Thursday, January 13/2011

Very windy morning so not much action on the waterfront. Not cold though.

In the evening we go with Maggi to Vlachos Taverna on the Dhekelia Road and meet up with Jane and Bill and Elsa and Harry for a meal. It is, as they say, the way Cyprus restaurants used to be. A traditional menu, from which J and I order the mixed kebab. The main dishes are good and come with large homemade chips. Equally impressive, though, are the extras that the waiter brings beforehand, two of each for the seven of us. There are large bowls of country salad with feta and warm pita bread, as well as smaller dishes of pilaf, kohlrabi sticks, pickled beetroot and a savoury mixture of egg and sautéed onion. We could have made a whole meal before the entrées come.

Good conversation too. J is interested in some of the social and political observations. For example we had noted that in the past few years increasing numbers of buildings, such as the police station and town hall, have been ceasing the embarrassingly colonial practice of flying the Greek flag beside the Cypriot one, turning instead to the EU flag. According to Bill and Harry this is in response to direct EU pressure to stop the inappropriate use of another country's flag. They also confirm J's assessment of Cyprus as a tribal society, saying that if a Cypriot owes you money you are unlikely to geet it because he probably also owes others with much closer claims of loyalty and kinship. In fact even shopping patterns are determined by these claims, with families shopping in stores owned by those with such ties. A Cypriot, they say, will buy a car only from a dealer with whom he has a relationship, rather than comparing a number of quotes, but if he brings a new buyer to his friend or relation he will get a kickback. An interesting evening.

Wednesday, January 12/2011

Head tax pursuit part two. Mainly in order to ascertain the facts for ourselves. This morning the hotel inspecion office is open - bright and so new you can smell the paint. The woman we speak to is friendly but we fall, she says, into a grey area - CTO cosiders tourists in hotels to be those staying less than a month. We're here for three months, but not exactly long term residents under tenant reguations. Also, they have no information on municipal taxes - the town hall would know.

The town hall is down by the waterfront - above the KFC/ There's a small booth as one enters labelled information, but it seems that not many people visit the municipal offices seeking information in English. When J asks about taxes he's told where to find a taxi - but eventually waved over to the lift. Third floor.

We're referred to Mrs. Androula, with the charming Cypriot habit of using the prefix in a semi-formal way before a first name. We only want information so that we know exactly what the situation is. She's more than sympathetic and makes some phone calls as we enjoy the amazing sea view from her office window. The situation is that there was, before 2010, a head tax payable to the municipality. Because of the financial crisis it was suspended for 2010. The assumption is that it will be reinstituted for 2011, but this has not yet happened, nor has the amount been set officially. By the end of January there should be a definite answer. Between the calls she orders coffee and gives us the 2011 Larnaca calendar, each page with a separate historical photograph of the city. We chat and J asks about her family, a son still at the gymnasium (high school) and one who was married the day after Christmas. Impulsively she takes two round wrapped cakes, each about the size of an apple, though a little flatter. They're from the wedding and she's had them here for colleagues. A totally lovely encounter.

So Maggi, up in the afternoon for a drink followed by tea and the cakes shared out. They're very rich, filled with marzipan and coated with very liberal amounts of icing sugar. Delicious, and two are more than enough for three people.

Tuesday, January 11/2010

Mr. Andreas, owner of the Sunflower, has announced a slight rise in our rent, generously allowing Kikki, the second shift manager to break the news. Apparently the municipality has imposed a new head tax (43 cents per person per night?) and so it is being passed on. There is a bit of vagueness about the explanation, and it does seem odd that a tax would be imposed without warning - though not impossible, and it does occur to us that it's midsummer before the Town of Sioux Lookout can say what the annual property tax will be and then it's due almost immediately.

Maggi has the address and phone number for the Cyprus Tourist Organisation's hotel inspection branch, left over from a dispute in which they supported her in not paying retroactively for a rate rise. It's apparently located a couple of blocks away above a bar called the Albatross. So we check it our but find no sign of it there. However the regular tourist office is happy to redirect us to the skyscraping new Nicolaides building.

On the way there we stop and chat with Vasken Terzian, the excellent former manager of the Kition Hotel. He's still working at the little shop there but the building itself is scheduled to come down in March. We tell him, truthfully, that the Kition was by far the best managed hotel we've stayed at in Cyprus and he seems a little embarrassed but pleased.

Then on to the Nicolaides building. It's tall, cleanly modern in design and, it seems, almost empty. Apparently, so Mr.Terzian says, bought by Arabs (Qatar, Bahrain?) who seem to feel no urgency about filling it. Of course money laundering springs to mind. The CTO office is on the second floor - but not open.

Lovely film, Little Traitor, on at eleven. It's Israeli (made in 2007) and chronicles a friendship between an occupying British soldier and a fiercely pro-independence young Jewish boy.

Monday, January 10/2011

This is boycott food day, as proposed (but not well organised) by the Green Party. It's the first day of the new 5% VAT being charged on food and medicine. The usual tax rate is 15% but until now food and drugs have been exempt. Itès as regressive a tax as they come, hitting the poor and pensioners disproportionately as seen fit by the current Communist led coalition. And the explanation that the over-large civil service has a COLA and won't be affected is designed to enrage. So we've joined the one day food purchase boycott - clearly a symbolic protest only. Though J, who goes to the supermarkets to pick up the weekly advertisements, says there's little sign of anyone else boycotting as throngs take advantage of the compensatory sales mounted in order to overcome any slowdown in buying caused by the new tax.

Sunday, January 9/2011

Brunch and newspaper (Cyprus Mail). Then walk on the beach in the afternoon. So few of the lovely old traditional buildings left in Larnaca. Each time we're out J says he must remember to take the camera as one more gaping hole appears. And so many apartment hotels closing. The Athene in its 5th year of renovations and a "for sale" sign drooping from its outer wall, the Kition closed and the furniture and crockery for sale, the Sun Hall closed for renovations. And others that have simply disappeared, some like the Four Lanterns literally. The renovations are not always aesthetic improvements either. The Eleonora's heavy black framework and trestles round the glassed-in balconies are not only untraditional - they're ugly and industrial.

M stops on her way back from Chris and Gloria's to share with us some lovely big oranges from Chris's plantation.

Saturday, January 8/2011

Down to the market. Stop for Cypriot coffee with Maggi at our regular café. Pick up some grapes, rather out of season now. In the evening M treats us to dinner at the Chinese restaurant opposite. We knew it was popular as there is never any parking available here at night as we're crowded out by customers. Intriguing glass threshold with fish swimming underneath. We haven't reserved but we're early by Cypriot standards, about 7:20, and a table is produced from nowhere with smiles. Nice service and good food too.

Friday, January 7/2011

The theory is a thunder shower - the actuality another sunny day. Probably the warmest December and January we've experienced.

Thursday, January 6/2011

Epiphany - which always feels like a bigger feast day in Cyprus than Christmas, though perhaps only because the celebrations are more public and less familial. We go down with Maggi to the town pier where the archbishop, having come in a parade more military than episcopal from St. Lazarus Church (traditionally believed to be the burial place of the Biblical Lazarus) throws a cross into the sea. The teenage boys compete for the honour of retrieving it, diving into the water. And it always is retrieved safely, having been prudently tied to a cord. The Greek Orthodox Church is definitely in Church Militant mode, as the archbishop is accompanied by soldiers carrying high powered automatic rifles as well as cadets of both sexes, some of the girls carrying daisies. The red-coated military band is nice but there's a bit too much awareness of the aggressive political role played by the Cypriot Church.

But it's a lovely day, sunny and warm, and the road along the beach has been blocked off for the parade so the throngs are spilling from the pier and the promenade into the street. The pier is strewn with the aromatic sprays of leaves that we can never identify, and we gather some to bring home to our flats, Maggi retrieving a particularly attractive bunch from under a young man's feet.

Stop on the way home at a new open air café in Ermou Square and Maggi treats us to beer at a sunny café table. Shocking price but it does come with a plate of mixed nuts. It`s busy, though, and everyone in holiday mood for the end of the Christmas season.

M to dinner here in the evening. J has done beef more or less stifado style, making a sauce for it with the marinade wine and caramelised onions. And we`ve saved the New Year`s bottle of sparkling wine. Nice having M in the same building so that no one has to head out home after a visit.

Wednesday, January 5/2011

It's not only heat - it's light as well. The sun rises here a little before seven at this time of year and sets a little after four-thirty. Maggi, just arrived from Norway, contrasts it with waiting until nearly nine for dawn.

Tuesday, January 4/2011

Adding insult to injury: first Australian floods cover an area greater than Germany and France combined and then people are asked to stay out of the waters as they're infested with poisonous snakes and crocodiles.

The Christmas music continues in the supermarkets until Epiphany, official end to the season in secular as well as religious circles. So we're not surprised to hear the carols in Carrefour, but a little startled when a hearty baritone Faith of our Fathers is slipped in between them.The Christmas music continues in the supermarkets until Epiphany, official end to the season in secular as well as religious circles. So we're not surprised to hear the carols in Carrefour, but a little startled when a hearty baritone Faith of our Fathers is slipped in between them.


