Monday, March 16/2009
Appointment to get teeth cleaned, which J fortunately remembers because I wouldn't have. A woman in the wainting room makes two calls on her mobile, one in English and one in Greek. In the Greek conversation she sighs "Kyrie eleison" (lord have mercy) which soulds like a religious chant imported from the Mass rather than a casual interjection as it would in English. Like the Alpha and Omega sporting goods store, which always seems so apocalyptic, and not at all like a regular A to Z.
Sunday, March 15/2009
Say goodbye to Fr. Wilhelm. Huge brunch at home as we look to emptying the fridge. Warm enough, but very windy. Lovely film - Touch of Spice? - on Dubai tv about a Greek family deported from Istanbul to Greece in the 60's.
Saturday, March 14/2009
Find a sunny table at market for our coffee. Two women at the next table ask for Nescafe. Really? asks the proprietor, whose Cypriot coffee is excellent, but he brings it and I shrub my shoulders in agreement with him as he passes.
Friday, March 13/2009
Haircut before leaving, with only minimal trauma - shorter than I want, but a good cut. A solid hour's wait, but I've brought a novel. Minimalist conversation with the girl who washes hair, consisting mainly of each of us repeating what we have to say twice and hoping this will result in understanding - which it doesn't always.
Three a.m. drama. We wake to hear the fire alaarm ringing at length, and decide clothes are required lest the emergency be real. There are voices in the hallway and, when I open the door, a nasty smell of smoke. We join the small cluster of residents outside the door of the flat next door, clearly the source of the smoke. Only one other woman, but men have a clear advantage at impromptu middle of the night gatherings, being free to appear in sweat pants and not much else. The occupant of the flat is a giant mountain of a man, padding about unhappily in underpants, t-shirt and socks. He has something to be unhappy about, as he's clearly the author of the burning, whatever it is, and is being subjected to flat inspection by a man in black whom we take to be the night manager, as well as the singing Swede of lobby fame, recruited in this case for his linguistic skills. Though the man mountain doesn't seem chatty. Night manager and singing Swede emerge, apparently satisfied and commenting that it may have been cooking. Back in bed we reflect that it's no particular comfort to be given an explanation that cannot possibly be accurate. The nasty, acrid smell could have been cigarette and bedding but it was definitely not burned toast and bore no real resemblance to burnt food. But the rest of the night is peaceful.
Three a.m. drama. We wake to hear the fire alaarm ringing at length, and decide clothes are required lest the emergency be real. There are voices in the hallway and, when I open the door, a nasty smell of smoke. We join the small cluster of residents outside the door of the flat next door, clearly the source of the smoke. Only one other woman, but men have a clear advantage at impromptu middle of the night gatherings, being free to appear in sweat pants and not much else. The occupant of the flat is a giant mountain of a man, padding about unhappily in underpants, t-shirt and socks. He has something to be unhappy about, as he's clearly the author of the burning, whatever it is, and is being subjected to flat inspection by a man in black whom we take to be the night manager, as well as the singing Swede of lobby fame, recruited in this case for his linguistic skills. Though the man mountain doesn't seem chatty. Night manager and singing Swede emerge, apparently satisfied and commenting that it may have been cooking. Back in bed we reflect that it's no particular comfort to be given an explanation that cannot possibly be accurate. The nasty, acrid smell could have been cigarette and bedding but it was definitely not burned toast and bore no real resemblance to burnt food. But the rest of the night is peaceful.
Thursday, March 12/2009
This week's Cypriot Financial Mirror says that tourism is expected to drop 10 to 25% next year and predicts the lowering of hotel prices, involving some level of government subsidy. Somehow we doubt that winter long-stayers will be the primary beneficiaries.
Friday, 13 March 2009
Wednesday, March 11/2009
J for a haircut and I to the internet. We come home to a gleaming flat. The cleaning is usually good - sometimes embarrassingly so as when we find that the carefully seasoned frying pan has been scrubbed clean, leading to future hiding of same before cleaners arrive - but today the windows have been washed and the balcony mopped down as well.
