Wednesday, March 17/2010

We're off on our west country trip, stopping in Wimbledon to collect Jenny's mum. It takes a while to clear the city but we're out through Hampton Court and into rural Surrey, then Wiltshire. Stop briefly at Stonehenge. We don't take the time for the tour - Cornwall is a long way away - but get a pretty good look across the field. In fact its location in the midst of farmland is one of the most striking things about it. Though it's probable that the fields were woodland in the distant past - or would that have made importing the giant rocks not just amazing but impossible? Stop at a petrol station to pick up a little for lunch. Canadian highway stations come off very badly by comparison. The convenience shop here includes chicken Kiev and chardonnay, though we settle for bread and cheese and yoghurt.

Through fields and along Bodmin Moor, we avoid the motorways when possible and head down from Truro to Falmouth on the south coast of Cornwall. The directions break down a bit as there are road repairs in the town but a young woman gives Jenny extremely good, if complicated, alternate directions, which Jenny, impressively, remembers. So down the old cobbled high street and through an almost impossibly narrow lane, Old Church Yard, possible only with the outside driving mirrors retracted, and we're there.

The flat belongs to friends of Jenny's, originally the home of Jenny's friend Jessica, who now uses it for holidays and also lets it. And it's absolutely brilliant - would be the envy of anyone looking for a coastal film set. It's in the oldest part of the town, set on a harbour that has been a centre of ship repairs, fishing and travel for centuries. There is a flat below (currently being renovated) and one above, but they're all nestled into the rock of the embankment so that the one below is invisible and the top two look like separate little cottages. It's lovely inside as well - particularly the living room which has a large floor to ceiling window in front, incorporating French doors to a little balcony overhanging the harbour.

The harbour is quiet but alive, with dozens of sailboats, loading quays, freighters, and even a large military ship of some sort in battleship grey. It's equally fascinating in daylight, with the circling gulls and activity on the boats, and after nightfall when the shipboard lights come on.

A short exploratory walk along the harbour and its shops. We pass a restaurant where celebrity cook Rick Stein has a new fish and chip shop opening Friday - it's full today with "practice" customers eating and workmen finishing off the paint. No more volunteers needed, so we go home and Jenny makes an omelet and vegetables and we all turn in.

Tuesday, March 16/2010

Wake to sun and silence. It's so quiet in Thames Ditton after the traffic of central Larnaca. You can lie in bed in the morning and listen to the birds sing.

Jenny is looking after Jasmine (14 months) for the day while Emma is at work and Doug and Giles off working on an electrical job of Giles's. Jasmine is lovely - round-faced, big-eyed and usually happy, though today she has a cold and is a little clingy. Still up for a joke, though, and thinks it pretty funny when she coughs and Joe says ah-choo. She's beginning to talk and knows quite a few words as well as some that she can sign, like bird. We take a morning walk round Thames Ditton admiring the flowers and, in the afternoon take Jasmine round Kingston in her pushchair as Jenny is visiting the dentist. She's quite happy to come with us and interested in everything. Later Jenny and I go round to the hall where Sam and Kai are being inducted into scouts. Laura and Nathan are there with Cody, who's the same age as Jasmine. When Sam and Kai put one hand on the flag and raise the other, Cody is quite interested and puts his hand in the air as well.

Monday, March 15/2010

Last day, so we're up early. I to the hairdresser to get a cut to last until we get home. As usual, we have too much food left, but that does allow for good sandwiches at the airport. The bus goes at 12:30 to the new airport - larger than the old but without the nice open air deck where we used to picnic. Do find enough seating for our roast chicken and artichoke sandwiches though.

Thanks probably to the looming strike, the plane is only half full and very relaxed. Everyone who wants two seats has them. A very nice chicken curry for dinner with a fairly good Bordeaux. The little dishes seem too good to be throwaways so I inquire (thinking that the bedsit is sometimes underequipped) and the stewardess insists that I keep two - and in fact returns with some disposable cups and again later with two small brandies in case the beds should prove hard in the bedsit.

London's lights are warm and the bridges sparkle. We land at Terminal 5 and Jenny comes to meet us. As we feared, access to T5 is chaotic and not well signed but Jenny is cheerful and gracious about it - she's now had experience with Terminal 5 so next time she'll know. And home to Doug and the dogs - who seem to remember us (the dogs, that is, Doug clearly does).

