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.

Saturday, February 21/2009

Wake to our daylight view of the pyramids, now majestic in the sun, and we can see buses already arriving in front of them. Downstairs for breakfast. It's a bit depressing. Nothing's really all that clean and we know better thaqn to eat salads in Egypt. There's a reasonable variety of white buns and sweet buns, most looking a bit dry. We take cups (choosing the cleanest) of fairly warm coffee and consider the options. J says he doesn't think he's up to the middle east breakfast at this hour of the morning but I want something to start the day's sightseeing with and decide that an advantage to the cooked dishes is that probably nobody has plynged a grubby hand into them. So back to take rice, foule (a standard mideast cooked bean dish) and a garlicky aubergine and onion mixture which has actually been kept fairly hot, as well as being delicious. J tries and is similarly impressed. And we switch to tea, which is hot.

Ayet, our guide for the day, arrives, a friendly young lady in a jean jacket, and we head for the pyramids, a short drive away. The only remaining wonder of the original 7 wonders of the world, so simple and yet so incredibly impressive. Ayet refers to limestone as the best of building materials, but only in such a dry climate would it have survived, and indeed over time the largest pyramid has gone from 146 metres to 137 in height over the past 4500 or so years.

We see the Sphinx, but decline the perfume factory tour, although Ayet points out it's included in our package. Ditto the papyrus making demo, which we agree is very interesting but something we have seen before. This buys us more time at the museum, and J persuades Ayet to forgo the explanations of other exhibits so that we can spend all our time with King Tut's treasures. It's all interesting, from amulets to a hinged, folding camp bed used by the boy king on hunting trips.

The best of it is astonishing. There's the well known death mask, with its eleven kilos of gold and the classic symmetrical face, and the coffins, which fit together like a Russian doll. Two of the three, made of solid gold, are on display, as are the gold inlaid nesting containers they fit inside, each bigger than the last, and the largest one enormous. The most moving of the King Tut exhibits, though, is the throne. It's a gold chair of moderate size, but its back panel has a coloured bas relief of a teenaged King Tut and his young wife, unique in its intimate and informal portrayal of affection. The two have eyes only for each other. He is seated comfortably and she is standing, rubbing his arm with oil. Each wears only one sandal of a pair, a unit only when they are together.

Ayet meets us outside King Tut's rooms by some mummies, calling our attention to one which includes a lock of hair, "given to him by a grandmother as a hair-loom," she tells us seriously. We head off across the city for the Islamic area. Driving in Cairo is not for the faint-hearted. Some streets are impossibly narrow but many are multi-lane, the lanes not always marked as cars four or five abreast fight for space, hands on horns and fenders showing signs of past wars. Most of the traffic is vehicular, but there is the odd cart pulled by a donkey and once we pass a wagon pulled by a donkey yoked with a horse. One would expect more accidents and there are many battle scars but we don't witness any prangs, though we once see a smashed car being carried on a small flatbed.

Ayet, who has sadly given up on us a source of extra tailor-made tours tomorrow, takes us to an outside cafe in a square beside the Sayyidina el-Hussein Mosque (apparently, according to the old Let's Go, the resting place of the skull of the grandson of Mohammed). It's a lovely sunlit spot where locals and tourists mix. As we arrive, a large man wearing shorts and a Hawaiian style shirt climbs into the front of a tourist bus and shouts to his wife "wrong bus!" Most tourists are less cliched looking though, and mix with locals. Ayet has guava juice while J and I drink tea with large sprigs of fresh mint immersed - very refreshing. There are sales attempts every few seconds - watches, jewellery, caps - but nothing too pressing. And we get a chance to chat with Ayet. She doesn't wear the hijab, but agrees most women do, though she says there's no pressure. She's learning Russian because there are increasing numbers of Russian tourists. The cafe is a lovely, cosmopolitan spot. Women walk past carrying large suitcase-sized bundles on their heads, the traditional load now wrapped in bright green plastic. Arabic and English are not the only languages in the air. As we leave, we see a tiny kitten curled under a table.

Back at the hotel we can still hear the traffic from our 10th floor room with the window closed.

Friday, February 20, 2009

Afternoon bus to the airport as we begin our Cairo jaunt. Dougie, the regular bus driver, is about to take a holiday himself. After years, he claims, of never winning anything, he has won two separate holidays, and is about to take the first of them in Athens. For the second he has some choice and is thinking of going to Rome. The airport has been undergoing renovations and has, accordingly, acquired much less general seating space and more things to buy at not especially attractive prices. The duty free shop in generous mode, though, so we sample single malts and chocolates, marking the former down for later purchase.

The flight itself is on Egyptair - about an hour and a quarter to Cairo. Minimalist safety instructions, not including any info on the life jackets, although this is one of the few flights on which a life jacket might be of some use if the plane went down - mostly over water and that water with temperatures above the mid-teens. We do get a fairly nice lunch though, and the best landing cards we've ever seen. They're bright little booklets with the immigration info on a tear-out page, the rest being a souvenir with basic information like useful Arabic phrases (all right, some of them not all that useful, like Merry Christmas) and even a map of the Cairo subway.

We're met on arrival and after visa purchase we're handed to Abdoul, who finds our driver and comes with us to the hotel, the Delta Pyramids. We have room 1001 - shades of Arabian nights. The room isn't large, but it does have a fridge and satellite tv (BBC World, Nile TV, a movie chanel, TV Monde plus Arabic chanels). Bathroom with tub and shower, bidet and middle east water hose as option to toilet paper if desired, as well as a large sink with soap dish artfully tilted to drip onto the floor not the sink. The drama comes, though, when we open the bedroom drapes for a stunning view of the pyramids dramatically backlit for evening.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Canada once again makes it onto BBC World television - live coverage at that - courtesy of Obama's 7 hour visit to Ottawa. So we'll see what adjustments will be made in Harper's efforts to please the Americans as the culture of the new administration takes effect.

Wednesday, February 19/2009

Walk out to M&M's for lunch. Bacalao - a Portuguese casserole with layers of potato, dried fish and tomato - and much nicer than that might sound. Second helpings all round. We get most of the way home before the rain starts, and it's not cold rain.

Tuesday, February 17/2009

Our tickets for Cairo arrive and we hand over the second half of the payment.

Over to the church to meet Liza, the girl who is heading off to Canada as a nanny. She's joining a family in Toronto (Markham) who have 3 year old twins and is nervous, but excited. A lovely girl and we hope, as she does, that it's a nice family. So many Philippine domestic workers here are badly treated - not paid or asked to do work that is beyond their contracts. Sometimes actually abused and often not respected.

Liza has a friend with her and they make tea in the rectory. Liza has made a carrot cake and Fr. Wilhelm and his dog, a German shepherd, join us. We exchange addresses and phone numbers and try to supply information. Most things in Canada are cheaper (but not wine). Her friend in BC lives a very long way away - you could take the train but not in one day. The temperature goes below zero in the winter, but not a lot. And then - will the euro go up or down? Ah, if we knew the answer to that we could be rich. She laughs. Her flight leaves in the early hours of Thursday morning, so this is almost the last minute. Hugs and we say goodbye.

Fr. Wilhelm has always had such a nice, relaxed, familial style, especially with the Philippino girls, whom he encourages to use the rectory to socialize on their day off - "you can cook anything except dried fish" - so we ask if he had sisters. Yes, one older and one younger. He beams: "Blessed among women."

Monday, February 16/2009

M&M to our place for fish chowder, something we haven't had in a long time. The late evening provides a choice of films with Mansfield Park, unfortunately, playing against The Winslow Boy. The latter wins out, so it's Arabic subtitles (from Dubai) rather than Greek ones.

Sunday, February 15/2009

One of the young Philippino girls is leaving for Canada this week and a new future. We don't know her but we do change $40 CAD for her courtesy of Fr. Wilhelm and give him Susan's info on exchanging euros in Canada. Fr. Wilhelm says he tried to persuade the girl to come today to meet us but - he smiles and shrugs - she leaves on Thursday and she's saying goodbye to her boyfriend.

Saturday, February 14/2009

Meet with Leo Leontios in reception to make arrangements for a long weekend ini Cairo. Next weekend if there is availability. He brings with him two small boys, a son and a nephew, who have been promised a treat if they're good, which they certainly are.

Lovely sunny morning for market. They now know our "usual" - two black Cyprus coffees - at the cafe. Two elderly men sit next to us in their usual full sun spot. Well equipped electronically with mobiles and, (one of them) a watch that reads the time aloud.

Six eggs. It's rare in this part of the world to buy a dozen as some would probably not be used while they were at their freshest. As the woman puts our eggs in a small bag, a tiny white feather floats off. A good sign. Then tomatoes (still with garden earth clinging), a cauliflower, a bag of oranges and some broccoli. Also a stop at the little deli for two litres of Spanish wine and a bottle of Cypriot.

Come across a short story of John Updike's saved for a rainy day from a UK Sunday supplement. Saved before Updike's death, but we read it now. His descriptions as spot on as Alice Munro's but with a nice masculine imagery.

Friday, February 13/2009

Drive up to Nicosia with M&M. We've never been since the Ledra Street crossing was opened. One only has to walk up the pedestrian mall that stretches from north to south across the old city (the only divided city left in the world) and show passports on the Turkish side to get a 90 day visa, kindly supplied on separate pieces of paper so as not to render the passports useless in Cyprus and Greece. A two minute procedure and no more razor wire in evidence.

Maggi and Magne are spending the weekend (their anniversary being on Vaentine's Day not Friday the 13th). After they leave the car in a carpark building, inconveniently furnished with a machine that books 10 hours maximum and is incapable of argument - with the encouragement of a regular customer who says they dono't check on weekends - we separate, they to lunch at a restaurant that features sheep's heads and we to cross to the north.