I always wonder what the cleaners make of the shower arrangements. We have a small snhower cubicle with a cloth curtain on two sides. When we first came to the flat the curtain was an annoyance, as it tended to be sucked inward and cling to the body once the water was turned on, bringing to mind old convent accounts of nuns piously washing themselves beneath concealing shifts. Our solution has been to fill 3 large (1.5 litre) water bottles and use them to stake the cutain at appropriate spots so it's held in place. What must the cleaners think when they see 3 large bottles of water permanently placed between shower and toilet?
The Today on BBC radio features an interview with mp and political diarist Chris Mullin, who says that the political diarist should adhere to the four I's: make the diary immediate (no late remembering and reframing), intimate, indiscreet, and (in case of accidental loss) indecipherable. The last reminds me of the time I lost my journal. It was quite an unpleasant feeling knowing it was lying exposed somewhere, and this despite the fact that it's not nearly indiscreet enough (Mullin quotes Chips Cannon as saying "there's nothing more dull than a discreet diary: you might as well have a dull or discreet soul") and the knowledge that anyone at all could read it online anyway. I eventually found it in the Larnaca post office lying on a table, presumably unread.
I always wonder what the cleaners make of the shower arrangements. We have a small snhower cubicle with a cloth curtain on two sides. When we first came to the flat the curtain was an annoyance, as it tended to be sucked inward and cling to the body once the water was turned on, bringing to mind old convent accounts of nuns piously washing themselves beneath concealing shifts. Our solution has been to fill 3 large (1.5 litre) water bottles and use them to stake the cutain at appropriate spots so it's held in place. What must the cleaners think when they see 3 large bottles of water permanently placed between shower and toilet?
The Today on BBC radio features an interview with mp and political diarist Chris Mullin, who says that the political diarist should adhere to the four I's: make the diary immediate (no late remembering and reframing), intimate, indiscreet, and (in case of accidental loss) indecipherable. The last reminds me of the time I lost my journal. It was quite an unpleasant feeling knowing it was lying exposed somewhere, and this despite the fact that it's not nearly indiscreet enough (Mullin quotes Chips Cannon as saying "there's nothing more dull than a discreet diary: you might as well have a dull or discreet soul") and the knowledge that anyone at all could read it online anyway. I eventually found it in the Larnaca post office lying on a table, presumably unread.
Wednesday, 11 March 2009
Tuesday, March 10/2009
Sunny and windy - a perfect drying day as we get clothes ready to pack up.
We've invited M&M to dinner - last time this year. Maggi's hired car makes it possible but we do miss the old days when we were in the same building and could pop up or down easily. The Eleonora will be open again next year - is in fact almost ready now - but not at the good old price.
We've invited M&M to dinner - last time this year. Maggi's hired car makes it possible but we do miss the old days when we were in the same building and could pop up or down easily. The Eleonora will be open again next year - is in fact almost ready now - but not at the good old price.
Monday, March 9/2009
A call this morning from Androula. We met her and her husband Andreas in Jordan two years ago and got on quite well. He used to be a headmaster and she a home economics consultant - both retired now and living in Nicosia. I'd texted just to see if thenumber I had was still good. They remember us well and wanted us to come for lunch or dinner. It's pretty late this year but next year we'll have to try.
Email from Liza, the Philippina nanny we met who was moving to Toronto. She says she's fine and the family she's living with are nice, so that's good news. It's half way round the world for her and probably the coldest climate she's known, but she's likely to be both paid and treated better in Canada than in Cyprus.
Email from Liza, the Philippina nanny we met who was moving to Toronto. She says she's fine and the family she's living with are nice, so that's good news. It's half way round the world for her and probably the coldest climate she's known, but she's likely to be both paid and treated better in Canada than in Cyprus.
Monday, 9 March 2009
Sunday, March 8/2009
Really thick dust haze in the air which, ironically, has the effect of making the air warmer, though it's not exactly sunny. One spot on the island hits 25 today. Fr. Wilhelm has ashes available after Mass for those who were unable to come on Ash Wednesday - "some of you work for slave drivers," he shrugs, addressing the Philippino domestics. So we line up with those with worthier excuses.