Maggi arrives from Norway; hungry, tired and trailing minor catastrophes. The hired car that she picked up at the airport turns out tohave only bright headlights or running lights. And, much worse, the flat she had booked last spring, immediately under ours, has been reassigned to Norwegians. Brandy, followed by hot lentil soup, is a bit of a destressor. And better, as we're nicely into the refills, Kikki phones from reception to say that she has spoken to Mr. Andreas (she'd previously said that Maggi would have to do that herself tomorrow) and that she can move to the third floor in the morning. So, relax and catch up on ten months worth of news.

Monday, January 3/2011

Coming back from Lidl we get caught in a shower and shelter underneath the projecting roof of a bar, closed and padlocked for the season. But it doesn't really blow over. Harder rain is followed by pea-sized hail and when that lets up we head for home and dry clothes. Rains all day (as J says at 9:30 in the evening, it's a good thing we didn't stay under the shelter until it stopped). But at home we're pretty well supplied with reading material. And we're also lucky in that the presence of the British forces means that we have BBC World radio all day on AM and several hours worth of a BBC4 and 5 mix on FM. We'd miss this quite a lot anywhere else. Well, almost anywhere. A quick think about other spots with British bases. Afghanistan? The Falklands? Iraq still? There's Gibraltar, but it's pretty expensive. A definite plus for Cyprus.

Sunday, January 2/2011

Down to the beach today, and the promenade is busy. It's sunny and we arrive while the Cypriot dance perforance is still on, as the men, in traditional costume are doing a dance that involves balancingstacks of glasses on their heads. It's more balance than dance, but impressive still as they get up to a dozenglasses before they finish, though our suspicion that the first glass is fixed to the cloth head covering is confirmed when they take these off. The performance ends with a circular dance drawing in volunteers from the (mostly tourist) audience.

Sit for a while on one of the promenade benches waatching the great parade of passers by, many with children, some with dogs on leads, one boy with a tiny puppy in his arms. It's a gathering place for locals as well as foreigners and a showplace for Christmas toys and fashions, with little girls in sparkly silver Christmas boots and mothers in impossibly spiky heels. We're sitting opposite a booth with a large and impressive display of prizes to be won by playing a small pinball-type game - tickets one euro each (or more expensive ones for a second stall featuring prizes like large bottles of liquor). J's guess is that the best prizes are virtually unwinnable, but we do see a couple of successes with the second class prizes, though most are things I'd pay not to have to display. A woman chooses a large, grey plastic pig, apparently a garden decoration as it's taken from the section including giant plastic snails and gnomes. And there's a family with three children who take turns at the pinball and head off with a four foot high pink panther bundled up and peering out uncomfortably from under the father's arm.

Saturday, January 1/2011

New Year's Day, and pretty quiet. We'd intended to go down to the beach after brunch, but it showers in the afternoon so we settle for New Year's television - the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Day concert and Breakfast at Tiffany's. And work out this is the elventh New Year's we've spent in Cyprus, following eleven that we spent together in Sioux Lookout.

Friday, December 31/2010

New Year's Eve. We're out at midday and pass several of the traditional barbecues held outside workplaces on the last day of the year. It's an all male ritual and it's dying out. Ten years ago, or even less, these were everywhere, with generous amounts of wine, halloui, sausages and even lamb, chicken and whisky - bread and salad greens on the side. And it was the custom to offer plates to customers or evento hail passersby to join in the celebration. Now you see much smaller gatherings - four or five men by a shop front - though one group we pass has a couple of half gallons of wine near their grill. Another has taken advanrage of a street corner just past our bakery that is equipped with two park benches, allowing the men to barbecue and eat in comfort. And in the air the smell of briquettes as people light up the grills on their balconies as well.

Our intent is to go down to the beach for midnight where there will be fireworks and free wine, beer and nuts as well as a concert. We wouldlnèt actually have stayed for the concert - very late, very loud, and standing only, but it's a nice atmosphere, with everyone from babies to the elderly, locals, foreign workers and tourists, and then the fireworks. But by eleven thirty we're feeling pretty warm and comfortable inside (though it's only dropped to about 15 degrees outside!) and inertia wins the day - not, one hopes, our symbolic mode for the coming year. So we pour a wee dram and watch the fireworks from the couch in our own sitting room,actually a pretty good view despite one building of more than ideal height. They only last about three minutes. Surely, we are agreed, it was longer than that on previous years.

Thursday, December 30/2010

Supermarkets are a great deal closer to their famers' market origins. Thus Prinos, the greengrocer's - which runs to things other than fruit and veg - sells rabbit, skinned and all but whole and with the head still on, covered with cling wrap but looking entirely too much like what it is - a small animal curled up in sleep position. And across the road at Carrefour, the international French supermarket a bird of some description (we can't tell from the Greek) retains not only large talons, grasping for a last chance at life, but a small rather flattened red head. Not only off-putting but remarkably poor value, these bits, for the five euros plus per kilo that's fair enough for the meatier parts.

There's a feistier attitude on the part of the customers as well. So in Prinos I meet an old man grinning as he walks down an aisle with a slice of bread and several pieces of sausage in his hand - more or less an unassembled sandwich. Looking for the source of his lunch, I find it on the deli counter. He's simply taken a large piece of bread and a few of the bigger chunks of meat from the free sample plate. J later sees a woman at the same plate taking handfuls for the child with her, scorning the toothpicks provided and scrabbling through the offerings. And in Carrefour an old woman in black is energetically bashing the stem part off a large bunch of broccoli, leaving herself with only the flower ends for heer euro a kilo. Seeing my eyebrows creeping upwards she laughs gleefully. I tell J that I'm surprised she had the strength to break such a large stem, but he says that she whammed it against the edge of the bin with practised skill - she's done this before!

Wednesday, December 29/2010

Along Ermou almost to the end for a haircut, with the usual trepidation - the hairdresser is very good but communication is limited. As I wait, a woman across from me, also waiting, begins to open her mail - two small parcels tightly taped together - each, it turns out, holding a pair of glasses. The tape is too tightly attached to remove, so she takes advantage of the hairdresser's preoccupation with a comb and leans in front of his customer to pick up the hairdressing scissors, and sets to work ruining the blades. Eventually the hairdresser takes note and retrieves them, kindly sending the boy in training over with a substitute pair as he cleans the blades.

In the end I get quite a decent haircut for ten euros.

Tuesday, December 28/2010

Continuing our habit of reading aloud. Currently towards the end of The Jewel in the Crown, first book of Paul Scott's Raj Quartet. Quite interesting from an historical point of view as well as being well written. We read Book II last year, so it's out of order, though not disastrously so, and we've since acquired the third and fourth books as well. In addition, we now have a buffer - downloaded work of Dickens,Strachey, Maugham and deMaupassant from the Gutenberg Project for times when we may find ourselves bookless.

Monday, December 27/2010

The Christmas sales continue at the supermarkets until New Year's Eve, with the biggest discounts being on liquor - an unusual phenomenon for Canadians considering that Canadian liquor stores regard five percent as a massive discount. Obviously the attitude is quite different here, as is the tax structure Clearly one should buy a three month supply at once, but it's a bit difficult to calculate.

The attitude to alcohol is different in other respects as well. No lingering Puritanism here. Liquor as well as beer and wine are available in small corner shops as well as supermarkets. Separate stores are uncommon and would only exist for specialty products such as higher end whiskies. Age of access doesn't seem to be a critical factor either - nor does this lead to much interest in the liquor section of the supermarket on the part of teenagers. Thus J, waiting outside the Smart discount store for me, spots a boy of about nine emerging carrying a bottle of vodka out to the car where his mother is waiting with the baby, with as little concern on all parts as if he had been sent in for a loaf of bread or a bottle of milk.

Sunday, December 26/2010

Boxing Day. And very quiet here. Quieter in some ways than Christmas Day. The Cyprus Mail, the English language paper, published on Christmas Day - a lone copy remains at the newsstand as proof - but its Sunday edition which includes extra sections with the radio and television guides and the puzzles is not in evidence. Oh no, today is holiday - no paper today. And therefore no telly guide either.

So, lazy day, with random TV and warm sun and extremely good leftovers, including the chicken and wine sauce and J's cabbage rolls, the tastiest I've ever had, with brown rice, caramelised onions, mushrooms and smoked pork loin. Leaves most cabbage rolls miles behind. He's amazingly good with a two burner hotplate and no oven. Though we do have the magic ingredient - time.

Saturday, December 25/2010

Having been unwilling to get home at two after midnight mass, we go at 9:30 this orning - a rather thinner crowd than there will have been last night, but plenty of enthusiastic crol singing by the Filippino contingent, complete with some rather original pronunciation - as in the lines from Hark the Herald Angels Sing which are lustily rendered Filippino style as "Pleased as man with man to dwell/Jesus our E. Manuel.