The formalities are quick and the north is waiting for tourists. the shops are less upscale, but goods are on display outside and the proprietors as happy to take euros as Turkish lira, most using an exchange rate of one euro to two lira. North Nicosia, or the part within the old Venetian city wals, is all charm, and thanks to the EU many of the Ottoman buildings are being preserved and restored. There are empty windows without glass, but also pointed stone arches, ainted wooden shutters and traditional Turkish balconies. It's warm and it's alive. Behind the main mosque (once a church) little girls play hopscotch on the pavement. Mothers with long skirts and hijabs (though this is not a strictly observant country) carry babies. A beautifully marbled cat curls up on a fabric display in the sun just past the antique shop. A man getting into his car stops to point out the one time church turned hamman (or Turkish bath house, so old that its arched door is more than half sunk below street level.

We stop to eat lunch, doner pitas stuffed with lamb from the spit at a little tabe outside the friendly but too hot cafe where we have eaten before. It's in a pedestrian way, a good people watching spot. As we leave, the cook tells us his son is studying in Minnesota. Then J buys Turkish red pepper at a stall in the covered market.

Back in the south we wait for the bus and read the notices fixed to the bus shelter walls. One begins "Good news" - but proves to be an advertisement for young students rather than a religious message:

"This is first time in Cyprus only 4 Asian children's. Are you worried about your children's to study English and maths? Am British qualified childcare and kindergarten teacher. I will teach English and maths only for Asian children's. The tuition fee is affordable."

One would suppose that EU countries do not allow limiting teaching to one particular ethnic group, but in this case it would clearly be preferable if fewer rather than more "children's" enroll.

Signs on buildings as we leave Nicosia: "Ecclesiastical Insurance" - protecting bell towers or parishioners? "Twenty-four hour self video" - the ultimate in narcissism?

Thursday, february 12/2009

A mushroom artichoke sauce for the spaghetti - amazingly good. Would try it in Canada except we remember what passes for artichokes in our part of the country.

Wednesday, February 11/2009

Two pretty good and two pretty bad computers at the student internet. The two good ones have been out of order for a week, the only advantage being that most users are too discouraged to show up so that sometimes, between crashes, it's retty quiet, almost contemplative. The good have been "fixed" - or at least lost their out of order signs - and are almost instantly virus ridden.

Tuesday, February 10/2009

Banks as thick on the ground as travel agencies here, frequently more than one to the block. The ground floor of our hotel has one, and there are two in the building immediately across the road (the Lebanese and Gulf Bank and an investment bank) and one in the building kitty corner to us - and this isn't unusual density. They seem to be surviving the crisis reasonably well, in part probably, because loans come out of investments rather than from borrowed funds.

Monday, February 9/2009

Yesterday's weird end of world hazy light explained in a way athat sounds exotic to our western ears but probably isn't to the locals. The explanation is a dust haze, the dust moving in from the Sahara, which happens periodically here.

Sunday, February 8/2009

A kind of strange end of world look when we open the morning curtains. Morning light but high cloud cover and not a speck of sun. It's not cold though. Stop at the bakery after Mass. We're still buying the rye loaves studded with sesame seeds, and this time they're still warm. Regrettably probably the last time for the koulouri. They've got smaller and more expensive (45 euro cents each) and this time they're not even fresh. No longer a pleasure unfortunately.

Saturday, February 7/2009

Lovely day for market. It's not ony vegetables and fruit. We thread our way past a blue plastic crate half filled with snails. There are some grubby lettuce leaves on top which I first take for rubbish but decide must be snail food. Some time we'll try the fungoid shaped Jerusalem artichokes, but not this week.

After market place coffee we go back to have lunch with M&M. Salt herring, and nicely done, with strawberries and kiwis for dessert, on the balcony overlooking the sea. As lovely as winter gets. Shirtsleeve weather in the sun, sea breeze, a drink in hand and good friends.

Friday, February 6/2009

The BBC struggles with the problem of political correctness with uneven results. So when Carol Thatcher, daughter of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, says, during a conversation in the green room after a show, that a French tennis player looks like a gollywog she is sacked. Whereas Jeremy Clarkson, the motorsport presenter, who is of far more value to the BBC, refers to Prime Minister Gordon Brown as a "one-eyed Scottish idiot" he is not. But then Thatcher initially refused to apologise, whereas Clarkson says that he was wrong to call Gordon Brown one-eyed and Scottish - but maintains that he is an idiot.

Thursday, February 5/2009

Maggi's planned a night out, so we meet at Napoli Pizza, M armed with a full page review of the place in her handbag. The pizza is indeed as filling as promised in the review and it's a friendly informal place.

Then back to our own hotel. The Kition's entertainment claim to fame is Thursday evening when "Ian sings the golden oldies." And he does, with a wide repertoire of songs from the 50's and 60's. Two fifty a drink but no cover charge and a small dance floor, and there's clearly a small regular contingent of (mostly) Swedes and Brits. I tease J about being the best looking guy there and he says he thinks just the yougest. It's a mellow crowd all right, but quite pleasant.

Wednesday, February 4/2008

The rest of the year is sliding into place as we book two 2 week stints with the Welby in London. That should be enough to make the pound rebound sharply.

February 3/2009

Sunny with high close to 20. Walk out to Orphanides supermarket, nting flats to let. Seems any clean and modern flat is described as "luxury" in Cyprus. According to the Sunday paper the tourist trade will shortly be in major difficulty (last Sunday's headline: Hoteliers told drop rates or face disaster). this is linked to the world financial problems, particularly the drop in value of sterling (half the tourist business is UK). It's also linked to price increases in Cyprus that seem well beyond those reflecting the strength of the euro and, ironically, to deliberate government policy to lower the number of low cost tourist beds in the hope that they wil be replaced with higher cost places attracting a better class of tourist. Instead of the more desirable tourist appearing in large numbers, they have been shocked to find that companies have been considering Turkey and Egypt better value for money. It's a year or two back now that we read a letter to the Cyprus Weekly saying how much more tourists paid to visit Monaca - and wondered if the writer had ever been to Monaco and nted things like the modern plumbing (most Cypriot and Greek plumbing won't take toilet paper due to ridiculously narrow pipe diameter) and sidewalks free of broken paving stones and misparked cars.

And when we reach Orphanides I notice that the price of salad greens, admittedly not an expensive item in Cyprus, has risen from 15 Cypriot cents a bunch (24 euro cents) to 35 euro cents since last year, a 46% increase.

February 2/2009

The two good computers at the student internet are still down (still that is since Saturday) leaving some rather despondent queuing for the two badly performing ones remaining.

J and I stop at Top Kinesis travel agency and inquire about holiday packages, a necessity as well as a pleasure as we can only stay in Cyprus 90 consecutive days, which won't take us to our return flight to London. The only thing on offer is a week at Sharm El Sheik, but a beach holiday playing hotel is not really our scene. Could they arrange something in Crete? The girl will check. Give her a few hours and she will telephone. We wonder, not for the first time, how all the travel agencies in Cyprus manage to survive. Given a secure computer, I could probably set up the same package in less time and more cheaply, so who is using all the travel agents? There are seldom clients inside as we walk past and most of the package holidays in the windows have disappeared. But there are a great many travel agencies, unlike in London where most of them seem to have been replaced by mobile phone shops.

London - now under a foot of snow. Canadian weather but without Canadian equipment from snowplows and snow tires to aluminum shovels and warm tall boots. To say nothing of winter driving skills. But it will melt with uncanadian dispatch.

Sunday, February 1/2009

Sunday afternoon walk. Stop at the crowded second hand shop to find some reading material. There are plenty of books but they're hard to access, piled two layers deep and hard to see in the dark shop. I move whole stacks at a time to peer behind at other stacks, carefully replacing not only books but ornaments and kitsch piled on top whenever a book sticks out far enough to make this possible. A clothes hanger with 3 colourful neckties dangles in front of one shelf. For the bottom shelf I sit on the floor and inspect one handful at a time. There is an amazing variety from Barry Goldwater to play scripts to manuals on breastfeeding. In the end I emerge with four read aloud candidates - Pride and Prejudice (which neither of us has read recently), Dickens' Hard Times, John Mortimer's Titmuss Regained and Edith Sitwell's The Queens and the Hive, history of Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots. I bargain a little to get them for three euro instead of four, and would have bargained harder had I noticed how ruthlessly annotated the Austen and Dickens are, scarcely a page of either untouched by childishly handwritten explanations and lipstck coloured highlighting - a far more thorough job than most undertaken by my own former students. No petering out here after the opening chapters. As they are Penguin editions, I have not even checked inside until after paying my money.

A walk along the waterfront and we sit on a bench watching the endless Sunday parade of walkers, local and tourist. Sundays are always semi-carnival mode along here. Family groups, tourist couples, foreign workers and stalls with ice cream and helium filled animal shaped balloons. From the other side of the street we can smell the sugar of the candy floss. Sunny and warm and the scent of flower beds under the palm trees. Hotels and cafes on one side of the road and lttle stalls along the beach on the other. Benches on both sides for people watching. And the one way street a constant stream of traffic crawling past, much of it people out to see and be seen. The same cars circle by several times.

The tv schedule promises the film Keeping Mum with Rowan Atkinson in the evening, but for the second time in a month it doesn't appear, a not unusual occurrence in Cyprus. In this case it's replaced with Zorro - fifty some years after the time when J and I would have considered the sword play a great treat.

Saturday, January 31/2009

Coffee at our market cafe in the morning. Plastic tables and chairs crowded together but we manoeuver ours into the sun.