Saturday, March 7/2009
Warm but overcast - more dust in the atmosphere? Coffee at the marketplace with M&M, and we buy six eggs but nothing else. Nothing more would fit in the little fridge. Feels like we have enough til we leave, though - probably too much of some things and not enough of others.
Film Sylvia on Dubai television - the life of Sylvia Plath. Interesting how someone with such psychological damage can leave the viewer so unmoved. Probably because of the self-centredness verging on narcissism, though that may be true of all mental disturbance. The Dubai chanel is pretty limited but it does provide two films a day, a reasonable proportion of which are watchable.
Film Sylvia on Dubai television - the life of Sylvia Plath. Interesting how someone with such psychological damage can leave the viewer so unmoved. Probably because of the self-centredness verging on narcissism, though that may be true of all mental disturbance. The Dubai chanel is pretty limited but it does provide two films a day, a reasonable proportion of which are watchable.
Friday, March 6/2009
Small group of boys (late teens? - a guess as I don't turn round to look) come in to the internet and crowd round one of the four computers, all of which are, miraculously, working. They're obviously looking for work in the hospitality trade, but they don't have a lot of patience; a ten minute search perhaps and they're ready to leave. I hear them daring each other on the way out. Yeah, do it - ask for condoms. It is a student facility, perhaps with many missions. Seems to work though, and they leave happy if jobless.
Friday, 6 March 2009
Thursday, March 5/2009
Our afternoon read aloud book is now Edith Sitwell's The Queens and the Hive, a history of Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots. We're more than half through, so reasonable hope of finishing before we leave. It's quite highly dependent on primary sources, many of which are fascinating, irony and malice coming down undiminished through the intervening four centuries.
In the evening M&M drop by for their rain cheque drink (unable to stop yesterday).
In the evening M&M drop by for their rain cheque drink (unable to stop yesterday).
Wednesday, March 4/2009
Two early morning stories courtesy of UK BBC5 underline just how different political concerns can be elsewhere. In Tanzania there is a problem with albinos being murdered as their body parts can be sold to witch doctors making spells to create wealth. And in Kenya the president complains bitterly about rumours that he has a second wife - threatening lawsuits.
Ash Wednesday (Eastern Church that is) and a lovely day.
Ash Wednesday (Eastern Church that is) and a lovely day.
Wednesday, 4 March 2009
Tuesday, March 3/2009
Settle our bill for the remaining time. We leave for London in two weeks, and as usual wonder where the time has gone. We'll miss Dave in the UK, which is too bad.
Tuesday, 3 March 2009
Monday, March 2/2009
Traditionally Green Monday is a day for picnics, the locals heading off to the countryside with barbecues and folding tables. So Maggi has planed a picnic for us and collects us at 10 for a drive out toward Kiti Beach, just south of us along the coast. On the way, we pay a short visit to Angeloktisti Church. The church itself is 11th century but built on a much earlier church site. The original apse is still there as well as a lovely 6th century mosaic with the virgin Mary and archangels. We've been there before but not recently.
We then head for Kiti Dam, out of curiosity, and eventually find it - bone dry. Surprising, since we've had more rain recently and the water is supposed to be coming over the dam at a couple of reservoirs. We do find a lovely old church nearby though, a stone building surrounded by ancient looking olive trees, the trunks gnarled and intertwined. The church is locked but looks cared for, despite the large number of spent cartridgeslying about. Cypriots are enthusiastic hunters, typically wearing - unbelievably - camouflage on their hunting expeditions.
We have our picnic lunch at Kiti Beach. Magne had wanted a barbecue but Maggi opted for simplicity so we've brought sandwiches, fruit, olives, pickled herring, cheese, beer and iced doughnuts. Then efforts to fly the kite that Maggi was given at Zorbas Bakery. THis is a traditional kite flying day and several picnickers near us have theirs soaring but we're not very successful in getting ours up. The beach has quite interesting stones and we pick them over while Maggi goes off to investigate a beach hut. Drive back along the coast stopping at Kiti Lighthouse as well as photographing the flamingos at the salt lake. A lovely day.