Sunday, March 14/2010

The suitcases don't hold much but take longer to pack for that as it's like a Chinese puzzle. Pause for brunch and then later a true break as we head over to the little sports bar to watch the opening race of the 2010 Formula One season. We'd checked earlier and the bartender had been helpful - but the timing was the same as a Rangers vs Dundee football match as well as a rugby match - would we mind watching on the little screen in the corner? No, we'd be delighted to watch at all. But when we arrive we find that almost everyone is here for the race - both big screens - with a couple of people seated at the bar following the rugby. Nice atmosphere and a pint of Guinness each. Sort of half way between watching at home and being at the race track. Clearer commentary and easier to identify the cars at home while the racetrack has the noise and excitement. Not a wildly exciting race though. New rules and cars finishing in more or less the order they started in. And the Bahrain track suffers from monochrome desert colouring.

Then over to the internet cafe across the back lane to choose the seats for tomorrow's flight. A half dozen computers with sticky keys (well mine, anyway) and full of young male foreign students. The one next to me is Romanian and he spends his hour chatting with a pretty girl (she fills the screen). I'd rather not be listening as it's a bit distracting but it's hard not to hear: No, don't take off your shirt - there are other people here, know what I mean.

M&M drop in for a last goodbye and the last of the g&t and artichokes, Magne so tired after a long day out that he falls asleep in his chair.

Saturday, March 13/2010

Moving day. And the last minute nearly forgots as we note that the drying rack is still on the balcony and J threads an old t-shirt through the handle holes in an already sealed box. It looks too much, but everything packs into M's little hired car - except J himself, who walks the short distance. No lift to the mezzanine at the Sunflower but we get it safely stowed away.



Then off to Agia Napa - or rather the hills above it - to a little chapel accessible by dirt track. The Greek name translates as "St. Forty" - and we joke about Ali Baba and the forty thieves, as the chapel is actually a large cave that has had a whitewashed cement wall built across the front - blue wooden door inserted. Inside there is the usual icon and oil lamp - clearly a holy place for genertions, probably centuries. There is a visitors' book, hard covered with damp - soft pages drifting loose. It's been taking entries since 2002 and we're now on the last page. As that's pretty full, I turn to look at the inside cover, which turns out to be a double page schematic of the London Underground system, routes in full colour.



We sit outside for a while, eating crisps and sharing beer and looking over the fields to a haze covered sea. Maggi's been photographing the flowers on our walk along the path - stunning little purple flowers like miniature violets, poppy-like white ones, silvery stars, yellow daisies and golden mimosa bushes in full flower as far as the eye can see. Others we're not even sure of. Orchids? There are a lot in Cyprus, which has its own little ecology due to having escaped the ravages of the ice age but received deposits from glaciers moving south.

As we sit, other visitors come and go. A Greek man shows us the contents of his plastic bag. He's been picking something in the fields, and we suppose snails, as we've spotted some ourselves, but he shows us a green spiky thing about two inches in diameter. Yes, it's to eat - and a few minutes later a aboy comes back to us with something cut in pea sized pieces, and tasting somewhat like raw peas. So a wild artichoke of some sort. Not bad, but probably better sauteed.



Then a German couple arrive with backpacks and hiking boots. Not young but quite fit. They've been walking cross-country and Maggi points them on to St. Elias chapel, also on a hill. From there they'll be able to get a bus home. And we ourselves wander back to the car and drive on back, stopping at Agia Napa harbour - now beginning to bloom with tourists - for a sandwich and a beer. Lovely day - warm but not too hot. Agia Napa is more touristy than Larnaca, but it's also closer to the lovely hills and fields of rural Cyprus.

Friday, March 12/2010

British Airways cabin crew union announces strike dates but they begin five days after we fly. By bedtime we have everything packed - wrapped, boxed, taped and tied, except for the microwave and the drying rack for the clothes - the latter inherited at some point along the way. Actually most of the useful bits and pieces were inherited or from charity shops but they're all things that come in handy - like the soup pot or the serrated knife and the radio. It's rather an editorial "we" - the we that have finished packing. I've helped line things up but J has done all the slotting in as well as sealing all with hockey tape and tying up with cord.

Thursday, March 11/2010

The juggling begins. Maggi has kindly offered to drive our boxes over to the Sunflower on Saturday morning. this is actually two days before we leave, so we have to make decisions now before we're quite finished about what to store, what to take with us and what to discard.

Wednesday, March 10/2010

The body of former Cypriot president Tassos Papadopoulis has been discovered covered with a thin layer of earth in a grave (already occupied as nearly as one can make out - where are the lurid tabloids when a story cries out for gory details?) in a Nicosia cemetery other than the one from which it disappeared. And arrests have been made of two cypriots (well, one was already in jail, for murder no less - the infamous "Al Capone of previous police humiliation) and a man of Indian nationality. It appears the Indian was paid only €200, much less than he says he was promised, to go back to India and start a new life. He'll undoubtedly be deported to India after prison (I'm inappropriately presuming conviction) but the new life he'd wanted won't be quite the same.