We finish reading Anita Brookner's The Next Big Thing, not exactly as penance but certainly as discipline, because it's Brookner and because we've begun it and because we're rapidly running out of reading material. We're left tempted to check online for reviews other than those on the jacket

Friday, January 30/2009

Brief afternoon rain with bits of hail. Not exactly tropical pattern but we've been getting days that begin cloudless, become sullen around noon and provide brief rain. Warm enough though. If we miss the weather in English we can always pick it up in Greek. A weather map is easy to read. The word for tomorrow in Greek is avrio. For tonight it is something written in Greek letters but pronounced a-popsy. Quite humerous to Anglo ears.

M&M come to dinner and J makes goulash.

Thursday, January 29/2009

The nearer Smart store, discount in theory although not always in practice, has moved to larger quarters and opens today so we stop, but no ceremony, no specials - though a pretty good price on cayenne, so it´s not a wasted trip.

Today Bill Stone, the last British WWI vet to have seen active service, is buried. (I have no enemies only friends he used to say: outlived all my enemies.). He was 108. Impressive enough, but a woman is discovered in Uzbekistan with documentation giving her birthdate as 1880 and consequently making her a hundred and twenty-eight years old. She appears on television in a brightly coloured scarf, toothless and looking old, but no older than women of a hundred who could have been her daughter´s age.

Wednesday, January 28/2009

An afternoon walk in search of reading material, which is thinning out. An Updike book would be nice, to commemorate the writer´s death, but actually anything we both like would do. We stop at the second hand shop, a place so crammed full of clothes, books and other things that it´s almost impossible to examine the wares. Sign on door says back in five minutes. So round the corner to the charity shop called Curiosity Killed the Cat. They don´t have many books but we are treated to the owner of the crowded second hand shop of our first stop, (a girl who is Georgian or Bulgarian?) telling the woman behind the counter of a male stripper group which they both agree would be much better entertainment than the pub.

Back to the crowded shop on the way back from our walk, but the back in five minutes sign still in place. Perhaps someone else is hearing about the male strippers.

Tuesday, January 27/2009

Early forecasts show no showers (unlike last night´s predictions). So we (M&M and J and I) drive out past the airport - and the flamingos at rest in the salt lake - and join up with the coast road until we turn north for Lefkara, via a back road into Maroni - a village so silent it could be deserted, with streets no more than eight feet across and little blind corners and dead ends.

Lefkara is known for lace and silver work and is a charming town in the hills, divided into Kato (lower) and Pano (upper) towns. Narrow lanes, stone houses with wooden shutters and women sitting in the sunlight working at lace and embroidery. we´re invited to watch and it is interesting, although we´re not really there to buy, which is a bit awkward. Not nearly as much pressure as usual Maggi assures us.

Over the hills, on an astonishingly good road. We stop at Kato Drys, a tiny village, for a picnic lunch. Only four people in evidence in the village the whole time we´re here, two of them a very young couple on a motorbike who roar past three times, like punctuation in a quirky comedy. There´s a covered well in the middle of the village where we spread out our picnic in the peaceful sunlight. We´re just round the corner from a ruin, the roofless stone arches of an old church on a hillside.

Then back through other loely little villages - Choirokitia (near the neolithic settlement of the same name) where we get directions from two young boys proud of their village, Tochni, and Skarinou. Narrow lanes, dark blue shutters, glimpses of bougainvillea blooming in courtyards, and rosemary in flower by a church. And almost no sign of the blight of huge developments of villas and holiday homes we passed closer to the sea.

Monday, January 26/2009

Watching the sports reports on European television sheds interesting linguistic lights. So, for example, Austria, in German, is Osterreich - literally the Kingdom of the East - a lovely Wizard of Oz sounding place.

Jenny texts with the names of her two new grandchildren - Cody (Laura) and Jasmine (Emma).

Sunday, January 25/2009

Rain in the night has made its way through the ceiling, so back to the red plastic pail. Leak fortunately mid-floor and not over bed.

Gwynne Dyer's column appears semi-regularly, as today, in our Sunday paper, so a touch of home as well as good analysis. The Sunday Mail (Cyprus) also carries a fairly horrific article on Cypriot teachers defying the Minister of Education in order to continue teaching a distorted, inaccurate and highly chauvanistic version of recent Cypriot history and the Turkish-Greek conflicts. Well beyond a question of interpretation and into propaganda.

Saturday, January 24/2009

Rain day. So mostly inside things - embroidery (me), soup making (J) and reading aloud Anita Brookner's The Next Big Thing. Then in late afternoon M&M arrive at the door with fresh strawberries and cream, straight from the morning market to the brandy marinade to us - lovely.

Friday, January 23/2009

We've been watching a blue splotch on the BBC Mediterranean weather map working its way across the Med from west to east and today it does bring in some rain. More promised so over to Metro and the bakery and lay in some fish and bread. Now set for a couple of rainy days.

Finish reading aloud Charlie Chaplin's autobiography. Interesting but by far the best bits are the impoverished youth in south London. In the early parts he doesn't avoid the personal and relational as he tends to do in later years.

Thursday, January 22/2009

The Eleonora - our apartment hotel of last year - has a showing of its renovated flats, word having spread by mouth - or text. So we go to look, along with a small crowd of others, mostly Scandinavians. They´re not finished yet - in fact we must be contravening EU safety regulations as we explore unfinished balconies. Enough of the floor is still open that J can see that the plumbing - in terminal difficulty last year - hasn´t been replaced. And most of the changes don´t really strike as improvements - e.g. kitchen and bathroom layouts. It is going to have that new flat gloss - but a lick of paint and some new tiles and counter tops would have achieved the same effect for much less money. Winter stay prices are supposed to be 650 and 700 euros a flat monthly, a 44% increase on last year.

M&M come back with us for tea - the cafe where the five roads meet having waffled enough over the price of coffee that we give up on them - 90 euro cents last week, one euro fifty-four on the printed menu, and a euro even when Maggi inquires inside.

Then Margaret and Tommy Mann - from the Isle of Mann - stop for tea. They´re up from Limassol for the day, staying on a 4 week package. Luckily they check out the Eleonora renovations just as we´re leaving (they having stayed at the E last year). Nice catching up. Margaret had a kidney removed in October so she´s still recuperating - and unfortunately their Limassol hotel has had some kind of bug circulating.

Wednesday, January 21/2009

According to (Cypriot) Financial Mirror, the average interest rate on bank deposits in 6.5%, necessitated by the high rates paid by Greek banks (7-9%). Greek banks based in cyprus pay up to 7.6%. Difficult to imagine how and why Greek banks do this, considering the difficulties the Greek economy is having.

Tuesday, January 20/2009

Lazing about in the morning as M&M drop in, so tea and J has an excuse for sweet biscuits and concocts a drambuie flavoured icing for the digestive biscuits in seconds.

BBC World provides hours of live coverage of Obama's inauguration and, along with a third of the world's population, we watch. For us the time is quite good as well. Ten a.m. in Washington is 5 p.m. in Cyprus, and between the hoopla and the hope of the new dispensation a good time to sit back and raise a glass of wine.

Monday, January 19/2009

We're reading in the early afternoon when we hear screech-thunk. Out on the balcony we're not alone as there are viewers from balconies along the road. A girl in a fairly posh black BMW has tried to cross three lanes of traffic at an intersection without traffic lights and been broadsided. It's surprising that there isn't more of this in Cypriot traffic. Half an hour of discussion with the young man who hit her (having had, in the far lane, limited opportunity to see her coming) and various bystanders cum witnesses. No police, though the station is only a block away, close enough in fact for a policeman to have looked out and shrugged his shoulders.

Sunday, January 18/2009

Sunny skies as we set off in early morning with Maggi and magne for Limassol down the coast, threading through and past little villages as we go. Limassol is bigger than Larnaca, more spread out, its business centre more modern European looking. M&M drop us at St. Catherine´s Catholic church and head off for Maggi´s faith meeting. We have some time to kill so we check out a couple of hotel apartments nearby. Stunning seqview across the waterfront park, but prices at least twice what we´re prsently paying, which if fair disincentive.



After church we drive out to Limassol´s Sunday flea market - big and cheerful though not incredibly cheap. Good poke about though and nice semi-carnival atmosphere. Stop at the little plastic tables for a cheeseburger, which is big and filling, lots of fried onions and friendly service. It´s lovely sitting in the sun people watching, the market pennants flutering overhead. There are a number of foodstalls including one offering food for vegetarians and vegans and another serving Indian food -"real Indian food all the way from India via Manchester."



On the way back Maggi drives up to the reservoir at Germasogeia where we see for ourselves how very little water is there, a shallow covering in the bottom of a dry reservoir - with a few hopefuls fishing at its side.



Then to Protaras, just north of Agia Napa, where Ellen, the Norwegian tour representative whom we met on our trip to Israel last year, has invited all of us for "coffee and cake" - Maggi says a standard Norwegian invitation. Ellen has a lovely little flat near the little hill with the chapel of St. Elias on top (Elijah to Anglos). She's had it nicely decorated and lives there 8 months a year, returning to Norway in the summers. She's made waffles with fresh strawberries and ice cream and we eat in her kitchen/dining room with a balcony overlooking the town and the sea. As night comes on the view is of the tiny lights along the bay.

Ellen has some interesting stories to tell. One is of a small Orthodox monastery in our area. It has, she says, three monks - well, four. One died 20 years ago and had, in fact, been buried, when the monks in their wisdom decided to dig him up and check for signs of sanctity, which apparentyly they found - less corruption of the flesh or something of that sort. So now he sits, fully dressed, at a desk, his face decently obscured but otherwise the pride and pleasure of the three remaining monks.