We then head for Kiti Dam, out of curiosity, and eventually find it - bone dry. Surprising, since we've had more rain recently and the water is supposed to be coming over the dam at a couple of reservoirs. We do find a lovely old church nearby though, a stone building surrounded by ancient looking olive trees, the trunks gnarled and intertwined. The church is locked but looks cared for, despite the large number of spent cartridgeslying about. Cypriots are enthusiastic hunters, typically wearing - unbelievably - camouflage on their hunting expeditions.
We have our picnic lunch at Kiti Beach. Magne had wanted a barbecue but Maggi opted for simplicity so we've brought sandwiches, fruit, olives, pickled herring, cheese, beer and iced doughnuts. Then efforts to fly the kite that Maggi was given at Zorbas Bakery. THis is a traditional kite flying day and several picnickers near us have theirs soaring but we're not very successful in getting ours up. The beach has quite interesting stones and we pick them over while Maggi goes off to investigate a beach hut. Drive back along the coast stopping at Kiti Lighthouse as well as photographing the flamingos at the salt lake. A lovely day.
Sunday, March 1/2009
Text from Jenny as we wake, to say that they are leaving Bahamas and about to sail up the Amazon. They'll be back in London by the time we get there so we'll get to hear all about their trip.
Reverse pattern - clouds disappear in late morning. After Sunday brunch we take a walk along the waterfront, enjoying the sun. As usual on a Sunday it's full of locals and tourists alike along the promenade. It's warm but windy and we watch a little girl's chagrin when the top of her candy floss blows off and skites along the sidewalk. Many of the children are wearing their carnival costumes, enjoying them for as many days as possible - a small female lion walks with her parents, her tail dragging dispiritedly along the pavement. As well as ice cream, cotton candy and hot dogs (one euro each, but none in evidence) there are helium balloons, toys and cheap jewellery on sale. And games of chance: small homemade wooden pinball games stand in front of plush animals and other prizes.
The newsreader on the Dubai chanel, whose English is fluent and almost unaccented, refers to a statement by the "Angelican" (accent on the second syllable, pronounced jell) bishop of Cyprus and the Middle East.
Reverse pattern - clouds disappear in late morning. After Sunday brunch we take a walk along the waterfront, enjoying the sun. As usual on a Sunday it's full of locals and tourists alike along the promenade. It's warm but windy and we watch a little girl's chagrin when the top of her candy floss blows off and skites along the sidewalk. Many of the children are wearing their carnival costumes, enjoying them for as many days as possible - a small female lion walks with her parents, her tail dragging dispiritedly along the pavement. As well as ice cream, cotton candy and hot dogs (one euro each, but none in evidence) there are helium balloons, toys and cheap jewellery on sale. And games of chance: small homemade wooden pinball games stand in front of plush animals and other prizes.
The newsreader on the Dubai chanel, whose English is fluent and almost unaccented, refers to a statement by the "Angelican" (accent on the second syllable, pronounced jell) bishop of Cyprus and the Middle East.
Saturday, February 28/2009
The pattern of weather seems to have been, typically, sunny in the morning, then clouding over and, sometimes, afternoon showers. So this morning begins sunny but J points to the rising bank of cloud in the north. Coffee at the marketplace with M&M but by 11 the dark clouds are rolling in and there's a slight chill in the air. After market J and I walk down to Prinos greengrocers, prudently taking umbrellas. Prinos is insanely busy as its produce is excellent and we're into a long weekend. Not only a long weekend, but a Monday on which the tradition is to have a picnic featuring green vegetables, bread and seafood. As we leave, a thunderstorm hits and, mindful of the recent ligntning strike death, we wait until it's moved east before putting up lightning rod umbrellas. By the time we reach the Polish shop - for pickled herring - the rain, never heavy, has stopped.