A warm day. The western end of the Mediterranean is still subject to snowstorms - in Spain and the south of France - but the eastern end has been unseasonably warm, with temperatures in Tel Aviv over 30 and ours reliably in the 20's, in part thanks to a blanketing of Saharan dust.



We're definitely in the clear now with regard to the flight on Monday. British Airways are still negotiating with the union representing cabin crew, but regardless of the outcome they can't strike before our flight as they must give seven days notice. So Monday night will see us in London. Jenny says she was at Hampton Court on the weekend and the crocuses are up but the daffodils are late this year.

Tuesday, March 9/2010

Walk out to M&M's for a curry lunch. We stop on the way at the flamingo Hotel exhibit, still taken with the batik of Lefkara but unhappy about its ill-fitted framing. Have a chat with Paulina, the young Bulgarian receptionist. Would the artist consider selling it unframed for less. She promises to try to find out.

Lovely chicken curry - mouthwatering smells from the time we enter the lift. And we're all a little sad that our time in Cyprus seems to be coming so rapidly to an end.

Monday, March 8/2010

J has a large bag of artichokes from Saturday's market (€1.70 for the bag - £1.53 GBP or $2.40 CAD). They're quite a bit of work as he peels down to the hearts, but incredibly good. Much too good not to share, so M&M stop to have an early lunch with the sliced hearts sautéed and other nibbles. Minus tablecloth as we've begun packing things away for the season.

There's an exhibition opening at the gallery on Stadiou, so we go. Turns out to be paintings by a man called rinos Stefani. We try to be appreciative but fail. It's not simply that the pictures are ugly - there's no reason that art shouldn't be ugly - it's that try as we might we can't spot any signs of talent. J points out that a high proportion of the paintings are dated 2009, and it's hard not to think that none of them has taken very long to produce - childish, charmless and devoid of impact. We've circled the gallery twice when it's time for the speeches to start and we decide that's our cue to leave. No real point in waiting for the wine and nuts. Lovely warm night for the walk back though.

Sunday, March 7/2010

Go to Mass and discover that Fr. Wilhelm has gone oon rest and renewal leave and been replaced by Fr. Andrew, a Canadian Franciscan of Filipino origin. This is his first parish, but he seems like a good choice, given the large number of Filipina workers in the parish. The public address system is not the clearest, so most of the specific wording of his first sermon misses us, but it seems that he has used up enough material for his first three homilies in one go.

In the afternoon Maggi cycles over and we play Scrabble.

Saturday, March 6/2010

Jane and Bill Curtis at coffee place as well as Maggi, so we thing of Jane's "coffee spot" painting.

One of the commentators on Gordon Brown's testimony before the Chilcot committee of inquiry yesterday: like a group of guinea pigs trying to tackle a brown bear. And, further on the prime ministerial theme, Stephen Harper makes the BBC news - unusual for any Canadian non-sports story. So we're informed that there was a suggestion that the words to "O Canada" be revised and I think that this could be a good thing, as the French words are brilliant but the English are pretty uninspired, not to say mindlessly repetitive. Turns out that's not it though. Harper has suggested that "all thy sons" might be replaced by something gender neutral - and been booed back into 24 Sussex.

Friday, March 4/2010

London's temperature hits double digits so there's some hope at the end of their worst winter in 30 years. And not a moment too soon, as we're to fly back there in ten days. Fingers still crosse that the threatened cabin crew strike at British Airways won't intervene. They have to give seven days notice, so if we make it through to Monday evening without strike notice we're in the clear. Actually there would be no difficulty about staying on here, probably in the same flat, and we're not booked in the bedsit util the 23rd. What's at risk is our much anticipated trip to Cornwall with Jenny and her mum.

Watch Gordon Brown testifying before the Chilcot inquiry into the invasion of Iraq, carried live by BBC World television. While in theory Brown's testimony ought to be as interesting as Blair's, this doesn't prove to be the case. Of course Blair testified on what ws a rainy day in Cyprus, whilst today is sunny, so there were fewer alternatives to viewing, but it's more than that. There's no performance art about Brown's delivery - just a bull ahead monotoone for hours, the gist of which is that the invasion was the right thing to do and the army was always as well funded as they wished to be during the invasion and occupation. The two positions are probably equally subject to dispute and equally lacking in humility, but with Tony the fascination (and much of the annoyance) was always in the dance, which earned a certain admiration despite any disapproval.

J, coming back from the bakery, squeezes his way past a parked car and finds himself facing the back seat, where a woman wearing a hijab is uncovered to breast feed her baby. J says her mouth opened in shock - and she instinctively covered her face.

Thursday, March 4/2010

We find Maggi's little old lady (probably no older than we are) who does dressmaking and repairs in a little shop near the market and she agrees to turn the collars on three of J's Tilley's shirts for €5 apiece, giving them a new lease on life. Ready tomorrow.