Saturday, January 17/2009

Very sunny at morning market so we ignore forecasts of rain and have Cypriot coffee at the ittle cafe with M&M. Then pick up oranges, broccoli, onions and tomatoes from the stalls - a big bag of oranges with the dark green leaves stil fresh. The promised rain does come in the afternoon but not enough of it to help Cyprus water supply much. Our hotel gets municipal water supplied three days a week. The other days it has to be brought in, and at that we´re much luckier than the locals, many of whom simply do not have water every day. Some water has been brought in from Greece by ship but the situation is still very difficult. The basic problem, of course, is simply lack of rain but there is also a lack of deent storm sewers and local reservoirs. When there is a real rain, as just before Christmas, the local news is busy reporting not only on flooded streets but on how busy the fire department has been pumping out people´s basements. An interesting use for the fire department.

Friday, January 16/2009

Late night. Jewish MP Sir Gerald Kaufman is interviewed on BBC 5 radio. He´s so softspoken, so rational, so humane. So sympathetic and yet so totally opposed to Israeli policy that considers Palestinian lives as having no vallue, as they did Lebanese lives. Hamas is particularly unpleasant, but Kaufman blames both Israelis and Americans for having been unwilling to talk to Arafat and more moderate Palestinians until they were left dealing with Hamas. Sir Gerald´s perspective is interesting. He represents Manchester and points to the number of British killed by the IRA in Manchester and the fact that peace eventually came in Northern Ireland not via bombing or even British troops but by talk and negotiation. The other interesting aspect of his perspective is his family history. His grandmother was killed by German Nazis and he regrets what he considers the use of the holocaust to blackmail the world into accepting the unacceptable. So unacceptable that he believes that Israeli leaders should be tried for war crimes.

Thursday, January 15/2009

Further to the price of sweet things in Cyprus. A single iced doughnut costs a euro sixty five at the bakery down the street, and that´s not unusual. That´s $2.75 CAD of one pound fifty UK. By comparison, a litre box of Spanish wine - young vin tres ordinaire, but perfectly drinkable - can be had for a euro fifteen ($1.95 CAD or just over a pound UK). Impossible to explain.

Wednesday, January 14/2009

Walking home from the supermarket I pass a high school. In front is a bit of graffiti - two large words printed in English. NATIONALISM and RACISM. No suggestion of pro or con.

Only in Cyprus. For the past month a Cypriot criminal called Kitas, better known by his nickname Al Capone, had been on the loose after escaping from a medical clinic. Kitas, who had been jailed for life in 194 for the rape and murder of two women, was recaptured only Monday, after endless scandal in the press, police searches, etc. Now tonight the clincher - two senior policemen are accused of being accomplices in the escape. And we´ve been wondering why police are so reluctant to ticket the many Cypriots who park illegally or use Hollywood mufflers.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Meet Maggi @ internet and she invites us to lunch so we collect J and drive out. So lunch on th sunny balcony overlooking the dark blue sea. It´s a stunning view, and one we could hae shared but for us a bit far from the centre. Lovely lunch and we linger and chat. Then walk back along the waterfront, our shadows long in the sun across the road.

Monday, January 12, 2009

We watch television, although only BBC World is in English. The other chanels do show English programs though; particularly films, though sometimes documentaries. So we see quite a bit in the way of subtitles. We´re a bit slow at sounding out the Greek leters and some of the combinations ae quite different; for example the mp letter combination gives the b sound. But it´s interesting nontheless. The Swedish chanel is quite interesting, with many words similar to the English or, often, to the Scots usage. Thus child is barn, comparable to bairn. Sometimes as interesting as the program itself, although there are often good British programs in the very late evening. We also get a chanel from Dubai where the programming is almost entirely American of a relatively uninspired sort (chat shows, soaps), apart from the occasional film and local news. Here everything has Arabic subtitles but it´s done nothing for our literacy. Periodically one thinks that it should be possible to learn what any six year old can learn with a little application, but the swirls and dots remain impenetrable.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

We take a walk down to the waterfront. It´s sunny but quite breezy. Either tonight or tomorrow morning a boat is supposed to go to Gaza from Larnaca carrying medical supplies, a successor to the boat Dignity that was rammed by the Israelis, apparently in international waters. We try to spot the boat from the pier. There´s a possible one in view but who knows. We´re less than 200 miles from Gaza. Mostly we´re north of it. We´re probably not a hundred miles from Syria, roughly opposite Latakia, where Lilly, my genealogical correspondent and probably very distant relative lives.

The news from Gaza is so horrific it´s painful to listen to. Actually, it´s rather difficult to listen to, as J is too frustrated by the blatant Israeli framing of the conflict in misleading terms to listen silently. Not only are casualties running a hundred to one but, as has been pointed out, this is the only war of recent times where civilians are unable to flee the conflict. Usually there´s not much historical context to reports (we´re largely dependent on Euronews and BBC, but there are worse sources). However on BBC World radio the other night we listen to Robert Fisk, experienced and prize winning journalist with the UK paper The Independent, for incisive and courageous analysis.

Meanwhile it´s hard to know whether the second Cypriot boat is being sent with any realistic hopes of getting through or on a mission that is symbolic only.

About 5, just after I´ve put the rice on, we hear car horns outside. A wedding? A celebration after a football match? We go out on the balcony and look down on a parade of honking cars festooned with Palestinian flags. Check down at the waterfront but no demo, though the restaurants and cafes are fairly busy and there are still children at the merry-go-round.

J still has with him his little pin with the entwined Canadian and Palestinian flags that he got in Bethlehem last year, though we left our Free Palestine shirts at home.

Saturday, January 10, 2008

Snake down through the wavering line that is the Saturday market. Inger, the Swedish woman who lives on the 2nd floor, has painted it, and the postcard sized version lives on our desk at home. It´s such a sensual pleasure - bags of oranges still with the leaves on, artichokes, radishes the size of tennis balls, fresh wet cheeses, bundles of cut narcissi, tomatoes with garden earth clinging, kohlrabi with flags of leaes sprouting, rough local wine in plastic water bottles, buckets of eggs (buy the number you need not a dozen). At one stall a man is running a small gambling enterprise involving a little roulette wheel and various bottles of liquor as prizes.

We meet Maggi who has cycled in and have Cypriot coffee behind "our" cafe. The tables in front spill into the market proper but those behind catch the warm sun. J´s butcher, whose shop also opens onto the market, leaves the door open and lovely smoked ham smells emerge. Loops of sausage and smoked tenderloins hang in the doorway. We resist, but do round the corner for 6 eggs from the egg bucket. And i get a half dozen onions as well. At one time the market was the cheapest, or at least inexpensive and the freshest place for produce. Sadly, this isn´t always so now, so each purchase has to be weighed on its merits and the days of our going home with 20 different coloured plastic bags and the week´s fruit and vegetables seem to be over. But we seldom miss going.

Friday, January 9/2009

Maggi picks us up and we go to suburban Livadia to check out the supermarket there. Nice to pick up the bottled water there (what comes out of the tap being suitable for cooking) as it's heavy to bring back when walking. It's a beautiful day - M has been swimming this morning - so we sit in the sun at the corner where the fivew roads meet and drink Cypriot coffee - always served with a glass of water on the side. Like most Cypriot cafes the tables spil out across the sidewalk and into the road.

Now reading, alternately with the Chaplin autobiography, Ann-Marie McDonald's prizewinning Fall on Your Kneew. Very powerfully written.

I learn never to try to roast garlic in the microwave. We have no oven and it seemed like a good idea. I oil the garlic and put it in a cup copvered with a saucer with water in it. However, the result is not glorious pasty roasted garlic but a microwave filled with smoke which J removes to the balcony. So, open patio doors, scented candles and, fortunately, no fire alarm. And the corn on the cob J has bought at Prinos greengrocers is boiled not microwaved as J prefers it. (It's good enough corn, but not a patch on fresh August corn at home).

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Down on the lift to get a litre of milk for breakfast. At 8 o´clock the lobby is not quite dressed for the day, as the cleaners mop down the floor. The manager and another man are behind the counter and in front of it stands a man wearing shorts and t-shirt and holding a plate of what I take to be his beakfast on raised palm, waiter style. He´s singing, in English, with indeterminate accent and a pretty good baritone. The shy manager has a look somewhere between amusement and embarrassment and I listen, unsure whether my acting as audience is appreciation for serendipitous entertainment or just encouragement for a drunk.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Thunder and lightning, visible through the curtains at 6 a.m. this morning, but by the time we get up the sky is an innocent blue. And the temperature rises to 20 degrees - 26 in the sun - though it does cloud over later.

I stop at the charity shop, presided over by a large and motherly englishwoman. A customer, a thin middle aged woman with blonde hair, possibly not naturally so, asks tentatively if she could dye her hair grey by using household bleach. "Somebody said yo could and it would be inexpensive." I´m still wondering why one would choose to do this and only two possibilities come to mind - returning it to its natural colour or playng an elderly character in a play. The mother figure is firm. She definitely cannot use household bleach; she´s to go to the Smart store where she can buy hair colouring for only three euros, very reasonable. The timid woman continues: would jewellery be ageing? No, no, says Mother; it brighterns you up. As I leave she is studying the plastic earrings wistfully.

I come in to the flat as one of the cleaners is leaving. The other, not hearing me, continues taking advantage of the good natural light on the dressing table mirror to examine her spots at length.

Construction in Cyprus often uses quite different, even baffling methods. So, out the window we see a fork lift affair loading gravel into a flat via the first floor (read 2nd floor in North America) balcony.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Feast of the Epiphany, which in Cyprus seems unrelated to the Magi. Religiously, it commemorates the Baptism of Christ, but culturally it´s a carnival style family day. There is, in every Cypriot city (near the water at least) a parade from the principal church to the sea. In Larnaca this is from St. Lazarus Church, the crypt of which is said to have been the burial place of the Biblical Lazarus following his second death (in fact the name Larnaca means coffin).