Friday, February 27/2009
Headng into a long weekend in Cyprus Monday is clean Monday or green Monday depending on translation - the day preceding kShrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday. These latter occurred in the western Church a week ago courtesy of the Gregorian calendar. This year Easter is a week apart in the two jurisdictions. Usually it's more; occasionally the same date.
This weekend there will be parades in some places and children in costume everywhere - princesses and spidermen much in evidence. Not only children if the shop window displays are anything to go by. There must be adult costume parties in the offing.
This weekend there will be parades in some places and children in costume everywhere - princesses and spidermen much in evidence. Not only children if the shop window displays are anything to go by. There must be adult costume parties in the offing.
Friday, 27 February 2009
Thursday, February 26/2009
Very strange late winter here. Warm enough but for some time now - feels like weeks but maybe only a couple of weeks - we've lived under a cloud much of the time, blue on the BBC weather map but white-grey in the sky. There's often a shower, but never sustained rain. Rather Londony actually, though much warmer. At least the water crisis here is over with reservoirs doing nicely. We do get a large clap of thunder with the evening rain today, but clearly worse elsewhere. North of us a field worker is hit by lightning and killed.
Wednesday, February 25/2009
News on Cairo bombing long gone as the crash of a Turkish Airlines plane in Amsterdam takes the headlines. We flew with Turkish Airlines last year and it's supposed to have a fairly good reputation, although they did pay relatively little attention to people piling their bags in front of the emergency exit instead of stowing them - no problem at all unless there is an emergency.
Tuesday, February 24/2009
Maggi drops by in the evening to hear about the trip and share reminiscences of their visit to Egypt last year.
Monday, February 23/2009
We've planned to take a ppicture of the pyramids from our hotel room window - the best view we've ever had - but we wake to a thick dust haze, the sun a faint red dot and the pyramids invisible. Fortunately, it disappears later in the morning and J gets a clear shot.
Being out in Giza, we can't really go too far before eing picked up at noon for the ride to the airport on the other side of Cairo. Not a great deal more on the news about yesterday's bombing. No terrorist group has taken responsibility. Speculation is, as the bombs (there were two ut one failed to detonate) seem to have been homemade that this may have been a protest by a small group, possibly against Egyptian government co-operation with Israel over Gaza, which angered many Egyptians.
Abdoul and driver collect us. The long drive to the airport gives us chat time and some of the chat becomes philosophical, Abdoul telling us his feelings about culture, religion and a Czech girl - a tourist guide - whom he had considered marrying.
The airport has been renovated and is quite modern, apart from marginally acceptable washrooms. It's equuipped with the obvious duty free shops as well as Starbucks, McDonalds's and similar, and - more interestingly - Italian, British and American lounges. So called, at least, though they all look like standard cafes. Prices about the same as a Canadian airport.
The flight is full and the meal the same as Friday's but with mango juice in place of orange. Enough chicken breast that I make a doggy bag. One passenger has to be asked to put away his mobile during take off, and the man next to me has his out during landing. Never sure how seriously phones interfere. If it's serious, airlines should be more emphatic, maybe replacing the no smoking signs with no mobile signs. No one tries to smoke any more and if they did they'd be pretty quickly spotted. Nor would smoking cause a crash. Airlines lose credibility by inconsistencies about what is important. For example, serious restrictions on bringing iquids aboard are universal in Europe and North America but Egypt and Israel - the gold standard in security (Israel, not Egypt) - both ignore water bottles but x-ray all luggage, checked as well as unchecked, which rather makes sense if one is to fear terrorists prepared to go down with the plane. Apparently it's not done in North America because it would be too expensive!
Walk back in from the airport. There's been a storm through but it's dry as we leave, though small bits of rain on the way. And home to the Kition.
Being out in Giza, we can't really go too far before eing picked up at noon for the ride to the airport on the other side of Cairo. Not a great deal more on the news about yesterday's bombing. No terrorist group has taken responsibility. Speculation is, as the bombs (there were two ut one failed to detonate) seem to have been homemade that this may have been a protest by a small group, possibly against Egyptian government co-operation with Israel over Gaza, which angered many Egyptians.