In the afternoon we go down to the promenade along the beach. It's humming. Balloons and popcorn, ice cream, roast corn on the cob and hot chestunts. Some of the children have new Christmas toys with them, and there are dogs on leads, happy to be part of the scene. And ships in the bay, six of them this time, at anchor for the holiday.

Friday, December 24/2010

The supermarkets have opened at seven today. Cypriots aren't big consumers of frozen foods and everyone wants last minute fresh. We trek up past the English cemetery and the ruins of old Kition, which flourished here as far back as the 13th century BC. Some of it has been excavated and bits more, between home and the bakery, are in process, so that between existing buildings there are gaps where one can look down at ancient foundations. It's obvious that these must extend underneath a larger section of modern Larnaca, so we walk home with our chicken from Metro and a large loaf of sesame studded rye bread from the bakery thinking of the community going about its business here over 3000 years ago.

Lovely surprise email fro Jim and Leila and Arturo, whom we first met nine years ago when they were sailing round the world. Well, to be accurate Jim was sailing round the world after early retirement. On his trip he had met and married Leila in Colombia and Arturo was born in New Zealand, so they joined the trip en route. We met them when they were harboured in Cyprus for the winter but also spent a few weeks with them in Malta the following year - but hadn't heard in years. Now Leila has rediscovered our email address and sent pictures of a now teenaged Arturo.

For the first time since we started spending Christmas in Cyprus we go back to our old habit of having Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve. Starts with the nine lessons and carols from Kings College Cambridge via BBC, the signal that Christmas has begun. Then chicken that J has made with wine sauce and vegetables. Finish with chocolate, almonds and shortbread. There are the Christmas decorations on the little table, the candles burning and a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. Quiet and lovely.

Thursday, December 23/2010

Interesting how respect for a queue varies culturally. So much so that when someone worms their way in ahead of us J or I will often say "Funny, he didn't look Taiwanese." But this moroning J experiences a particularly blatant version. We go early to Lidl, mindful of the crowded supermarkets that accompany the days before Christmas. J is near the front of a line and has reached the checkout counter when a woman phshes in from the side, shoving her shopping art ahead of him. J says that there is a queue and points to its end, but she continues to push, while talking to him loudly in Greek. Eventually J removes her trolley and the people behind, a mixed English/Greek Cypriot couple take up the argument with her in Greek, showing her where the queue forms. She then has an unsuccessful go at crashing the line-up at the next counter before resigning herself to the rear.

Well, perhaps not entirely cultural variation. After all most Cypriots would not have done it and those behind J were less than impressed - but in the UK, land of the sacred queue, only the mentally ill could be imagined trying it on.

There are Christmas films on TV - fortunately Cypriots use subtitles instead of dubbing - but they're ostly things like modern take offs on A Christmas Carol and we're old enough to feel nostalgic about Jimmy Stewart. Tonight's film, The Christmas Choir, is about a man who takes men from a homeless shelter and forms them into a choir. We're thinking that it's a good story line but that in real life the problems would be insurmountable Turns out that it was based on a true story.

Wednesday, December 22/2010

Down to the post office and past a shipping establishment. The sign outside proclaims it to be a bonded warehouse for repatriates retired. Guess repatriates covers people both coming and going. They offer packing and moving services, including "stuffing-distuffing goods." Distuffing - there's a keeper word.

Tuesday, December 21/2010

Sounds like a bit of a party late at night in the room next door. We're pretty good sleepers and anyway justpleased for every apartment that is filled. It's nice having a fairly inexpensive place to stay but it doesn't seem busy enough to keep going. Feels like too much responsibility supporting the Sunflower and its employees - not that there are a lot of them. kAt first it seemed very nice having the lounge-like lobby quiet and to ourselves. And it is nice - but maybe too quiet for long term survival.

Monday, December 20/2010

Meet Berndt down at the beach. He's a Swede who has previously lived at the Eleonora and the Athene when we did - as well as having a similarly disastrous short stay at the Nautilus. Last year he and his wife were happily ensconced at the Eleonora at €700 a month. This year when they went back to the Eleonora in October they were told the price was now €900. Then electricity and water became extras to be paid separately. So now they, and other Swedes have rented two bedroom apartments on the waterfront (Finoukides). They do their own cleaning but it's €800 and no buildings between them and the sea. An interesting light on J's having been quoted €1300 at the Eleonora. Berndt says "they're crazy."

Sunday, December 19/2010

Over to St. Helena's Anglican for the service of the nine lessons and carols. They always do it very nicely and the little church is pretty full. Small bits of politically correct editiing to the carols which one tends to sing by heart, being caught out by "good Christians all rejoice." There's mulled wine and goodies afterward, including half of a large fruit cake remaining from yesterday's installation of the new priest, the Rev John Holdsworth. We chat with Jeannie and Chris recently moved from New York, she a New Yorker and he a Cypriot who oved there in 1974 - now back at the family restaurant. Also with Liz Taylor (surname acquired by marriage) who lives in a traditional Cypriot house in Oroklini, just north of us, and is very informative on the diocese (Cyprus and the Gulf) which includes places like Iraq and Yemen, all of which she has visited as a Church council representative.

Saturday, December 18/2010

Coffee outside the market entrance at Jimmy's Café. A mixture of Cypriot and non-Cypriot customers at the little outdoor tables. Not Cypriot and tourist as many non-Cypriots are not tourists either - a mixture of ex-pats, foreign workers (mostly Asian or East European), students on visas, and others, with English being the most common language after Greek. Today at tables near us two young women chat with a man sitting next to them. Heès bald but has a bushy white beard reaching to mid-chest, a gilt-decorated stole round his shoulders and a large bright turban, which he places on his head as he leaves, nodding to us and striding off with his long hand-carved walking stick, a small red plastic bag of market produce hooked to its end and hanging over his shoulder.

Doesn't feel like a week before Christmas, and it's not just the mild temperatures. There's been a real lack of Christmas films and music, even the corny repeat films with quasi-Christmassy themes. And, as J points out, almost the only carols we have heard have been in the supermarkets. Thus we edge past other shirtsleeved customers by the shelves in an overly warm Smart store hearing a voice singing "oh the weather outside is frightful." Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

That's not the only Christmas contribution the supermarkets have to make. They're pretty good at this time of year at providing fairly generous free samples in the aisles. Thus a quiet trip to Metro this afternoon yields - as well as the staples we camae for - a couple of ounces each of red and then white Cypriot wines (palate cleanser in between cubes of Cypriot cheese), a not-all-that small piece of chocolate honey cake, and (pièce de résistance) a small sample of Bailey's liqueur to be drunk from a tiny dark chocolate cup which is then itself consumed. Does mellow one a little in the face of the Christmas supermarket rush.

Friday, December 17/2010

Wake to sun but then it looks as if fog has rolled in, obscuring the sea and making the buildings hazy. Soon realise it's not fog but dust, presumably from the Sahara, its usual source. Continues all day, though the temperature remains warm. Still shirt sleeve.

J makes a beautiful spaghetti carbonara for dinner with the streaky bacon from Metro. Why is bacon here well over half lean, whereas in Canada they might almost as well sell it as lard? Is this a question of cuts of meat or the nature of the pig? Also, it doesn't have that horrid stick-your-finger-through-it texture that must come from injecting Canadian bacon, like Canadian chickens, with salt water.

Thursday, December 16/2010

Why do computers have to supply last minute instructions such as: Please do not power off or unplug your machine - Installing update 1 of 12? This warning could have been provided any time in the last two hours, instead of which it waits until I have begun to power off, as it knows full well. In order to guarantee inconvenience or run the battery to zilch? And please do not - or what? There won't be any ice updates until tomorrow? there will be no second chance for updates ever? My computer will immediately cease to function?

The budget debates are broadcast live on the government television chanel, and have been for days, postponing the ten minute English language news and weather. It's obviously of some importance - even to us, as there's a 5% tax slated for food in 2011 - but looks like it would be painfully tedious watching even if one understood Greek. Toonight it runs more than four hours over its scheduled three hour allocation and members of the legislature are obviously drifting elsewhere, as the benches are pretty thinly filled. One woman with long blonde hair has the misfortune to be sitting - and no doubt to have been sitting for a numbing length of time - behiind the microphone used by the member with the floor and in full view of the camera. She looks indescribably bored and is clearly texting as the speeches continue. Put the wine on ice - I'll need it?

Wednesday, December 15/2010

BBC radio announces that the French have found and intend to give formal burial to, the head of King Henry IV. Well, that's Henry IV Part I - part II anywhere?

Tuesday, December 14/2010

We take a walk to Lidl, not very far really to the north of us. It's overcast and windy but the wind is a warm one, though strong enough we can see the umbrellas would be useless. Lidl will be a useful addition to the food sources, with pretty good prices on many things - e.g. young but drinkable Italian wine on offer at one and a half litres for a euro, and prices for chocolate much better than average local ones. Though some other things are not especially cheap. On the whole there is less variety than in the other supermarkets, though there are odd additions, like quilted vests and hubcaps.