The parade is a rather unsettling mixture of Orthodox Church clergy in full regalia and the military, cadets as well as weapon bearing soldiers. Greek flags much in evidence. The bishop throws a cross off the pier (prudently tied to the end of a string - the cross, not the pier) and teenage boys dive to retrieve it. It´s an honour to be the successful diver but it´s no polar bear feat. The high temperature today is close to 20 degrees, warmer in the sun - and the water will not be terribly cold. The pier is strewn with aromatic leaves from the mountains which we, along with others, gather up afterwards, as they smell lovely in the flat.

There are crowds for the parade and the waterfront is bright with helium balloons and full of children eager for the bouncy castle or ice cream or popcorn. And plenty of people of all other ages as well. We stand on a low wall at the edge of a bed of petunias to get a better view. Then Maggi texts "where r u" and we meet up. Impossible in the crowd without directions. Back to our place for tea and cake.

In the evening J does swordfish for dinner. And then the terrible contrast with our day as the news brings ever more horrific scenes of Gaza, such a short distance away, sharing our eastern end of the Mediterranean. And last January we were in Palestine.

Monday, January 5, 2009

Trips to bakery and supermarket as tomorrow, Epiphany, is a holiday and nothing will be open. It´s the fifth holiday in 13 days as on the days after Christmas and New Year´s most things are shut. Some enterprises - building construction projects for example - seem simply to close for the entire period.

Jenny texts to say that her daughter Laura has just had a boy. Exciting times as her other daughter, Emma, is also due in January. The UK has been very cold and she says that at 6 this morning there was an inch of snow in Thames Ditton - suburban London.

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Rainy a.m., so back to the books and the Sunday paper. Learn on the news that there was a shoot out on the street in Agia Napa last night. Here we thought it was semi ghost town when the truth had more of the wild west about it.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

In the evening we join M&M and drive up the coast to Agia Napa to have dinner at Tony´s, an old haunt of M&M´s in the days when they wintered there. It´s too dark to see the sea, but there´s still the romance of the lights strung out along the bay, backed up by the light romance of Maggi´s new Mantovani cd´s.

Agia Napa is quite different from Larnaca. Once upon a time it was a humble fishing village. Now it has ballooned into a commercial resort, booming and relatively vulgar in high season but semi ghost town in low. Little raffic and many shops and cafes closed for the season. There remains a small community of off-seasoners though, many of them Scandinavian.

Ton´s is nearly but not quite full and Toy himself, a short man with a waist length white beard, does greet Maggi with a hug, but she´s not sure he actually recognises her. The menu is typically Cypriot but also what J and I refer to as a "Polish menj" (as in Poland menus list all the dishes that are ever on offer, many of which may not be available on any given day). Thus the stuffed vine leaves that Maggi´s mouth had been ready for are not on, but she has moussaka and Magne giant shrimp, both of which they say are good, while J and I both order beef stifado - the nicest I´ve had and very generous portions. So while M&M regret the lively venue they remember - open 24 hours and a live band at night - we do have a very good meal.

Friday, January 2, 2009

No man´s land between holiday and ordinary time. Sale signs have begun appearing in shop windows, some advertising 50% off, interesting in itself as sale times used to be controlled by legislation. But most shops have not reopened yet, extending the New Year´s holiday. Even the supermarkets are still closed J finds. I pass a large flower bed shared by snapdragons looking sadly tired but still faintly aromatic and three dark green artificial Christmas trees.

The Dubai television chanel, which usually features the most vapid American programming imaginable, along with brief and superficial local news reports and the occasional film, now has several hours of a robed man in a chapel like room mournfully chanting from the Koran. Have we failed to remember an important Moslem holiday? Is this a lament for the fate of Palestinians? No, it seems a council member has died and displaced regular programming. But the dirge continues for enough hours that we begin to speculate on possible arrangements for bathroom breaks. How does he manage?

January 1, 2009

New Year´s Day. Still chilly but we wake to that cloudless dark blue sky that is so very Mediterranean. Walk out along the seafront for our now traditional New Year´s meal with Maggi and Magne. There aren´t a lot of people out in the cool wind, though the man who sells hot chestnuts is there. Once the wind drops the sun is quite warm though. Lovely meal from a beautifull lemony shrimp cocktail and roast pork to Christmas pudding and brandy sauce. The sun still streaming in from the balconyas we start.

Wednesday, December 31,2008

New Year´s Eve. We´re reminded of the old Cypriot custom of barbecuing on the street. Shopowners used to barbecue meat and halloumi and share it, along with wine and spirits and pitas and salad with their customers. One still passes the occasional shopfront barbecue but mostly they´re just intended for staff now.

Buying frenzy in the supermarkets, both for New Year´s meals and because the annual sales on liquor are coming to an end.

We work a bit at staying awake through the evening but 11:45 sees us bundled up - it´s an astonishingly chilly +5 C and windy - and down to europa Square on the waterfront. It^s only a block away, so we don^t need much time to get there. Plan B would have been to watch from the roof as Inger said she would do, but the waterfront is livelier and, as J says, it´s probably warmer at ground level. Crowds as usual. There is free wine, beer and zivania, all in plastic cups, but the disincentive is the need to remove a hand from a warm pocket to wrap it around a cold drink. The first salute comes from the deep tones of the ships at anchor in the bay as their horns greet the New Year. Then the fireworks, accompanied by terrified cross-flutters of birds that had thought themselves safely at roost for the night efore the big bang. The fireworks are set off on the beach and we´re standing about 200 feet away, so the bursts of colour and light are almost above our heads and we´re looking straight up at the cold black velvet sky. We don´t linger long when it´s over. Back to the warm studio and a New Year´s rusty nail.

Tuesday, December 30-2008

Meet M&M at student internet so they stop in for tea.

PM begin reading aloud Charlie Chaplin^s autobiography. Absolutely fascinating and, somewhat to our surprise, very well written. His early childhood was spent in the Kenington road area of South London, very near the Imperial war Museum. As he was born in 1889, his memories are of a Victorian London, and one in which his family was so poor that he spent time in the Lambeth workhouse. Any real pretence of education had ended by the time he was twelve and his stage career had begun. Amazing the changes in his world as he went on to become an international star, a thorough cosmopolitan, and, in 1975, to be knighted.

Monday, December 29/2008

Cyprus's mild version of winter - temperatures in mid to high tens Celsius and the occasional shower. Euronews shows only European weather, the camera moving across the map at a speed that makes focus a tricky eye exercise. BBC World attempts to cover the whole world in the same inadequate time, so that North America is represented by little more than half a dozen cities. The two chosen Canadian cities are Winnipeg and Quebec, an odd choice but reasonably interesting for us. Presumably Winnipeg occupies a spot on the map for which there is little competition.

Sunday, December 28/2008

Lazy day for us, but we're an hour away from Gaza (by air) and the utter misery is intensifying as the Israelis play tough for a pre-election audience.

Nice bits of year end retrospectives beginning. Gwynne Dyer's look at the year in today's Cyprus Mail is disappointingly thin on analysis - looks like he suddenly realised it had to be done by five o'clock - but BBC World shows some of its best documentaries of the year, including a couple of excellent ones on China, a contry that has changed enormously in the almost 20 years since we were there.

Saturday, December 27/2008

Coffee with Maggi at the market - a smaller market for the Christmas meal but we don't need anything. Then in the afternoon we walk out to M&M's. The road has been eroded a bit by the sea during the last storm - undercut as well? G&T, melon and parma ham on the balcony overlooking the sea. It's hot as long as the sun lasts.

Woolworth stores in the UK began closing their doors today, early victims of the recession. They've had a long history. My father used to tell us about going to Woolworth's with his brothers and sister to buy Christmas presents. They would take turns having one wait while the other four went to buy his presents.

Friday, December 26/2008

Boxing Day and would have been my grandfather's birthday - I think his hundred and twenty third. He never knew any of his grandchildren and we have - the oldest grandchildren at least - a few distilled sayings and memories of him through our parents. In the Depression, for example, he wouldn't let his sons caddy because there were grown men trying to feed their families by caddying. It was also Grandpa who, early in his marriage, made the mistake of telling my grandmother that the cake she had just made was as good as a store-bought one.

Shops closed and we, like many others, tourists and locals alike, walk along the beach front promenade (named Finoukides after the date palms that line it) and the pier. It's warm in the sun and everyone from babies to grandparents is out, the children displaying Christmas presents. A little girl is unsteady on her new roller skates and helium balloons in animal shapes are much in display. Popcorn, roasted corn on the cob and ice cream on sale. One brave man goes for a swim. The water is probably quite warm, but there is a bit of breeze across the beach.

We stop to examine the new large abstract sculpture at the pier end of the beach. Tell me, I say, that it isn't something horrible like a monument memorialising victims of some Turkish atrocity. Well, not quite - but sort of. It's not Cypriot victims anyway. Loath to miss any chance to demonise the Turks, the southern Cypriots have erected a monument in memory of the victims of the Turkish massacre of the Armenians. It's true, of course, that the massacre occured, though not recently and true that Turkey has not taken responsibility and that many Armenians took refuge in cyprus - but all the same it seems like an opportunity they just couldn't let pass. But there is also on display along the walk winning entries from a Cypriot art contest with multicultural emphasis. Some quite impressive works and a sign of hope. They don't seem to attract as much attention as the sculpture though.

Thursday, December 25/2008

Christmas Day. Traditional and not. We go to Mass in the moroning, stopping for koulouri at the bakery on the way back. Bakeries and news stands are open (and newspapers published) but not much else. No one condemned to day old bread or news.

