Wednesday, February 18/2026

Storm warning issued by Girne municipality, Girne being the regional centre ten miles to the east of us. Wake up to amazingly strong winds and the sound of lashing rain. This has to be the stormiest winter we remember experiencing in the Mediterranean, and there have been over twenty of them. On the other hand winters here really don’t last very long. 

Like the phrasing, particularly the bit about taking precautions against adverse events such as roofs being blown off - be prepared to duck? Though not as amusing as the tongue in cheek posting by a FB correspondent: “With all this wind I’m worried about the caravan in the garden. We didn’t have one yesterday.”

Unsurprisingly, the skies were far too cloudy to spot the crescent moon today, but the assumption is that it was there beyond the storm and Ramadan will begin tomorrow. For the observant this means fasting between dawn and dusk for the following month. Times of sunrise and sunset are calculated for pretty well every location in the world, in modern days easily checkable on the Internet.

And tomorrow’s forecast is for sunny skies and gentler winds.

 

Tuesday, February 17/2026

 Before Ash Wednesday comes Shrove Tuesday. The word shrove is derived from shrive, meaning to give absolution after confessing sins. Pretty solemn nomenclature compared to pancake day. And fat Tuesday always sounds   rather more indelicate than the romantic Mardi Gras - until the realisation hits that Mardi Gras translates literally as - Fat Tuesday.

But both fat and pancake refer to the using up of foods that won’t be eaten during the coming days of fasting - meaning meat, eggs and dairy (as well as wine and olive oil). Thus, prudently, pancakes were traditionally made the day before Ash Wednesday with the last of the butter, eggs and milk.

So Beverley and John have invited us for dinner on pancake day. And we rightly expect pancakes but are in fact regaled with a full meal from soup made from their own tomatoes - duly roasted, blended and frozen - to superb crepes, John’s specialty, following a full meat and roast potato main course. 

Joined, discreetly, by Henry, the oldest of the four rescue dogs, and two of the rescue cats. Not to mention excellent company. Pat is there as well, and kindly gives us a lift home.

Monday, February 16/2026

Courtesy BBC

Season of fasting coming up, for those who observe. Between lunar, Gregorian and Julian calendars it takes some sorting. Once had a student ask if there were any way of predicting when Easter would be. Before I had my mouth in gear a not particularly academic classmate said ‘Yes, it’s the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox’. And that’s pretty well it for the western Christian church.

There are western Christians in Cyprus. A few Roman Catholics as well as Christians of various denominations among the ex-pat contingent. But most Cypriot Christians, living almost entirely in the South, are Eastern Orthodox. The Orthodox Church uses the Julian calendar which occasionally produces a date for Easter that matches the western - but usually doesn’t. (Christmas, on the other hand, is celebrated in Cyprus and Greece on December 25,  same as in the west, but this is not true in all Orthodox countries. Don’t ask). 

This year Lent begins next Monday, February 23, for the Orthodox in Cyprus. The Orthodox don’t do Ash Wednesday. They start Lent with Clean (or Green) Monday. Considerably less penitential than Ash Wednesday. No meat, but the tradition is to eat seafood and salads, often at outdoor picnics.

In Muslim countries, including North Cyprus, the penitential season is Ramadan, starting this year, tentatively, on Wednesday February 18. The date is based on the lunar year, and, in fact, the tentative bit is down to the tradition that Ramadan begins with the first sighting of the crescent moon. Used to be by the naked eye, and still is in some places, but TRNC - like Türkiye - now relies on astronomical calculations. Answering the question of what happens if the skies are heavily overcast for several days.

Thus the beginning of Ramadan is, coincidentally, on Ash Wednesday.
 

Sunday, February 15/2026

 Wake up this morning and can’t hear either raindrops on the terrace tiles or the near gale force to be reckoned with winds that seem to have been making themselves felt for days now. Cloudless blue sky (no photoshopping just classic Mediterranean blue) and morning coffee on the terrace tiles. Enjoy the palm tree next door but quite happy not to be responsible for one. They get very shaggy and are soon tall enough that a fireman’s ladder wouldn’t reach to do the haircut. Helicopter?

Have finished John Simpson’s Unreliable Sources as our current read aloud book so now move back a century to our next pick, Pushkin’s Button by Serena Vitale.  Had remembered far too little about the famous poet, although J points out that we did see a statue dedicated to him in Russia at Ekaterinburg.

Must have known at some point that he died following a duel. A duel which is the subject of the book. It’s surprisingly well written and compelling. As the Times Reviewer says ‘Vitale has created a new literary form somewhere between biography and detective story…the work of an artist and a scholar’. 

Saturday, February 14/2026

 

Walking home from the little supermarket with fruit, sheep’s milk yoghurt and sourdough bread still warm from the oven. Uphill to our place but less than a ten minute walk. We always look at the building barely visible from our spot (marked with a 🔻). Does anyone live there? Is there a road? How was it built? 

Have to remind my Canadian self that thirty degree gradients here may be steep but they won’t ever ice up. Unlike that in one of the scariest rides we’ve taken, which was from Antalya to Taşucu along the southern coast of Türkiye. It was twenty-five years ago but we both remember it clearly. Three hundred and seventy kilometres of coastal road. Tight curves, narrow passages, long sections running directly along the cliff edges, lack of guard rails. In places the road tilted perceptibly toward the sea side. We went on a day in January when the road was icing and occasionally we could see at the bottom of the ravine the corpses of previous vehicles that had failed to hold the road. A road that is apparently now in the process of being redesigned in acknowledgment of its status as one of the most dangerous in Türkiye.

Friday, February 13/2026

 Friday the thirteenth. Not lucky in the weather but can’t really complain overall. A snuggle in day with soup and spaghetti sauce ready to reheat and tea and coffee and whiskey to warm up with. Lots of good reading material too.

And outside? Intermittent gale force winds and showers, some of them very heavy. Not cold, though. Eighteen degrees. More in the short sunny intervals.

Actually Friday the thirteenth isn’t much of thing in most Middle East countries. What is common is the charm for protection against the evil eye. Probably not taken really seriously - but then is the avoidance of the number thirteen taken seriously? Yes and no territory. My grandmother, seventy some years ago, moved to a small Canadian village and applied for a postal box. None available - unless, haha, she was willing to accept number thirteen. They were astonished when she was pleased to have it.

The charm, called nazar boncuğu, or evil eye bead in Turkish, is very old, much older than any of the religions in the area. There are textual references to it as far back as the Bronze Age some five thousand years ago. It’s common as a bracelet charm or pendant and J pointed out that the house recently built next to the orchard has a small one embedded high in the wall. And surprisingly, while most Christian churches dismiss them as a pagan superstition, there is one high on an arch in the Roman Catholic church in Larnaca.

Interestingly in Turkish culture there is a reluctance to praise or admire children in particular lest this attract the evil eye, tempt fate. I had wondered about this - assuming tradition and not actual belief - when a Turkish Cypriot friend posted a photo of his new grandchild. Had been about to say what a lovely looking baby he was when I noticed that all the other friends had avoided this and instead posted things like wishes for health.

Thursday, February 12/2026

 

Courtesy Kemal Basat

A beaked whale has been found washed ashore at Tatlısu on the Karpaz peninsula about 60 kilometers east of us. It is male, approximately five meters long, and weighs about one and a half tons. Now being removed from the rocks and taken to the Tashkent Nature Park for necropsy in the hope of determining the cause of death. 

Surprisingly there are several thousand whales in the Mediterranean, including the elusive deep diving beaked whales. Thirteen whales were found beached on Cyprus almost exactly three years ago, with some suspicion then that the deaths may have been earthquake related.