Cyprus does have winters but happily they are short. There are a few lovely honeysuckle blossoms left but the bougainvillea are looking distinctly bed-raggled —a pronunciation which stuck in our family after my brother misread it as a young child.
The neighbour’s grapevine, though, J points out, is sporting a few new bright green leaves, discernible at the very top.
And the orange tree has begun a first attempt at blossoms, so maybe the rain has done some good. Days getting slightly longer, though the theoretical sunset time for Lapta - 17:02 - definitely doesn’t apply in the shadow of a mountain peak. More like 15:20.
Nothing like reading to put present day empires and despots in historical perspective, however horrifically. J, better educated than I, no doubt surprised at my dismay at accounts of Roman Emperor Augustus, known for initiating a period of imperial peace, reached his royal height by having put to death two thousand knights and three hundred senators from opposing factions. By no means an enormous death toll by ancient standards. Pax Romana indeed.
And William Dalrymple’s City of Djinns has more horrific (true) narratives than that. Apart from the thousands killed in conquests, there are some truly appalling stories of revenge. Such as the fourteenth century sultan who had a captured rebel general flayed alive and then ordered his flesh to be cooked with rice and sent to his sons and family.
Makes a change from daily news analysis.
Notice that it’s sixteen years ago today that I first bought a book online and downloaded it to Kobo - though I did practise first with freebies from Project Gutenberg. What a life changer.
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