J has outlined a Christmas tree shape about five feet high on the front of the wardrobe using tinsel made from silver paper donated by Maggi. He's "hung" baubles (saved from last year) on it with bluetack, decorated it with curls of paper chain and cut a gold star for the top - and all of this in two halves so that the wardrobe doors still open. He's also draped coloured foil curls and balls made from chocolate wrapper across the arch in the middle of the room and we have a couple of christmas posters, full broadsheet size, courtesy of the December 10 and 11 Guardians. As well as our menorah style five candle wrought iron candelabra that J rescued from the street two years ago.

M&M to dinner for what is now our 7th Christmas together. This time we have a leg of lamb, largely because it works better with the large pot but no oven facilities. And because Cypriot lamb is so good. Just after the vegetables are on the table and J is finishing making the gravy, the two burner hot plate blows, audibly. As Maggi says, pretty good timing. Dinner is done, and we can still make the brandy sauce and heat the Christmas pudding in the microwave. Lovely lamb and good company.

Wednesday, December 24/2008

Christmas Eve. There is a Christmas farmers' market today, and the rain has stopped, but we head north instead to Carrefour and collect a few more bits for dinner tonight and tomorrow. The queues are horrific, especially at the butcher's counter - easily fifteen people deep. At Prinos greengrocers I watch a young mother hand her daughter, aged maybe 4, a juicy peach as a reward for watching the shopping basket in the queue and am not sure whether I am more shocked by the casual acquisition without payment of a large out-of-season fruit on behalf of a child or by her handing the girl unwashed fruit to eat. I tell Joe, who says he just watched a woman in the supermarket put in her cart a carton of coke with attached free toy bus. She then tore the bus out of its plastic, handed it to her young son, and returned the coke to the shelf.

Lovely walk back. The rain has freshened things up and we pass bouganvillea, and flower beds, trees laden with oranges and palms swaying in the breeze. Very busy with traffic backed up and store aisles jammed with shoppers.

Christmas for me begins with the broadcast live of the nine lessons and carols from King's college, Cambridge. Or does when we're in this part of the world, anyway. In central Canada it would be at 9 a.m. but here it starts at five pm, always with a single boy soprano singing the first verse of Once in Royal David's City. They've been holding the service for 90 years and every year since 1932, with one exception, the radio World Service has carried it live. Time to sit down, pour a drink, and know that Christmas has begun. King's College chapel itself (not that it shows, this being radio) is lovely - a Gothic chapel dating back to Henry VI, and memories of it mingle with the music.

And on a more secular plane we pick up, later in the evening Ricky Gervais in some slightly edgy comedy with Swedish subtitles on the Swedish chanel.

Tuesday, December we/2008

The television weather map of the Mediterranean shows the eastern end concealed by bluish cloud. It's not a satellite map - just a representation - but it matches the alternate drizzle and heavy showers that happen.

Monday, December 23/2008

Wake to the swish of cars driving on wet road. It's rained in the night, though not enough to do a great deal of good. Cypriot reservoirs are said to be at 3% of capacity and progress with desalination plants hopelessly behind. More rain, and hail and wind, in late afternoon, with attendant damage and flooding. As always, the storm sewers here are completely inadequate. so much of the rain that falls is wasted.

There's a Christmas concert on tonight. It's free and the standard is usually pretty high, but given the uncertainty of the weather and the certainty of flooded streets we give it a miss.

Sunday, December 21/2008

Last Sunday in Advent. At Mass there are two separate, though intermingled groups. The Europeans - mostly English or Irish expats with a sprinkling of Italians, Poles and others - and the Asians - mostly Filippino or, in lesser numbers, Sri Lankan, household help. While clearly in the laid back european camp ourselves, it's hard not to admire the liveliness, enthusiasm and open affection of the Filippinas especially. They don't make much money here, are often badly treatd by their employers, and, in many cases, have left small children behind with grandparents as they search for jobs that will allow them to send money home but the hug as they meet, sway to the music and are all smiles. It's very humbling.

Find a Chinese delivery menu that had been thrust into my hand on the street. See that it features "pecking duck with 4 pancakes," "half pecking duck" and "whole pecking duck," at eight euros fifty-five, sixteen euros ninety and thirty-three euros thirty respectively. For those feeling peckish?

Saturday, December 20/2008

The American Academy has a car boot sale in the morning. Pick up 4 paperbacks for a euro. Then market for oranges, cucumber, courgettes, cauliflower, kohlrabi and eggs. Coffee there with M&M. Good Cypriot coffee with the glass of water on the side and a nice breeze blowing.

In the afternoon to Carrefour. Still getting stocked up. Last time J spotted a Cypriot woman checking out the liquor. She opened the caps of two different fancy for Christmas bottles of vodka, sniffed them, returned them to the shelf, and bought neither. Today we check the meat counter. There's a sign with a price for lamb, but all that appears at that point under the glass counter is thirteen sad looking sheep's heads, eyes glazed, and beside them a pile of miscellaneous offal. No sign of the better bits. What would one do with a sheep's head if one were inclined to cook it? Not that I am.

At Prinos, the greengrocer across the road I get a huge bunch of dill - almost the size of the bouquets of roses in grad photos - as well as lemon, garlic, and onion. A man comes over to offer me a small white paper bag. Turns out to contain 5 hot chestnuts that he's just been roasting, so J and I stop at a park bench to eat them while they're still hot.

BBC World TV shows a circle of policemen surrounding the Christmas tree in Syntagma Square, central Athens. Its predecessor was burned by rioters and t he protests continue. We have fond memories of sitting in Syntagma Square in mid-December the year we retired, pleased that we could leave our jackets open in the winter sun (before we'd first come to shirt sleeve Cyprus). It seemed so exotic then seeing both Christmas lights and oranges on the trees of the square. Now, unfortunately, we've become blind to the miracle, walking past laden orange trees in December without really seeing them.

Friday, December 19/2008

Maggi and I have a drink at the little market cafe with her friend Dino, a British born Cypriot. We drink zivania, a clear Cypriot liquor. I've had it before but this is nicer. Zivania in one glass and ice water for diluting it in the other. Still shirt sleeve weather, so lovely for outside cafes.

Stop at the Frangiorgio and collect the Christmas card Rachel and Dave have sent with Kieran and Katy's school pictures, both of which turned out really well. There's a broken cable beneath the Mediterranean, affecting both internet and telephone communication. It's somewhere near Alexandria but affecting countries as far away as Singapore. Hard to know what the local effect is - it could easily be confused with the usual apalling performance.

Thursday, December 18/2008

Pre-Christmas sales at the supermarkets and we get our exercise as they're not all in the same direction and none are very close. The priorities are interesting. Carrefour's flyer, for example, has 13 pages of food ads, 13 pages of wine and liquor ads, and 5 pages of miscellaneous - soap, ipods, whatever. Anything with sugar is ridiculously expensive, but alcohol often quite cheap - e.g.700 ml. Drambuie at ten euros forty-five cents or a litre of local vodka at five euros fifty cents.

Wednesday, December 17/2008

M&M drop in for tea in the morning so Magne gets to see our studio as well. Maggi says temperatures have been so warm that there are snake warnings out. Datime temperatures about 22 in the shade, much warmer in the sun, and the snakes have not hibernated as usual. Contrast with the -35 and wind chill warning in Sioux Lookout when I checked at the internet yesterday. The bad part is the drought. Our hotel is only granted water from the municipality 3 days a week. The rest it brings in by tanker. Local residents have similar problems - water rationed and not available every day.

Tuesday, December 16/2008

Meet Maggi at student internet. Had forgotten how maddening it is. Three out of four computers "working" though unbelievably slowly and with periodic crashes and, in at least one case, a mouse that leaves the user feeling neurologically disabled. Increasingly frantic attempts have slow and inconsistent results. Astonishingly little achieved in half an hour, which is the maximum allowed, regardless of whether anyone is waiting for a computer or not. Sourpuss, in charge today, takes a particular grim pleasure in pointing out that one's time is up.

Haircut in the afternoon, put off since back in tunisia. I wait for the man who usually does it well. Not a lot of language in common so it's a more unnerving prospect than usual. Show him 2 fingers shorter and say "layer." He nods and sets to work. Basic "shorter" don and he explains that he will now "layer everything." I have horrible visions of a vicious shingling, but it's fine. He's never given me a bad cut - though the price is creeping up. Nine euros now, and the euro itself is creeping up. Worth roughly $1.50 when we went to Paris, it's now $1.70

Monday, December 15/2008

Wake up in our new home. No couch here, but there are 2 armchairs and a proper kitchen table with 4 upholstered chairs, and lots of light. Maybw we were lucky to have the bed beetles as an excuse.

Free bottle of wine at Metro with 65 euro purchase, but we don't have a hope of carrying that much. Must be at least a kilometre. Would have gone on to the student internet but Maggi texts to say that it's closed for the funeral of former president Papadopoulos. Never speak ill of the dead, but he, an old EOKA man, did as much as humanly possible to prevent the reintegration of south and north cyprus, spending his presidency persuuading the citizens that whatever they were offered they deserved better.

Sunday, Deember 14/2008

Mass at 9:30 with the usual enthusiastic Filippino singing. Father Wilhelm, giving communion, says "the body of Christ" in Polish, so back home.

After brunch we decide to make the move. Frangiorgio not exactly happy and suggest that on the daily rather than long term plan we owe them money on top of the deposit from last spring. But after the bugs they're not in a strong position and we call it quits. Do a flit, as the Scots say, to the Kition, fortunately only two blocks away. Maggi, out for a bike ride, comes to help. There's our suitcases, a bit of food and the three goxes we left in the storeroom last March, as yet unpacked. We'd also left a drying rack for clothes and a wheeled cart, both scrounged/inherited. Dryer there, wheels gone - taken by someone who must have taken some time to untape our name. Good thing it's only two blocks.