Abdoul and driver collect us. The long drive to the airport gives us chat time and some of the chat becomes philosophical, Abdoul telling us his feelings about culture, religion and a Czech girl - a tourist guide - whom he had considered marrying.
The airport has been renovated and is quite modern, apart from marginally acceptable washrooms. It's equuipped with the obvious duty free shops as well as Starbucks, McDonalds's and similar, and - more interestingly - Italian, British and American lounges. So called, at least, though they all look like standard cafes. Prices about the same as a Canadian airport.
The flight is full and the meal the same as Friday's but with mango juice in place of orange. Enough chicken breast that I make a doggy bag. One passenger has to be asked to put away his mobile during take off, and the man next to me has his out during landing. Never sure how seriously phones interfere. If it's serious, airlines should be more emphatic, maybe replacing the no smoking signs with no mobile signs. No one tries to smoke any more and if they did they'd be pretty quickly spotted. Nor would smoking cause a crash. Airlines lose credibility by inconsistencies about what is important. For example, serious restrictions on bringing iquids aboard are universal in Europe and North America but Egypt and Israel - the gold standard in security (Israel, not Egypt) - both ignore water bottles but x-ray all luggage, checked as well as unchecked, which rather makes sense if one is to fear terrorists prepared to go down with the plane. Apparently it's not done in North America because it would be too expensive!
Walk back in from the airport. There's been a storm through but it's dry as we leave, though small bits of rain on the way. And home to the Kition.
Thursday, 26 February 2009
Sunday, February 22/2009
Breakfast at somewhat lower standard today. Aubergine not on but replaced by fried courgette cakes - ok but not warm, a match for the cold scrambled eggs and today's foule. A waiter seems annoyed when we choose a table with a clean cloth. At another table I spot a different waiter assiduously scraping a bit of encrusted food with a table knife. Mission accomplished, he leaves the knife at its place setting for the next hotel guest to use.
We have a free day today, so some negotiating for a ride to the city centre, made slightlymore difficult by the fact that nobody ever seems to hae change and there is little point in agreeing on a price and then not having the exact fare. We twice meet people who ask, oddly, if we speak Hungarian, and I'm tempted to say, not quite accurately, that nobody speaks Hungarian. Everyone who asks our nationality has the same response - oh yes, Canada Dry (quite a popular drink in the Middle East). In the end we're offered one way down town for 40 Egyptian pounds - about $9 Canadian or five British pounds. We see it's not a taxi but the tourist policeman by the hotel door gives his blessing. Seems the driver drives for the hotel. "Limousine," he says, though that would be overstating it considerably for the green station wagon with decomposing upholstery.
We get out at Tahir Square in the centre, beside a metro station. Our original plan had been to take the metro from Giza, but the hotel staff really only speak hotel English - they can deal with the questions that hotel guests normally ask but can't really cope beyond that, as in where is the nearest metro station. We check out the station, which looks modern and reasonably clean. At the top of the stairs outside the exit a woman sells small packets of tissues, although there don't seem to be any buyers, and feeds a very little child who is seated on her knee. J says, though, that there is much less begging than there was 20 years ago. We're near a bridge over the Nile and Cairo here is in its modern city mode; five star hotels, river islands, the rose coloured Egyptian Museum.
We head off with the general intent of picking up a tourist map from the information office shown in the little map in our aged Let's Go. It's not as easy as it might seem, because not all the streets in our little map are named, whereas on the ground all the streets have names in Arabic but only in the centre or on motorways are the streets also labelled in western letters. To add to the difficulty, streets in Cairo, like those in most ancient cities, head off at all angles, so that those that seem parallel as one sets off spin out to opposite corners of the map, so it's important to find the right road.