Down in the lobby with the netbook - grateful for the wifi - and note the current temperature in Sioux Lookout. It's -29!

Monday, December 13/2010

Walk down to the post office and tourist office - for maps and new bus timetables. The post office is opposite the Kition, our home for the last two winters. It looks deserted, other than the little convenience shop on the ground floor. Then we spot the handlettered sign advertising furniture for sale, and in the covered walkway through the building are bits and pieces of furniture from the hotel, most of it looking a little worn and yellowed, exposed to the world in daylight like this - dressing tables with paint chipped at the corners, even our old drapes in a sad heap. Rather like a dignified lady forced to evacuate in her underclothes. Nothing is underpriced either - white plastic garden chairs for the balcony are €2 each.

J checks at the Eleonora, newly (well, last year) tarted up and relet. Long stay rate - €1300 a month. That's close to 50% more than last year's quote and I'm indignant. Did you ask if there's a single person in there actually paying that? It's the old Cypriot trick of negotiating a different price with each customer. Sometimes a manager will even ask one to remind him of the price agreed the previous spring.

As usual, the language of translation affords entertainment. So I am puzzled by an advertisement for tins of "pilled tomatoes" though I might have been a little quicker had I heard it aloud. Of course - peeled tomatoes. And the small fish labelled "smell" on the next page are pretty obvious, if a bit offputting. But the caveat on Lidl's special offers stating "all prices without decorations" continues to be a mystery.

Sunday, December 12/2010

Had intended to go to church, but it's raining so we settle for brunch and the Cypriot Sunday Mail. The paper brings the news that someone had left the reservoir gates open during the storm oon Friday night, so tonnes of water were lost to the sea instead of being captured in the reservoir.

Saturday, December 11/2010

Barely up at eight when two men arrive wiith a new television to replace the one that didn't get the satellite chanel LTV. They've also brought a brand new two burner hotplate, replacement for the single burner one we had before, as well as a stainless steel frying pan and a tin opener as we requested. Very nice.

Damp on the pavements and cloudy still, but we go to our favourite bakery for the large loaf of dense rye bread studded with sesame seeds. It's still hot. And we treaat ourselves to two koulouri, bagel shaped and similarly studded. Then Metro supermarket, now on Christmas hours so no early closing Saturday, and a quick stop at the market where we get a cauliflower and fresh figs, which I barely recognize, never having eaten them. Followed by a Greek coffee at Jimmy's corner café by the hairdresser's. Seems like we should be meeting Maggi and Magne here as we always used to.

Friday, December 10/2010

Unpacking and then a quick trip for more provisions. Not only Carrefour but also Smart and Elomas discount stores and Prinos greengrocers. All quite short walks, which will be handy. Unpacking always full of happy surprises as we find forgotten books or Christmas decorations - and in this case a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon and three bottles of Cypriot brandy. J had wondered why the stored box was so heavy!

Terrific thunderstorm with much needed rain, but we are cosy inside with spaghetti sauce simmering. Discover that the rain has brought a ceiling link - downside to top floor living - but staff very concerned and we borrow a wash tub to catch the drips.

J comments on the appropriateness of the Greek name for bank - prominently posted on the many banks we pass - "trapeza."

Thursday, December 9/2010

Up at 5, just before alarm. Good timing as the minicab arrives at 5:20, texting first to warn they're on the way. £20 to Heathrow 5, which is surprisingly good.

The flight is very quiet with the plane well under half full, so that anyone who wants two seats has them. A full English breakfast designed to last until supper, with wine later. Buy an international plug from duty free on board to replace the one left in Sousse. This one with USB charger connections.

The new airport in Larnaca is somewhat farther out than the old and the cabs are agreed that the price to the Sunflower is 15 euros. But we're travelling light so take the bus for a euro each, which takes us to Makarios Avenue, leaving quite a short walk to the Sunflower. A typical Cypriot welcome, with lots of warmth and a bit of confusion re length of stay and room, but soon sorted.

Fourth floor flat facing south, so lots of sun in the offing. And still time to nip over to Carrefour for some basics so we can make supper.

Wednesday, December 8/2010

Moving day again. Twenty Tunisian dinar left - pretty good - and make a fair trade at reception for 10 euro in change. They probably pleased to get rid of the coins. Time to book the seats for tomorrow's flight to Cyprus, bookable 24 hours in advance but not - never argue with a computer - 24 hours and one minute in advance. There's an hour time difference between Tunisia and the UK, so we cn book our 8:35 flight at 9:35. Then our 10:20 transfer arrives at 10:05 and we're off. About one and three quarter hours to tuis airport. Tunis itself has a particularly bad reputation for driving standards, but even on the motorway lanes are seen as a suggestion only, with many drivers straddling, and signalling lane changes apparently unheard of. It's easy to imagine missing the flight to become a reluctant witness to an accident.

This is not the EU or North America. No one at all interested in liquids being taken through security, including full bottle of water. (Interestingly, Israel, the gold standard for airport security, x-rays all luggage, including checked bags, as well as conducting personal interviews with those flying to Israel, but pays no attention to liuids. So one does wonder). A quiet flight with lots of space as we've booked the exit row seats. Sandwich and wine lunch.

Everything works very smoothly at Gatwick, though it's a first to see snow on landing here. Chilly on the train platform too. It's rush hour and crowded but we change to the tube at Farringdon, which takes us straight through to West Harrow on the Metropolitan.

Good to arrive early as it leaves us plenty of time to visit with Jean. Warm and cosy inside, and us spoiled with lovely Sri Lankan food. Nice to catch up on people and books. J's plumbing skills and bit of copper wire put to good use in repairs. I step on the bathroom scales. The readout says ERR. Error or a polite er, you really don't want to know?

Tuesday, December 7/2010

In the lobby Julia, one of the few English speakers here, tells us that the hotel is 99% sure to close in January, apparently for major renovations, as has happened with a hotel down the block. She's booked to return after Christmas but may end up at the Tej Marhaba. But yes, it's less cosmopolitan.

Attempt to confirm our airport transfers for tomorrow, in accordance with the instructions on the internet booking info saying that confirmation 24 hours in advance is COMPULSORY and VERY IMPORTANT and easy (no capitals here). We'd tried online last night, but the site simply advised us to try later. Call off and on through the day - regular and emergency numbers both unanswered. Turns out it's a statutory holiday. Try emailing the company headquarters, presumably in the UK. No one in the office until Thursday says the automated reply. Also celebrating Tunisian holiday? But about 4 pm there is an answer at the emergency number. Yes, yes. They'll be here tomorrow - 10:20. No problem.

Monday, December 6/2010

We take a walk north along the beach to the Tej Marhaba, the hotel the Scottish couple told us about. It turns out to be an immense complex, including a shopping malland an indoor as well as outdoor pools. It takes a while to find reception, reached by an escalator and a glassed in corridor past pub and restaurants. The receptionists aren't eager to deal with us but consent to get a porter to show us a room. It's nice enough, though not, actually, as nice as our present one, and the sea view is a bit distant - a couple of blocks away rather than at the end of the garden. The porter asks us, in the lift, where we are staying now, and gives us a witheringly pitying look when we tell him. Not really justified, although the paint here is new enough you can smell it.

Its assets we know in advance - many more English speaking guests, quite a few of whom come every year, and better English television - CNN and a film chanel as well as BBC World. But we're not quite left wanting to move here. It's enormous and forms its own little world, much more isolated from the slightly seedy but very much alive surrounding Tunisian city than we'd prefer. Standing in the lobby, large as an upscale airport lounge, looking out over the sunbathers, you could be in any very big hotel anywhere - Prague, Helsinki, Pattaya. Sousse vanishes.

And we establish that there's no free wifi. What? Oh, weefee. No. Not in the rooms or the lobby. But in one of the cafés. At a price.We take a walk north along the beach to the Tej Marhaba, the hotel the Scottish couple told us about. It turns out to be an immense complex, including a shopping malland an indoor as well as outdoor pools. It takes a while to find reception, reached by an escalator and a glassed in corridor past pub and restaurants. The receptionists aren't eager to deal with us but consent to get a porter to show us a room. It's nice enough, though not, actually, as nice as our present one, and the sea view is a bit distant - a couple of blocks away rather than at the end of the garden. The porter asks us, in the lift, where we are staying now, and gives us a witheringly pitying look when we tell him. Not really justified, although the paint here is new enough you can smell it.

Its assets we know in advance - many more English speaking guests, quite a few of whom come every year, and better English television - CNN and a film chanel as well as BBC World. But we're not quite left wanting to move here. It's enormous and forms its own little world, much more isolated from the slightly seedy but very much alive surrounding Tunisian city than we'd prefer. Standing in the lobby, large as an upscale airport lounge, looking out over the sunbathers, you could be in any very big hotel anywhere - Prague, Helsinki, Pattaya. Sousse vanishes.

And we establish that there's no free wifi. What? Oh, weefee. No. Not in the rooms or the lobby. But in one of the cafés. At a price.