But our new home is light, happy and warm, and we're instantly glad we've made the move.

Saturday, December 13/2008

Market morning, and on the way over we meet Dougie, the bus driver, who asks how we're settling in - we spare him the details - and says he's brought Maggie and Magne in. If Cyprus is, as J contends, a tribal society, it's nice to be in Dougie's tribe.

Cyprus coffee with M and M in a litle corner behind the market. Near the rubbish piles, but sunny, nice management, good company and good coffee. Then the basics - if we manage to move we don't want too much to carry. So a couple of onions and some tiny tomatoes and the rest from Carrefour in the afternoon.

Friday, December 12/2008

So after coffee the agenda becomes a search for alternate accommodation. We're a bit put out because the promised CNN has disappeared from the TV offerings. Not our favourite chanel by any means, but still constant English language news, which is in short supply here. There's also a separate charge for heat that was not the case when we booked, and heat is a definite necessit in a north facing flat - and in the evening anyway. But the creepy crawlies are the biggest concern.

Check at the Achilleos and at Petrou Brothers. Achilleos ridiculously overpriced and Petrou sparkling clean, professionally run and with good TV, but still pretty high, as always. Off to M and M's for lunch - after telling Francis at the Frangiorgio about the bugs. Apologies, new flat - next door - OK not to move until after lunch - which we discreetly refer to as an appointment.

So lovely and welcome interlude with M and M, gin and tonics, spaghetti bolognaise and mince pies with custard - and lots of catch up talk and laughter.

Walk back along the seafront and, seeing the Kition Hotel, decide to check. The manager is in at 7:30 and we look at two studios. There is a one bedroom but its fairly expensive. The studio is a last minute bit of inspiration but proves to be lovely - 3rd floor corner and 3 large windows and two patio doors to a balcony gong the full length of the studio. Tons of light and a penthouse feel. It's not large and storage is pretty limited but we're taken with it - and it does have BBC. Forty euros more than the Frangiorgio. So back to think it over.

No bugs in new Frangiorgio apartment.

Thursday, December 11/2008

Up at 4:40 and mini cab to Heathrow 5 - 23 pounds, a fraction more than our joint train and tube fares from Gatwick. Heathrow 5 huge and glitzy but no long queues. Amazingly long bus ride out to the plane though, feels like heading for another town. SMall delay while they find and unload the cases of two people who have not shown for the flight. Undoubtedly not terrorists but Cypriots, who very frequently come late and with staggering amounts of hand luggage, used, we suspect, to a system that runs less on rules than on favours. Huge brunch and lovely crew, especially the young man wh hands us each an extra brandy, saying in confidential tones "one is never enough, is it?" He'd also come up with larger cups for coffee at breakfast with similar sympathetic clucking. BA seems no longer to run to newspapers, but this time we're prepared and have exchanged our overweight British coins for three newspapers in preparation. And the flight's half empty so there's lots of room to spread out and read them.

Maggi meets us at the gate so hugs and then we're just in time to get the bus in. Dougie, the bus driver is into high welcome too, with a handshake for J and kisses - les deux smack - for me. And he refuses to take any fare - oh not the first time!

Out to get enough for a meal of the beans on toast and cheap wine variety. I'm fairly early to bed with The Times - and then the discovery. First a small beele, about the size of a ladybug, crawls past - but perhaps it fell off the newspaper? But there are more. Two or three at a time, clearly visible against the white sheets, appearing endlessly from where - the mattress, the carpet? A half dozen of them, when squished in a bit of toilet paper, have mosquiteo sized amounts of what can only be human blood, though we're not aware of being bitten.

Wednesday, December 10/2008

D-Day. And a few auf widersehn's (sp?). J talks to our friend of flood night, who says that he makes 3 winter trips - to Tunisia, Egypt and Turkey - going back to Germany in between. British Air allows seat selection online 24 hours before departure. Useless yesterday as the internet was closed for the holiday. They're not open today when I check at 9 and 9:30, but are at 10, giving me time to pick good seats on tomorrow morning's flight, though no time to see about today's, which matters less as they're all in banks of 3 anyway.

The transfer is there promptly at 10:30. We're alone in the van until Hammamet, where we pick up another half dozen holiday makers. Past olive groves, in some of which there's a bit of picking going on, with blankets spread on the ground, as efficient a collection method as any. Sheep and goats graze, often it seems on nothing but sand. There's a fair bit of land reclamation going on, tree planting to stop the erosion of grassless wastes. The settled areas are spreading with a lot of buildings in the local mud brick, looking half finished as further storeys are added as money allows, leaving many people living in what looks like - but isn't - bombed out ruins. Gardens and groves are often fenced in quite effectively with cactus plants.

No queue at the airport and no one mentions the fact - or used to be fact - that one is not supposed to leave with Tunisian dinars. We've got a very few and I'm hoping for something in the way of reading material, even old. But once through security - no questions re liquids, mobiles, etc - there's only the big Duty Free with ridiculous prices. Gin about the same in euros as Air Canada charges in dollars. Do you take all currencies? Not dinars. Pounds, euros, dollars? Oh yes.

In the departure lounge a young Asian woman walks round with what looks like a menu, but what's on offer is Chinese massage, behind a not particularly concealing screen in what looks like a nor particularly comfortable chair. Ten euro for ten minutes.

An hour's wait at Gatwick for the luggage, then train to Farringdon and tube to west Harrow. There's frost (snow?) in trace amounts on the platform, but cosy, warm, and a bottle of wine and some Bombay mix waiting at Jean's, to say nothing of a warm welcome.

Tuesday, December 9/2008

Phone after breakfast to confirm the transfer for tomorrow. AOK. A few more cafes and shops are open today, though by no means everything. Sort of a Boxing Day selection. Internet closed though. Stil a small amount of lamb's blood in the gutter.

Packing night. Leaving Newsweek and Mrs. McGinty Est Mort *the Agatha Christie in French translation I've just finished reading( at the hotel. But what about the others? All very well to say, to begin with, that we can leave them behind, but when it comes to it I hate seeing books consigned to the rubbish bin. They're not ideal ones to find a home for here either. Mordecai Richler's St. Urbain's Horseman would simply be considered pornography in a country where it is forbidden to access hotmail on the internet. As for the other two, a travel book featuring Central Asia and the biography of a Trappist monk are probably minority taste and tough going for most Arabic speakers. But they're too heavy to take.

Monday, December 8/2008

The dining room looks like a series of short stories in the making. There are the four people at the next table, all German, who look like two sisters, the husband of one of them and a friend or possible sister-in-law. They seem on quite friendly terms but appear to be on independent schedules, arriving for meals singly and leaving when finished, regardless of whether they leave a lone person eating. The diets range from that of the one we call Jane (because of her resemblance to Jane McGill), who eats enormous amounts of salad and fruit but little or no meat, to that of the sister-in-law character, a large blonde woman, immaculately dressed, with a cane and a taste for comfort food, who keeps a plastic bag in her handbag to load with pastries at dinner. And the couple at the next table - she middleaged, a plump, wistful redhead who always says good morning in German and he an Arab, German speaking, but possibly a local, a little younger than she - and not always there at meals. She wears no rings, and she's happier when he shows up for meals, which he does more tha half the time, sometimes at breakfast. And the story is?

Out for a walk and the city is utterly deserted and shuttered, apart from the magnificent tomb of former president Bourguiba, where we seem to coincide with some Bourguiba family members. The tomb looks a bit like the Taj mahal, and is at the end of a quarter km walk made of paving stones. On each side of the walk there is a cemetery. Quite interesting, with rectangular white sarcophagi marking each burial spot - the richest of them in white marble, most in white concrete, and the occasional one in white tile. One is actually in chequered blue and white tile. There's no surrounding grass, just earth, butmany of the white coffin sized rectangles have sprigs of green leaf on top. There's the odd tourist and very few locals, but nothing open. Then, at the marina hotel complex, we spot a shop saying closed Sunday-Monday-Tuesday. TUrns out it's Eid, the feast commemorating God's sparing of Ishmael (Isaac in the Judaeo-Christian tradition), celebrated with each family killing a lamb - and we remember that the gutters were, as we set out, running red. We had joked about its being blood. No wonder the sheep I saw Saturday was so reluctant to accompany the woman.

In the evening the bubbly woman in the next room asks if we have heat. Actually, no, and it is starting to get chilly. She speaks 6 words of English to our 6 of German, but she manages to convey an amazing amount with sign language, laughter, and sheer determination and even hugs. They'd better fix it - otherwise she's off to Sousse, good hotels with heat and bigger pools, same price. She writes out 3 names (all this expressed without language in common!) A cheerful young man comes to check the heating and gets results with ours but not, unfortunately, hers.

Sunday, December 7/2008

A man rides a motorbike down past the bank, one hand on the handlebars, the other gripping the edge of a large rectangular tray full of pastries balanced on his head. We stop at a shop in the medina to browse. On a shelf at the back, a small television set is showing the Hajj, so J's curiosity is aroused. In Tunisia (98% Moslem) what percentage are observant, that is atttend the mosque? Not a large percentage - mostly the old.

The numbers seem to be dropping in the dining room as winter comes on and tonight a number of the dishes appear to be recycle versions of last night's fare, so it's tempting to ask if we don't finish it tonight will we have to eat it again tomorrow.

BBC's weather report refers to Manitoba and Ontario as "perishingly cold."

Saturday, December 6/2008

Coming back from the internet cafe I see a young woman in a hijab with a sheep on a rope lead. She's talking to a young man and also trying to persuade the sheep to come along with her, but the sheep is having none of it, digging in its hooves as she tugs and backing away like a dog trying to slip its collar. A cruising yellow taxi passes and the woman pjuts up a tentative hand. The taxi slows, then the driver seems to size up the situation and speeds away. Can she really have been going to try to force the sheep into the cab?