On Ramses St. we come across a crew of riot police, perhaps fifty of them. There is no visible trouble, but there are large political posters and perhaps a demo is expected. We detour and head east. At one point we pass an Armenian church and the priest invites us in. He doesn't speak English, but his French is excellent, clear and not too fast, and he's quite pleased to show us ihis tranquil church and its full-sized replica of the shroud of Turin. As we go farther from the city centre there are fewer tourists, more street life, bits of markets under bridges, fewer English signs. (Although English on the sign of a shop is by no means an indication that anyone inside the shop speaks English). Dust and rubble increase at street corners. In Egypt it's easy to see how whole civilizations disappear under dust. Here it's made worse by the fact that there seem to be few people who refrain from tossing sweet wrappers and such on the ground as they go.
We had had thoughts of tea at yesterday's cafe but our progress tacking across the city is a bit slow, though interesting, and J still wants to take photos of the Nile, so we head back. Stop for something to eat at KFC - not our first choice in Egypt, both because it's a waste not taking advantage of middle east food and because we're not keen on the high fat fast food route. However the culture in general is not particularly hygienic (witness the waiters drying cups at our hotel, thumb in cup, towel draped over shoulder) and the thought of the food appearing in cardboard box and sterile can is rather encouraging. This morning outside the hotel, we passed a van with a huge tray of loaves of bread balanced on the roof. Two or three of the loaves fell onto the roof of the van and the driver returned them to the tray. It's simply a different view of cleanliness. KFC is better than average, although it's possible to find the washroom without seeing the sign or asking directions.
Stop at five star hotel and buy a newspaper as well as taking advantage of very clean loo. Then a policeman actually escorts us across two streets - more hazardous than it sounds, and referred to by the guide book as a real life game of frogger. We negotiate with the driver of a local black and white taxi, with the help of a by-passer, for a ride back, having brought with us an envelope from the hotel with the address in Arabic. Some discussion amongst driver, bystander and policeman and then agreement at 40 pounds Egyptian again - although this time we have the disadantage of persuading a cabby to go from the centre to Giza at rush hour.
The trip is about an hour and a half, some of it in gridlock. It's made a little longer probably by some adjustments at the Giza end as the driver asks locals for directions and expresses surprise. An interesting drive though. We pass two informal sports bars - cafes with a small television outside and perhaps 75 men on the pavement, some on wooden chairs and some standing, watching the football match in the dusk. Probably the same match to which we are listening at high volume in the taxi. Back at the hotel we head down the street to buy a large bottle of water and two tins of 7-up from a small shop. The purchase comes to 10 Egyptian pounds (about two dollars Canadian) and someone is sent to find change for our 20 pound note. How on earth do the operate?
Back to our room, and it's almost the same place we left. We're down one towel, though someone brought two extra yesterday, but have, mysteriously, acquired an extra armchair, squeezed in with some difficulty as we already had two.
Time to pour a drink (whiskey we brought with us) and watch the news. Then we hear on BBC World the breaking news from Cairo. There has been a bombing at the cafe we visited yesterday and had planned to visit today. Tourists were clearly the target: one young French woman is dead and seventeen people have been injured. Little extra information as the area has been sealed and television shots show mainly police milling in the gathering dark.
We have a free day today, so some negotiating for a ride to the city centre, made slightlymore difficult by the fact that nobody ever seems to hae change and there is little point in agreeing on a price and then not having the exact fare. We twice meet people who ask, oddly, if we speak Hungarian, and I'm tempted to say, not quite accurately, that nobody speaks Hungarian. Everyone who asks our nationality has the same response - oh yes, Canada Dry (quite a popular drink in the Middle East). In the end we're offered one way down town for 40 Egyptian pounds - about $9 Canadian or five British pounds. We see it's not a taxi but the tourist policeman by the hotel door gives his blessing. Seems the driver drives for the hotel. "Limousine," he says, though that would be overstating it considerably for the green station wagon with decomposing upholstery.