Sunday, December 5/2010

To 9:30 Mass at St. Félix Church, just beyond the train station. We're about ten minutes early, which turns out to be a good thing, as there are preliminaries: it's necessary to establish how many people understand each of various languages which may be used. There are quite a few putting their hands up for French - possibly including people whose first language it isn't. Quite a few also for German, a surprising number for Polish, a few English and fewer Italian. So the Mass is a mixture, with readings in various languages, singing in German and Latin, the body of the Mass in French and a sermon in both French and English. The explanatory bits before and after are repeated by the versatile priest in several languages. Impossible to tell what his mother tongue is, though it's something European. The English and French sermon is provided by his black assistant.

The congregation is surprisingly large - about 175 people. there are chairs for nearly 200 and benches along the side. No kneelers, though the more devout, mostly Poles, kneel regardless. Despite, or perhaps because of, the language difficulties, it's all over in forty-five minutes. Besides, an evangelical congregation of some description takes over the building at eleven.

Another trip to the souq. First a futile inquiry re a new clasp for J's gold chain. Forty dinar?! Not likely. We eventually fare slightly better on the purchase of a tin of shoe polish. Two dinar, the young man says. but, we protest, it's only one dinar at the Magasin Général. This seems to take the heart out of the bargaining, and we end up with the shoepolish and a reel of thread for a dinar.

There are four clocks in the Sousse Palace lobby, purporting to represent the times in Tunisia, London, New York and Tokyo. the hour hands are, of course, at four different points - but the minute hands are all set at different points as well.

While tables are not assigned, people do tend to adopt a usual spot and return to it. Interestingly, one older couple have opted to sit side by side rather than opposite each other. Their table is near one end of the room and their chosen seats give them a shared view of the room as stage, and it is a theatre of considerable comedy - from costume to food choices - and occasional bits of bravery and gallantry.

Saturday, December 4/2010

Brave the souq again. The young man selling pashminas gives us information on what to look for and, after considerable bargaiing we buy two from him - for only one dinar each more than they cost at the prix fixe shop on the edge of the medina. But he has kindly prepared us for this: You may see them at the prix fixe for one dinar less but (he spreads his hands and looks disdainful) consider the quality. Ah yes

Friday, December 3/2010

At the Magasin Général we are waiting to pay when the man ahead turns and asks "Canadian?". We congratulate him on his finely-tuned ear. The couple, Billy and Margaret, are Scots, and outside we chat for a few minutes. They come to Tunisia for three months every year and are staying near the far end of the beach, north of us, at the Tej Marhaba. They're happy there and say that there are quite a few other English speakers; Scots, Irish, Welsh and English, many of them returning year after year. And, like many others, they've found that they can winter in Tunisia more cheaply than they can stay home - in their case in Glasgow.

Thursday, December 2/2010

This really is the day for El Djem (also googlable as El Jem, which produced a whole new set of hits). We take the 11:41 train from Sousse Ville station, a handy five minute walk from Sousse Palace Hotel. Deux billets, première classe. I can't remember the term for one way - but when we see the tickets it's printed on them - allée simple. First class costs a little more than standard but is more comfortable. We wait on the platform, watching a half dozen women and a man, all of them equipped with short picks, removing the weeds from the stones between the tracks. Must be a brutal job in the summer heat. How do other countries do this? A second man is repainting the white stripe along the platform edge, which we stop over when the train comes.

El Djem, a pleasant hour's worth of almost non-stop olive groves, with the occasional bit of plowed reddish earth and bits of what looks like tumbleweed. El Djem train station is a squared off white building with its name clearly written on it in roman as well as Arabic letters, so there's no mistaking it, and El Djem's world heritage prize can be seen clearly from the station. The amphitheatre that dominates the town is clearly visible so that no directions are necessary. But we decide to start with the museum, perhaps half a mile away and covered by the same admission ticket.

The museum is an excellent introduction to the history of El Djem, known as Thysdrus in the Roman period. It's also a world heritage site in its own right - an astonishing collection of mosaics, mostly from the third century. There are dozens of them, many of them enormous and amazingly complete. Some are geometric or with patterns of leaves or flowers, but most are complex scenes depicting gods and goddesses - the Dionysius figure is popular - or scenes of violence with animals such as lions and tigers. J is especially intrigued by a round inset of Apollo, looking much like a Christ figure with halo. There is a wide range of colours in use and quite sophisticated shading and three dimensional effects. In addition to the several rooms featuring mosaics on both walls and floors (as we feel guilty even walking and experience an Old Testament urge to remove our shoes) there is an entire house in situ on the excavation site, the foundations and floor mosaics (roped off in this case) original, but the walls extended up to give the original effect. Purple bougainvillea grow outside the white walls and catches the sunlight and we are, for much of the time, the only patrons there in the quiet autumn sun, unbelievably privileged as we look at leisure at these stunning mosaics nearly two thousand years old. And next to the house are the foundations of several more houses. The modern town of El Djem is built on top of the ancient one, and much of the Roman settlement must still be beneath the present shops and cafés. Unfortunately there is little to excavate from the previous Berber community from which Thysdrus took its name.

It's a ten minute walk to the amphitheatre which towers above the town. It is, as the book says, more impressive than the colosseum at Rome, on which it was modelled. It's slightly smaller than Rome's but a little more sophisticated in design and more complete as a ruin. It would be still more complete had it not been used a number of times in the town's rebellious history as a refuge for locals resisting invaders or defying the authorities who imposed heavy taxes. The latter, in 1695, breached the walls with cannon fire and later centuries saw further damage, following which the ruin supplied building material for local houses as well as Karouan's mosues. However what remains is still enormous. It originally seated 27 thousand to 30 thousand spectators, and a fair number of these seats have been replaced. It's also possible to walk, as we do, through the underground passages and the rooms used as cages for wild animals and storage for the corpses of gladiators. Here too we're almost alone and we climb well up
into the seating and sit for over an hour in the sunny silence, contemplating the rising tiers of arches opposite, watching the birds nesting in the pale amber rocks and listening to a rooster crowing in the town and pigeons cooing above us. We leave at sunset as the rock colour becomes deeper and richer in the final glow.

Our train doesn't leave until 7:15, so we wander about the town in the dusk, watching the bustle - vegetable markets (fennel bulbs and feathery tops, enormous half squashes, huge bunches of carrots), school children returning home, motorized bicycles buzzing past, men having coffee at the plastic tables outside the small cafés. Pharmacies (all goods behind the counters) and small and hardware shops (paint tins, tyres, rope and fuel pumps outside) abound and the streets are full of both pedestrians and cars - often very old Mercedes. The streetlights are widely spaced and glow in the dark. Near us a man in traditional Arab headdress sits on the hood of his car enjoying the social scene until his friend arrives and they drive off. Near our bench a café employee delivers coffee to a man in a parked car, collecting, as he does so, an empty cup left on the pavement's edge. A pickup truck is parked nearby with a donkey and a horse standing in the back, and a long bendy bus passes, young boys standing at the windows. It's happy and busy and no one pays us any attention. We're no longer tourists to be sold wares at inflated prices, just spectators at the theatre of life.

Our train arrives. We have - locals as well - been sent to the far track and recalled, a minute or two before it zooms in, to the near - a western stationmaster's nightmare. The "confort" class, half a dinar more for the two of us than premiere classe coming, looks remarkably like premiere classe, though it`s more crowded. We get the last two seats together, and this only because a young woman sitting opposite motions to the middle aged Tunisians sitting facing us, indicating that they should cease occupying four seats and give us space. With fairly ill grace the wife removes her stockinged feet from the seat opposite her and covers her face with a shawl, blocking out the sight of me. J sits across from her husband, who gathers in his water bottles and stares stolidly ahead. Our advocate resumes reading her paper back - Mille Soleils Splendides, the French translation of Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns.

But it's only an hour's trip to Sousse, and by 8:20 we're back in the dining room, just in time for the end of the dinner period.

Wednesday, December 1/2010

The plan was to go to El Djem today, but it's quite windy and overcast and one of the conflicting forecasts is for rain, wo we decide to postpone. After which it does rain here, though pretty briefly. Discover, in the process of checking the weather, that the wifi is good as far as the corridor outside our room. In fact it's good inside our room (with only a few lapses) if you sit on the luggage rack just inside the door - but no further.

Afternoon trip to the souq. I'm not really tough enough for it. Although another way to look at it is that the sellers are too aggressive for their own good, leaving one walking away from things that one is actually interested in buying rather than be bruised by the process. And interest is pretty hard to disguide from these experts, alert to the slightest flicker of the gaze. For the first time I find myself wishing I were cross-eyed. One of the most irritating factors is the rhetoric, which is essentially that used to discipline recalcitrant children: Why won't you answer me - Look at me when you speak - I asked you a question. The tone is a bit better than the words, but it's a relentless onslaught. The actual establishing of price is the least unpleasant aspect. The shopkeepers have discovered that the most effective means of selling is to establish a supposed relationship, in the pursuit of which they ask endless questions or even resort to physical touch as you pass their shops - where are you from, etc. On the other hand, there is some humour to be found. Several will open with "only five dinar" ($3.50 CAD, £2.10) as they gesture grandly at a rack of large leather handbags. It won`t be, of course, but it's an amusing staart.