Friday, December 5/2008

Attempt to mail postcards to the grandchildren. The post office is standing room only, and there must be at least fifty seats occupied as well. A young woman shows us where to take a number. Our number is 022. The electronic number currently being served is 667. Do they start over at a thousand? We leave.

For the first time the tourist information office in the medina is open as we pass. A petite young woman is in charge, a little shy. Do they have information in English? She searches in a large cupboard and in her desk. There isn't much there at all. Or French? Ah, here we are a little lucker and get a brochure about Monastir and road map of Tunisia. We ask about the price of stamps to North America and louage trips to Kairoun, but her answers seem both improbably high and like random guesses. I'm ready to leave but J, as usual, is thirsty for information - about the economy, health, education. I jokingly apologise: "Il a toujours des questions." But she's warming a little and becoming more fluent as she continues, mostly in English. Turns out, rather disturbingly (as she can't actually come up with a full grammatical sentence, though she's a lovely girl) that she teaches English to students of 18 or 19. But there's not much chance to practice. French is coçmpulsory from age eight and English at the secondary level. Other languages are senior secondary options. An initial doctor's visit is 35 dinar ($31.50 CAD or £17 UK), but dentists are not expensive.

Walking back, pass a small truck parked on a main business street with a placid sheep in the box. J talks to it and it looks silly and interested.

Thursday, December 4/2008

Try to catch up on the Canadian political scene at the internet but the consultation with the governor general scheduled for later today. BBC World, which doesn't usually mention Canada, has it pretty well summed up when they say that Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper has taken the unusual step of asking to have parliament suspended in order to avoid defeat.

Over past the mairie to the post office. Dark blue sea and tall palms, red Tunisian flags much in evidence as always. Post office inaccessably crowded and outside there is a fair sized streetmarket taking place over block or so. Mostly local supplies - clothing, kitchen knives, mobile phone chargers. There are some fairly attractive salad bowls close to 2 feet in diameter and a sort of tin hibachi affair. I finally acquire my comb, a not particularly nice pale aqu one. I buy it from woman at a table outside the supermarket but all the other sellers are male, as they seem to be in all but official goverment shops or little family run ones or supermarkets. One stall at today's market includes, amongst other unrelated objects, 3 padded bras of different colours in the care of a man no woman would dream of consulting about measurements. Nearby a boy about the size of Kieran is shouting enthusiastically "one dinar, one dinar" as he offers a variety of things for sale at 90 cents CAD each.

The male dominance is even more pronounced in the outdoor cafés, which are many and often large. Among the dozens seated at one of the biggest - men of all ages wearing fezzes, baseball caps, woollen hats, the occasional Arab headdress or bareheaded - we only once spot a female, a very small girl with her father. In the more touristed spots there is very occasional woman. But unemployment is fairly high and men have quite a bit of time for coffee, even young men.

We're about to go down to dinner when BBC World announces that the governor general has agreed to suspend parliament. So there we are in the BBC news along with the international drug cartels and the war crimes of former African presidents nd Khmer Rouge leaders. Somehow "suspend parliament" has the sound of suspending democracy, a deprivation not implied by the faintly ridiculous "prorogue." So we're back to the Stuart kings who would much have preferred not to deal with parliament at all, were it not for the grubby necessity of getting money.

Wednesday, December 3/2008

Morning starts with dark clouds and white caps on a grey-blue sea. Very windy and no hardy German sunbathers in evidence, but not actually cold. Text message from Jenny saying she's back from Cumbria and awaiting the birth of the grandchildren - due next month.

Try the internet but it's ridiculously slow - "plus tard" we tell him. Walk down to the souk. Horrifically windy but still not cold.

J chats in the lift with the German of lst night's flood watch. He and his wife go away for the winter - 6 weeks here, then Egypt, then Turkey. At dinner the German lady at the next table says tht they are here until January 13. The conversation is partly in English and mostly in French, and she seems also to have said that Cyprus gives her a headache, so there may have been some degree of miscommunication.

Tuesday, December 2/2008

Check at the louage station re trips to Tunis and Kairouan. Yes, continually. From "trois heures le matin" - much earlier than our most ambitious thoughts.

Decide in the end not to go to Tunisia - given the louage time and a preference for being back before dark - and then it begins to rain, hard and with accompanying thunder. Having a glass of wine and a read in the room when I check the stairwell door in the corridor, which has been banging. There's a German guest in the hallway who has spotted a leak in the ceiling. As I turn round we realise that the room is filling with water coming in from under the balcony door. Reception promises help, which takes some time to arrive. The German spreads his hands - this is Africa. But eventually a man comes with long squeegee, mop and pail and it's habitable again. Evening's drama over.

Monday, December 1/2008

December already. Not that it feels like it in Tunisia. A little cooler than when we arrived? Maybe, but yesterday we abandoned our light jackets by late morning - while locals passed us in coats and often woollen hats as well. Curious - one would have thought that biology more than culture would determine sense of cold and heat, but it's clearly a mixture.

This morning J shows me the footprint on top of his shoe where a man at the Medina yesterday stood on his foot, firmly and unapologetically - presumably to allow his knife-wielding companion time to slash J's bag.

Make our visit to the ribat, a large sandstone complex, walled fortification originally defended by warrior monks who slept in small cells around the central courtyard. Great views from the ramparts and tower and reminiscent of Life of Brian which was filmed there. Makes, as Zeffirelli found, a better Jerusalem than present Jerusalem for film purposes. There's not a great deal in its little museum, but some of the antique embroidery is lovely and the picture of Monastir 150 years ago is interesting - an Arab village.

J chats up a young man as we're leaving about the present state of Tunisia. Things are difficult economically despite the signs of construction. Monstir itself he says is a university town - faculties of pedicine, pharmacy, health, agriculture. Do they pay for university or health care? Not for university, except accommodation, but they do pay for medical care, though not a lot.

To the internet café. Fascinating Canadian political/constitutional situation but ot easy to follow via the internet glimpses, especially as it's still early morning in Canada.

Sunday, November 30/2008

Market day in Sousse, so after breafast we take a louage (shared taxi). Holds 7 plus driver, though rather packed. One dinar 30 each to Sousse (about $1.15 CAD, 62p UK for a 24 km trip). Close to a km walk when we get there, from the bus/louage station to the medina.

This medina is much older and bigger than "ours" in Monastir. It's about a km across diagonally but a labyrinth of passages enclosed in ancient walls except for the northern entrance where the wall was blown away by the Allies in 1943. The medina includes 24 mosques and several hotels, but mostly it's shops and stalls selling everything, like a Middle Eastern souq: the obvious leather goods, jewellery, tiles, pottery and kaftans; food of all sorts from fast food to sweets to huge open sacks of spices to whole fish and live hens; ordinary clothing, socks, underwear, etc. as well as general necessities - plasticware, batteries, watch straps, etc. It's crowded in places and in the prts with more tourist goods (including towels featuring various English football teams), there's fair pressure to buy. A man approaches, determined to sell us some Viagra. Very cheap, he insists, but gives up when I say "pas necessaire." Through the crowds an occasional cart or even car makes its way, unbelievably, and more than once two or three sheep on a lead.

We take some time to look at the port - a working port with some pirate style tourist day boats as well - and the southern end of the beach, with beautiful fine sand.

Come back by train - even cheaper than the loge and from a handier location by the port. As we're waiting for the train J discovers that the leather bag he has been carrying has been slashed by a sharp knife, presumably in the crowded medina lanes: It's wrecked the zipper of the front pocket and cut the lining through to the second section. Nothing missing - actually there was nothing in the front section except plastic cutlery for picnicking, but it leaves an unpleasant feeling.

Saturday, November 29/2008

Back to the market. An amazingly large fish section, including whole tuna and swordfish as well as steaks of same. Three sheep's heads in a row at a butcher's stall, looking pathetically small without the large fluffy bodies. The cow's head has lost its dummy pacifier. The pressure of salesmen in the medina isn't overpowering but there is sometimes an edge to it - it's not very much for you; a cup of coffee. As the man selling cigarettes who is disgusted when J points out he doesn't smoke - it's very cheap so buy them for someone else. Of course we must look as if we're going back to Europe at the end of a week's holiday with a suitcase full of souvenirs.

Friday, November 28/2008

The BBC chanel is prone to sudden pixillation and disappearance, especially in the early morning and around dinner time. So as it disappears this morning we scan the other chanels for news. We're not much good at following the Italian or German news and the French chanels seem to be broadcasting advertising and children's programming. The two Tunisian chanels, which seldom have much content of consequence even when it isn't the Moslem holy day, are no use. One is, oddly enough, showing a Canadian program on ice climbing, dubbed in Arabic and featuring information on technique and desirable ice climbing locations from Quebec and Banff to Nipigon, Ontario. Written advice of the "wear a helmet" variety appears in a sidebar. One wonders what on earth the Tunisian watchers make of it.

At breafast a German lady uses her few words of English to say she regrets not being able to converse with us. But turns out she does speak some French so we have a brief discussion. Join the sunseekers outside where the sun is certainly hot but the wind is strong enough that it is only just a pleasure, although several determined Germans are in bathing suits.

Mark Abell, the British man we listened to on BBC yesterday is on again today, now no longer barricaded in his Mumbai hotel room but free to go home to his family. And how had he spent his time, apart from keeping in touch with his Blackberry? "I had one of the Ladies Number One Detective Agency books to read." As have we in our hotel room, though fortunately with no need to barricade.

Drinking a not bad Tunisian red wine - Grand vin de Mornag (2005). Much better than the red J bought at the bar. But J finds a small shard - it looks like glass but we think plastic - in the bottom of his glass.