We get out at Tahir Square in the centre, beside a metro station. Our original plan had been to take the metro from Giza, but the hotel staff really only speak hotel English - they can deal with the questions that hotel guests normally ask but can't really cope beyond that, as in where is the nearest metro station. We check out the station, which looks modern and reasonably clean. At the top of the stairs outside the exit a woman sells small packets of tissues, although there don't seem to be any buyers, and feeds a very little child who is seated on her knee. J says, though, that there is much less begging than there was 20 years ago. We're near a bridge over the Nile and Cairo here is in its modern city mode; five star hotels, river islands, the rose coloured Egyptian Museum.
We head off with the general intent of picking up a tourist map from the information office shown in the little map in our aged Let's Go. It's not as easy as it might seem, because not all the streets in our little map are named, whereas on the ground all the streets have names in Arabic but only in the centre or on motorways are the streets also labelled in western letters. To add to the difficulty, streets in Cairo, like those in most ancient cities, head off at all angles, so that those that seem parallel as one sets off spin out to opposite corners of the map, so it's important to find the right road.
On Ramses St. we come across a crew of riot police, perhaps fifty of them. There is no visible trouble, but there are large political posters and perhaps a demo is expected. We detour and head east. At one point we pass an Armenian church and the priest invites us in. He doesn't speak English, but his French is excellent, clear and not too fast, and he's quite pleased to show us ihis tranquil church and its full-sized replica of the shroud of Turin. As we go farther from the city centre there are fewer tourists, more street life, bits of markets under bridges, fewer English signs. (Although English on the sign of a shop is by no means an indication that anyone inside the shop speaks English). Dust and rubble increase at street corners. In Egypt it's easy to see how whole civilizations disappear under dust. Here it's made worse by the fact that there seem to be few people who refrain from tossing sweet wrappers and such on the ground as they go.
We had had thoughts of tea at yesterday's cafe but our progress tacking across the city is a bit slow, though interesting, and J still wants to take photos of the Nile, so we head back. Stop for something to eat at KFC - not our first choice in Egypt, both because it's a waste not taking advantage of middle east food and because we're not keen on the high fat fast food route. However the culture in general is not particularly hygienic (witness the waiters drying cups at our hotel, thumb in cup, towel draped over shoulder) and the thought of the food appearing in cardboard box and sterile can is rather encouraging. This morning outside the hotel, we passed a van with a huge tray of loaves of bread balanced on the roof. Two or three of the loaves fell onto the roof of the van and the driver returned them to the tray. It's simply a different view of cleanliness. KFC is better than average, although it's possible to find the washroom without seeing the sign or asking directions.
Stop at five star hotel and buy a newspaper as well as taking advantage of very clean loo. Then a policeman actually escorts us across two streets - more hazardous than it sounds, and referred to by the guide book as a real life game of frogger. We negotiate with the driver of a local black and white taxi, with the help of a by-passer, for a ride back, having brought with us an envelope from the hotel with the address in Arabic. Some discussion amongst driver, bystander and policeman and then agreement at 40 pounds Egyptian again - although this time we have the disadantage of persuading a cabby to go from the centre to Giza at rush hour.
The trip is about an hour and a half, some of it in gridlock. It's made a little longer probably by some adjustments at the Giza end as the driver asks locals for directions and expresses surprise. An interesting drive though. We pass two informal sports bars - cafes with a small television outside and perhaps 75 men on the pavement, some on wooden chairs and some standing, watching the football match in the dusk. Probably the same match to which we are listening at high volume in the taxi. Back at the hotel we head down the street to buy a large bottle of water and two tins of 7-up from a small shop. The purchase comes to 10 Egyptian pounds (about two dollars Canadian) and someone is sent to find change for our 20 pound note. How on earth do the operate?
Back to our room, and it's almost the same place we left. We're down one towel, though someone brought two extra yesterday, but have, mysteriously, acquired an extra armchair, squeezed in with some difficulty as we already had two.
Time to pour a drink (whiskey we brought with us) and watch the news. Then we hear on BBC World the breaking news from Cairo. There has been a bombing at the cafe we visited yesterday and had planned to visit today. Tourists were clearly the target: one young French woman is dead and seventeen people have been injured. Little extra information as the area has been sealed and television shots show mainly police milling in the gathering dark.
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