The ice and snow continue to assail Europe and we note that Gatwick is closed until "at least Thursday morning". Well, it's another week until we fly there.

Tuesday, November 30/2010

Feel unduly spoiled here when we look at the temperatures elsewhere - though not Cyprus where the highs are still in the mid-twenties, and where we'll be in another nine days. Northern Europe is pretty cold, though, with parts of Scotland going as low as -20 and hundreds of schools closed, not by the cold but by snowfalls as great as 16 inches. The Telegraph online shows a very Canadian looking selection of UK photos this morning. BBC online features advice on driving on snow and ice to a readership few of whom would ever have seen snow tyres.

Drink the cheaper bottle of Tunisian - and are delighted to find it's much the better of the two.

Monday, November 29/2010

The walkway along the beach is lovely - wide decorated paving with plenty of room for several people walking abreast, with a huge stretch of fine sand beach and the Mediterranean on the east and the Corniche, with small cars, taxis and (patronised by tourists only) horse drawn calèches decorated with plastic flowers. There's also a little story-book "train" which will take people up to the Port El Kantaoui hotels just north of Sousse. In summer the beaches must be full but now there's plenty of space and the woven coconut matting beach umbrellas are left unattended, though mostly there are no sun loungers either - it's bring your own towel. Certainly warm enough, though. Every day it's been over 20in the shade and much warmer in the sun. There are a couple of families here with small children today, and one day we saw a diver emerge with a water-shiny octopus.

There's a rather different range of juices here. Thus we find, amongst the fruit concentrates, a cloudy lemon and almond mixture which proves delicious mixed with either water or vodka.

Sunday, November 28/2010

Hard to believe this is our last full week in Tunisia. Time to start thinking of side trips. Sousse is a good place to use as a base. It's not only on the long railway line that extends from Tunis to the south, but the station is in the city centre, only a couple of blocks from our hotel. It could hardly be more convenient.

Have begun reading John Mortimer's memoir - Clinging to the Wreckage. As entertaining as Mortimer usually is. Interestingly though, Wikipedia mentions that he was asked to leave Oxford after his second year as a result of a compromising leter sent to a sixth form schoolboy. Mortimer does reefer to emerging from a schooldays world of vague homosexual romance, but neglects to mention going down from Oxford prematurely.

Strong winds today, but surprisingly warm ones. The temperature is 18 when we get up and rises slightly during the day. The palm tree by our balcony is four storeys high, but while its fronds whip round its trunk scarcely moves. It must have an amazing root system - like an iceberg's underwater bulk.

Saturday, November 27/2010

As in a classroom without a seating plan, the guests in the dining room find habitual tables and form at least nodding acquaintance with their neighbours, made easier when these happen to share a language, though many people are fluent in more than one. by European or North American standards the dining room is overstaffed, and there's a clear hierarchy. There are the kitchen staff in white, who only appear behind the buffet, replenishing or removing trays, as well as at the carvery or the griddle as required. Then there are the red waistcoated waiters, bringing drinks as ordered as well as removing plates, somewhat too assiduously as it's easy to leave for more bread and return to find one's half finished plate tidied out of existence - though nobody minds if you start over at that point. Presiding over all are the dark suited maitre d's - always more than one, so it should be maitres. It's hard to know exactly what their role is. Are they supervising us or the waiters? Certainly they are too superior to concern themselves with such trivialities as an empty yoghurt basin at breakfast, although one was once forced to capture and remove a cat that had wandered in from the poolside. One supervisor is stationed near the door where a sign warns in three languages (ungrammatically in all three?), that food is to be eaten in the room and not taken out. However, patrons routinely leave with an orange or a pear - one giggling couple with a plate bearing about 30 dates - and sometimes more. The Irishwoman at the next table not only makes elaborate sandwiches - half a baguette containing sliced meat and cheese - but sends the waiter for aluminum foil to wrap them in.

Finish reading Donaldson's The Case Against Owen Williams. Enjoyed the book less for the plot than for the sense of small town New Brunswick, and the protagonist's hopeless knowledge that stereotype and simplicity would always outweigh the less compelling and more awkward claims of truth.

Friday, November 26/2010

An afternoon walk in the souq, itself a world heritage site. It's Friday, the Moslem holy day, but that hasn't closed mostof the shops or the outside cafés. There are locals everywhere, enjoying a little fast food on their day off, and a smaller number of tourists, unmistakeable as they`re more lightly dressed, though Tunisians sometimes wear bright colours as well. At a café just outside the entrance to the souq one European man sprawls next to his wife, his enormous bare belly spreading out over his shorts in defiant insult to local custom. Most tourists, though, are more discreet, with short sleeves and, more rarely, shorts.

There is a maze of lanes and it`s easy to get lost - and pointless not to as the market is no more than a kilometre across and there are a number of exits. Many of the shops and stalls have wares of interest only to locals - batteries, cheap watches, hair ornaments, underwear. Others are clearly aimed at tourists, with jewellery, kaftans, and packaged spices (though one disillusioned traveller online warns against finding oneself with packets of coloured powder. Leather goods are everywhere, with the rich scent of leather in the air from handbags, cases and ottomans, most at very good prices even before bargaining begins. We`re not actually in buying mode, though I would like a light cotton jacket. There are handmade woven cotton jackets here, but much heavier than I'm looking for. There's also pretty relentless "assistance" from shop owners, making browsing more or less impossible. Will have to steel myself eventually. J's much better at it than I.

Wednesday, November 25/2010

Take a walk and discover, on a side street, St. Felix Catholic church. Tunisia is 98% Moslem, and other religious buildings are pretty thin on the ground, almost nonexistant. The church itself doesn't look new, but the very small and plain cross on top of the steeple does appear as if it might have been a recent modification. Could it have been a church - perhaps under the French - and then lost and recently regained its ecclesiastical status? There's a caretaker who explains that he is Moslem, but very poor and with a family, and so he asked the priest for a job. The point is probably more that he is short of money than that he is embarrassed at having such a non-Islamic job. The church is a fair size but pretty plain, and appears to len d its facilities to an evangelical group that worships here as well as the Catholics.

There's an account in the news of an elderly woman in France who was locked in the loo for twenty days, trapped in the windowless room by a lock that jammed and surviving on lukewarm tap water. The sixty-nine year old woman banged on the pipes at night to alert neighbours in the apartment building, but it took them nearly three weeks to be more than annoyed by the disturbance. The most distressing aspect of the story? The description of a sixty-nine year old woman as elderly. Do think it might have helped to bang out SOS in Morse Code. Surely the neighbours couldn't have ignored that. Hope that her loo was larger than ours here. The toilet is an a blue and white tiled room four feet by three, and the only water available comes with the Arabic metal hosepipe provided for paperless cleaning of one's anatomy - unused by us as there is also toilet paper for the heathens. (We do have a very nice sink, tub and shower in the next room).

Tuesday, November 23/2010

Signs are always in Arabic - which might as well be curly decorations for all we can make of it (though we can read the Arabic numbers, which are actually Persian) - and French. In tourist areas hey are also frequently in English and German as well. Spotted one in Finnish. Translations vary in skill and spelling: thus a building site notice reads "Excusez le dérangement" and "Sorry for the distrub."

Find in my pocket a sheet handed out the other day by someone in clown regalia advertising a showing of Avatar in 3D, more or less next door to us, and presumably in French. Entrée 12 TD ($8.70 CAD, £5.25). Seems pretty reasonable, not that we were desperate to see it.

Reading aloud The Case Against Owen Williams, by Allan Donaldson, one of my old UNB professors, the book borrowed in London from Jean. Nice momentum, credibility and sense of period.

In the dining room J spots one of the guests carefully removing the chocolate decorations from a large cake and placing them on his own plate. As I leave the room, the head waiter, mistaking me for one of the German majority, asks "Schmeck?" and I have just enough memory of Mennonite cooking to translate this as "Tasted good?"

Signs are always in Arabic - which might as well be curly decorations for all we can make of it (though we can read the Arabic numbers, which are actually Persian) - and French. In tourist areas hey are also frequently in English and German as well. Spotted one in Finnish. Translations vary in skill and spelling: thus a building site notice reads "Excusez le dérangement" and "Sorry for the distrub."

Find in my pocket a sheet handed out the other day by someone in clown regalia advertising a showing of Avatar in 3D, more or less next door to us, and presumably in French. Entrée 12 TD ($8.70 CAD, £5.25). Seems pretty reasonable, not that we were desperate to see it.

Reading aloud The Case Against Owen Williams, by Allan Donaldson, one of my old UNB professors, the book borrowed in London from Jean. Nice momentum, credibility and sense of period.