Wednesday, March 3/2010

We have new neighbours in the building opposite, seen only, of course, when they are out on the balcony. The previous tenants had two cute little girls who appeared on weekends, sometimes permitted to use the laptop, which spent most of its time outside next to the ashtray. The new people have no children in evidence and fill the balcony with amazing amounts of wash. So far I haven't subscribed to J's suggestion that the woman takes in laundry, largely because I can't imagine there being any profit in it in modern times, but I'm beginning to think he may be right. It's hard to imagine how one small household could generate three or four lines of wash a day, day after day.

We walk out to M&M's in the afternoon. It's windy, but a warm wind and a lovely walk along the seafront. The waves are high enough that we get a little of the splash. There are plans for a new walkway out along Makenzy (spelling correct by local custom) and it will certainly make life safer for pedestrians, as for most of the way there is no sidewalk and walkers are caught between speeding cars and the crumbling edge of the roadway. Lovely and sunny on their balcony drinking g&t and looking at the shifting colours of the sea.

Then with Maggi over to the Flamingo Hotel, which is displaying the work of local artists, including Jane Curtis, whom we saw at Saturday's coffee. She has a number of paintings on the Cypriot theme, including a small water colour of a coffee spot in a typical Cypriot village which we all like . there is also a batik artist, identified only as Breda, with intriguing pictures, J's favourite being one called Lefkara.

Jacob Zuma, South African president, is visiting the UK, staying at Buckingham Palace with the newest of his three wives - leaving one to wonder what the facilities are at the palace for accommodating heads of state choosing to travel with more than one wife.

Tuesday, March 2/2010

M&M arrive unexpectedly mid-morning, having just delivered back their hired car after 3 months of freedom and mobility. So tea and biscuits and chat. They're not here much longer than we are - another week.

Lovely weather - sunny and warm with light breeze. Always the nicest weather is just as we're about to leave, though of course the better way to look at it is that we miss the nastiest weather elsewhere. J says many more tourists down at the waterfront cafes now that the spring weather is here. And the flowers are looking somewhat refreshed, though there have been beds of petunias, snapdragons and marigolds all winter.

Monday, March 2/2010

J home with bags of grapefruit and oranges, the oranges with dark green leaves still attached, so we can sit in the flat and inhale citrus. It's spoiled us for oranges in England and Canada - they're so disappointing by comparison.

The storm that devastated Madeira has moved northeast through Portugal and Spain and into France, with heavy rains, coastal flooding, and winds as high as 175 km an hour. At least 45 people died in France, and the newscaster refers to them as having, in the majority of cases, drowned in their sleep. A chilling image, but the reality must have been so much more horrific.

Sunday, February 28/2010

Wake briefly in the early hours to an horrific storm. Can't tell whether we're hearing hail or heavy rain, but the winds are violent and the lightning non-stop. Still wet and windy in the morning, so out to the nearest bakery for a loaf of round village bread, sprinkled with sesame seeds and still hot, and back with the bread and the Sunday paper.

Saturday, February 27/2010

Jimmy's Café for morning coffee/beer. M&M are there as well as Jane and Bill Curtis, a retired English couple who live in Pyla in the winter and on their boat in the summer. Lovely letting the sun sink in. M&M back later for tea and the second half of J's cake. by two the dark clouds are moving in from the north and later the rain starts.

We watch a BBC documentary on a re-emergent Stalinism in Russia and Georgia. New school textbooks ignore stalin's crimes and vastly underestimate the number of his victims in the interests of inculcating "positive history." And many citizens are happy to rethink the past in order to have heroes to admire rather than villains to regret. Thus the past is rewritten in accordance with a Russian saying that goes "You never know what is going to happen yesterday." And we remember driving across Moscow in 1991, three weeks before the coup attempt, and seeing an enormous bust of Lenin being carted away in the back of a truck.

Dubai news reports items seized by customs, including drugs and "materials used in witchcraft."

Friday, February 26/2010

Starts out a cool but dry day, long enough for J to get in his exercise at the beach and for us to head over to the student centre for the internet and a look at the Friday paper. While we're at the student centre - umbrellaless - the rain starts, and the rest of the day is nasty, wet and very windy. A good day to hunker down with soup and television documentaries and reading. Now alternating our last two books, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude and Robertson Davies' Fifth Business. Happily, we're across the road from a little charity shop, so it's impossible to run out of books entirely - but that road quickly becomes three inches deep in water during heavy rains. Suitable only for waterproof boots.

Fall asleep watching the late night film on the swedish chanel - the original Little Lord Fauntleroy with Mickey Rooney - subtitled in Swedish.