In the dining room J spots one of the guests carefully removing the chocolate decorations from a large cake and placing them on his own plate. As I leave the room, the head waiter, mistaking me for one of the German majority, asks "Schmeck?" and I have just enough memory of Mennonite cooking to translate this as "Tasted good?"

Tuesday, n

Monday, November 22/2010

We've eight cats who have attached themselves to the hotel. They're hungry and slim but definitely not starving. Always on the lookout, and some of the guests feed them, but they also play with each other and lounge in the sun.

Walk down to the port just south of us, ignoring the repeated invitations to stop at the outside cafés. Not easy to read the posted menus without raising expectations unduly, but we do note that the price of a beer in the café outside Claridge's is 1.8TD ($1.30CAD, 80p). It's probably well short of a pint though.

There are several large working ships plus a couple of pirate ship style boats for tours of the harbour. A number of men are fishing, most with long black poles but one, a man sitting in his sock feet on the harbour edge, is using line and hook only.

Find the Magasin Général a block off the corniche. It is, as the name suggests, a general store, selling everything from automatic washing machines and china to basic groceries, including rather unperky produce. Water here is 250 to 350 millemes for 1.5 litres, making it approximaately 1/13 the price of bottled water at the hotel. But then it's pretty inexpensive staying here on half board. Guess they have to make the money somewhere. Walk back from the MG to our hotel along the beach. There's miles of fine sand. Some sunbathers, but not overcrowded.

At home we check the temperature on the balcony. Twenty degrees iin the shade but 50 in the sun! That's 122 Fahrenheit, though no one younger than we are still remembers that. We sit on the balcony and look past the einosaur trunks and luxuriant fronds of the palm trees to the deep blue streaked with aqua of the Mediterranean. Interesting: the very word "Mediterranean" sounds so romantic in a way that the German "Mittelsee" doesn't, but the meaning is the same - it's simply the sea in the middle of land.

Sunday, November 21/2010

Sunday is a little laid back here. It`s not a work day per se and many shops are closed, leaving the field to smaller family run ones and restaurants. A surprising exception seems to be shoe stores, with even quite large ones spilling their goods out onto the sidewalks. Shoes are impressively inexpensive here, if not impressive in quality. Plenty of signs on racks proclaiming everything for 10TD ($7.20 CAD or £4.46). Because this is not a school day there are young children playing in the lanes and families out enjoying a snack. Our street, named after former president Habib Bourguiba, and the area by the traffic circle are heavily touristed, though with many locals too, but the small streets and lanes only a block away have mainly Tunisians - drinking coffee, buying pastries, chatting. We stop at a little shop to buy a bottle of water - bonus size 1.75 litres. The man hands me two ml coins - implying that the price is 8 millemes. Fortunately we bought water here yesterday so I look at the change and say "sept". He looks, J says, sheepish, and hands over another coin. This is a standard complaint amongst tourists - comprehensible from both sides, of course, as the tourists hate being taken advantage of while many locals must see Europeans as so rich it shouldn't matter to them.

Breakfast was a little thinner than usual, with skeleton staff as most seem to have the day off. But at dinner there's a huge turkey at the carvery - gone despite the skilful carver's best efforts by seven o'clock. The printed card we were given on arrival says that dinner is from seven to nine but a bit of observation has shown that the actual time is more like six thirty to eight thirty, with some guests beginning to gather about six fifteen and doors actually opening at six twenty. So, as the turkey's disappearance shows, it's a bit hard lines on those who suppose dinner starts at seven. Though there's always plenty of other choices when one dish is finished.

Saturday, November 20/2010

The tourist information office is, conveniently, at the end of our block, not that the information itself is up to much. And it should be pretty well from source, as the building itself appears to be the Ministry of Tourism. Train times are posted on a bulletin board just a little too high to be readable, but we're not going anywhere today anyway. We do aquire a brightly coloured but not especially useful map of Sousse centre, showing our hotel as well as the post office, train stations and souq. Could be worse, but seems mainly designed to feature telephone numbers for sponsoring hotels and restaurants. Across the street from the tourist info is Claridge's Hotel, which had always interested me, despite a certain scruffiness, mainly because of its upmarket name. That is until I read online that the rooms have open showers but toilets are off the corridors. Not on next year's short list.

There's a nice park between the roundabout and the souq. Lots of benches, some in the sun and some in the shade of tall palm trees. A bit of an oasis, close to fast food vendors, shops and taxis - who park opportunistically across the ends of crosswaks which serve to funnel pedestrians into their ambit. Crossing the street here is a bit like doing so in Beirut. The crosswalks don't seem to be particularly protective but drivers are quite aware and don't regard pedestrians as targets. We sit on a part sun part shade bench for a spot of people watching. There's quite a variety, more local than tourist, though with plenty of both. Young local women seem almost equally likely to be wearing or not wearing the hijab. Obviously there's no pressure either way and groups may include both. Noticeably the locals of both sexes wear more clothes than the Europeans, presumably a combination of modesty and sensitivity to cold. What do they make of shorts or bare shoulders? Do they seem scandalous or just silly? We're much more conservatively dressed than that, but this is not a country in which we'd ever be mistaken for residents, everything from hair and skin colour to clothing proclaiming our otherness.

Friday, November 19/2010

Still in sleep mode, and lucky in that we have a fairly long stay and can afford to take a leisurely approach. We inquire about a map. Of Sousse? Non. Would there have been maps of anyplace else? I'm not sure whether it matters much whether one communicates with the reception desk - actually a sweeping bar rather than a desk - in English or French. Miscommuication seems inevitable. Thus J inquires about the posssibility of a remote control for the television - not really of overwhelming concern as there is only one English chanel - and is told that the guide has been waiting for us and had phoned our room but we weren't there. Heaven knows who we've been mistaken for. I give it a try and am asked what our room number is. Sixty? Oh yes - it's been sent. Untrue. Determine that the French for remote control is télécommande. But is language the essence of the problem?

Thursday, November 18/2010

Breakfast buffet the cholesterol special we remember from 2008 in Monastir. Theyère happy to put as many eggs as you want in an omelet cooked ias you watch, but how many eggs does one want in a three week period? It's an east (or in this case south) west mix. There's the presumably local yoghurt, cheese, olives, sausage slices and onions. Or the eggs, croissants, baguettes (whole wheat ones if you're quick but these are prized by the Germans too), sliced cake, jam. As well as two breakfast cereals - one cocoa coloured and one bleached ghost white. Neither attracting much attention. And coffee, various teas, cocoa, hot milk. The usual sugar water "juice" substitute. Last night's oranges are gone, though, leaving the elderly apples. Do too many people pocket breakfast oranges?

We should be exploring but we've both been hit by fairly miserable colds, so we catch up on sleep instead.

Wednesday, November 17/2010

Four alarm beginning. That is, the alarm on the mobile goes off at four, so that we can leave at ten to five. The street is smoother than the sidewalk, which gives us a good surface to wheel the suitcases on as there's no traffic yet. First train out of Swiss Cottage gets us to London Bridge station in time for the 5:50 train to Gatwick, actually ahead of the morning rush hour.


Our flight is at nine from Gatwick's north termminal and it's not at all full. I've booked - with some difficulty online 24 hours before - the window and middle seats on exit row 12. Had I known that the plane would be half empty I'd have gambled on booking the window and aisle seats. But visions of conducting conversations over the girth of a stranger seated between us who might be, unaccountably, not willing to trade seats. It's supposed to be a three hour flight - therefore short haul, meriting only a cold bun with cream cheese and tomato, and a cup of coffee.

We're in to Tunis early. Long queues at unprepared immigration desks and a hand baggage x-ray on exit. Well, of course there was the time a man flew in to Gatwick with a live grenade. Checked luggage still not unloaded forty inutes after landing, but that leaves time to find the WCs and take out some Tunisian dinars from the cash point. The transfer man is waiting for us. We seem to be his only passengers, but a man with two silver coloured cases, who clearly hasn't booked a transfer but wants a ride to Sousse, turns up. Much loud dispute in French, but in the end he comes. The driver is a young man in a dark suit - the car an extremely dirty (outside) five seater. Interesting. In Canada - outside Toronto - the driver might have worn jeans but the car would have been clean. It's a good hour and a half drive, on six lane highway past spiky little palm trees, olive groves and flowering shrubs.

Sousse is a spreading city, Tunisia's third largest, on the coast, the signs mostly in Arabic or French - though there is the Amen Bank as well as The English Pub for those who don't qute want to get away from it all.

We register at the hotel, on a form that wants all the info on the immigration form and then some. I leave some blanks - our date of marriage, for instance. Why do they want to know that anyway? It would be easier to invent a date than to buy a gold ring if decency is their concern. The hotel itself (Sousse Palace) seems fairly large, though there are only three storeys of rooms, most if not all with sea view. We're on the second floor, looking out over the key-shaped pool and, immediately behind it, the Mediterranean beach. Downstairs the lobby is enormous with endless marble, massive crystal chandelier and loud sports TV screens and thick cigarette smoke, though some tables - it would seem individual tables rather than areas - are marked no smoking. The happy discovery after dinner is that the lobby area, though not the rooms, has free wifi.

Dinner is from seven to nine, with lots of choice, none of it especially exciting. In spite of the fact that the time is an hour later than GMT, we don't last long after dinner but fall asleep watching BBC World, another happy surprise.

Monday, November 15/2010

We have a wander past the old book and print shops between Charing Cross Road and St.Martin's Lane, and find ourselves growing covetous. There's a large Hogarth print of Gin Lane. Can it be original? How many were there? And hand coloured Shepard illustrations of Winnie the Pooh. Then to the Portrait Gallery where we limit ourselves to the modern gallery, which changes frequently. We're both taken with a portrait of Sid James - painted with his face on a television screen, with the Radio Times and a Woodbines cigarette packet incorporated as collage elements. There's also an interesting exhibition of photographs by Dmitri Kasterine, including portraits of a young Margaret Drabble, Tom Stoppard, Kingsley and Martin Amis, Graham Greene, and a long-haired elderly Robert Graves.

Before we go out to dinner Maggi phones from Norway, her call coming through on the Cypriot mobile, which has fortuitously been left on. She'll meet up with us in Cyprus in January.

By tube again to Soho to have dinner with Alexander (just back from a whirlwind tour with Nigel Kennedy) and Flora. As we take the lift at Belsize Park underground station, two other women are as amused as I am by the didactic tones of the recorded message. "You have reached the lower level," the voice says, with pedantic slowness. "Exit, turn right...." As if we would otherwise have hit the wall as we turned right without exiting the lift.

We meet at the Gay Hussar on Greek Street. It's in what was once, quite literally, a red light district, immediately next to a Church of England refuge for women in distress. The Gay Hussar is a Hungarian restaurant dating back about sixty years. (When A first gave me its name over the phone I misheard it as "gay bazaar" - or bizarre? - and googled with predictable results. It has a long history as a meeting spot for left wing intellectuals, and the scene of many political plots. The two rows of tables are elbow to elbow, so that it's easy to be drawn into the next table's conversation, though the noise fosters intimacy at one's own table as we lean in to hear each other. The walls are lined with political cartoons featuring the left wing cast and the bookcases over the doors to the kitchen are spilling over with signed copies of works by former habitués. The food is mostly Hungarian and the wine list, A points out, divided into "Hungarian Wines" and "Wines from Other Countries." The house Hungarian red is quite good, though. Flora and I have the roast duck, A duck liver, and J stuffed cabbage. After dinner we head a couple of streets over to a spot A knows that does indeed, as promised, have excellent coffee. So we part with plans for a next meeting.

Quote from Baronness Kennedy in the New Camden Journal, as she pays tribute to the late Michael Foot, a man with integrity seldom found in contemporary politicians: "to spin is to deceive and to deceive is to fail."

Sunday, November 14/2010

Many options this morning. Regretfully we pass up the high mass at Westminster Cathedral and the choir. And we don't join the royal family at the cenotaph for the Remembrance Sunday service. It's a moving ceremony with veterans and bands and wreaths laid by the queen and all of her children as well as the prime minister and other political party leaders. We do get to follow on television though, remembering that when we watched two years ago there were still a very few World War I veterans left - but no more.

The program we've been waiting for, though, comes at noon, just after we've had brunch - the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, final race of the season, with Red Bull's Vettel on pole. Great coverage, with lots of pre and post commentary. It's good to have a final race where the driver of the year is still undecided. There are four statistical possibilities for the championship, with Spain's Alonso - not our favourite - the statistical favourite. But the race is a good one and the new champion is a tearful young Sebastian Vettel.

Saturday, November 13/2010

We'd thought about going down to the City to see the golden coach and procession - parade really - for the new lord mayor of London, but we wouldn't have been back in time to see qualifying for tomorrow's Formula 1 Grand Prix, and it's the last race of the season. Besides, we get quite a good view of the parade, commentary included, on TV. And then of course there's qualifying itself - with Vettel on pole for the race tomorrow and the championship up for grabs. We barely see the final result before it's time to leave for Jenny and Doug's.

Out by train to Thames Ditton to visit the extended Clarke family. Emma and Giles and little Jasmine are staying with Jenny and Doug while their house is being remodelled. Doug takes Joe over to see the renovations of their place and also Laura and Nathan's loft conversion. A more than full time job for him, as well as plenty of work on the parts of Giles and Nathan. Jenny's mum is there and Laura and Nathan arrive with the three boys. Cody and Jasmine aren't babies any more. Cody is quite a self-sufficient little nearly two year old with a sweet smile - and a tendency to put things he finds in the bin, including, Nathan fears, his missing wedding ring. Jasmine, a few days younger, is very chatty now, explaining that Daddy is in their "holey" house - uninhabitable as the construction is still in progress. She's missed her afternoon nap and is tired enough that she suggests brushing her teeth - the usual preliminary to bedtime. Jenny brings in fish and chips from the neighbourhood shop and there are thirteen of us round the enormous dining room table and much laughter.

Home by train with a borrowed guide to Tunisia in hand.

Friday, November 12/2010

Over by tube to King's Cross. I'm now used to not feeling too old if a young man offers me his seat. It's almost always an Asian boy, and part of the whole Asian culture of respect for older people. Today, though, a Chinese girl insists that J take her seat. I always wish I could sketch the random collection of six or seven people sitting opposite me on the tube - such an amazing cross-section of the very multicultural city that London is - bless them all. Today there is a girl wearing rhinestone slippers and ring with a (presumably fake) pearl the size of a marshmallow.

At the British Library we see an exhibit on the development of the English language. There are 400 million people with English as a first language, but 1.4 billion for whom it is the second language. Does that include those for whom it is 3rd or 4th? We've noticed in the winter that it is many people's second language. When a Norwegian speaks to a Greek Cypriot, it's almost always in English. Or as one Dutchman said, "Of course I speak English - who speaks Dutch?" The exhibit does contain some of the earliest works in English, I'm more interested in some of the other aspects. There are maps showing how the waves of immigration supplanted the native Celtic, especially the early Scandinavian influences. Both Kent and the Isle of Wight, homes of my great great great grandparents, had early Jutish settlements. For example Rolvenden, home of the Kentish ancestors, takes the "den" in its name from the Jutish for swine pasture. Thus also Benenden and Tenterden in the same area. It seems pretty likely that some of the untraceable ancestors were Jutes. There are also tapes to listen to with different accents - such as recreations of the Shakespearian period - and different slang. Thieves' argot and gay slang - the latter the origin of the term "naff". Before leaving I read the sample passage to add my own accent to the study.

Thursday, Novembe 11/2010

Remembrance Day and as dour a day as it seems usually to be. We're still at home when the television takes us by surprise at 11 o'clock wit Remembrace observances. Two years go we were in Waterloo Station as people came to a stop for two minutes. Now the news shows buse and cabs a well as pedestrians stopped for the silence. We're wearing Canadian Legin poppies from Canada House. They're noticeably different from the British ones - brilliant red with a felted surface as opposed to a muted red paper with a green leaf.

Alexander texts with a suggestion that we meet Monday for a meal.r

Wednesday, November 10/2010

To Jean's in West Harrow. Happily, it's dry, though there's a chill wind. Warm inside, though - and a lovely Asian feast as well as good conversation. We're lucky Jean could fit us in, as she has extra practices for a coming concert. Shanthi joins us after work. She's lucky to have her new jog, having survived the swingeing civil service cuts that saw out many of her colleagues, but the new position is pretty stressful, involving the design of further cuts and redundancies. She's brought aubergine and chicken korma to add to the lamb cury and all the vegetable dishes - sweet potatoes, green beans and leeks - as well as dhal and cucumbers in yoghurt and fragrant rice. The table looks like it's set for Thanksgiving - and we're nearly, but not quite, too full for the apple crumble and custard.

And to top it all off, we leave with a borrowed book by Alan Donaldson one of my old professors. And yes, he does look old in the photograph at the back, but probably hasn't aged any more than the rest of us over the last 40 odd years. I didn't think of him as being especially young when I was a student, but he must, actually, have been only in his mid-thirties.

Tuesday, November 9/2010

Visit the Natural History Museum. We've tried before,but it's usually more crowded. This time there's no school break, though there are plenty of excited children in bright school pullovers, clustering aroun the many dinosaur reconstructions and trying all the hands-on exhibits in the human perception area. There's plenty of info, much of it presented in visually impressive form - e.g. the rati of hormones to blood shown as a cylinder of quite realistic blood coloured fluid accompanied by a teaspoon of white liquid. Or the poster indicating thesize of a dinosaur by showing it stretched out over a double-decker bus.

Over to Asda or ine anda look at the mobiles. Some pretty good prices but, despie the assurances of the helpful young man, nne of the Nokias prove to be tri or quad band - thus they're unusable in North America.

Mushroom and aubergine spaghetti for dinner.

Monday, November 8/2010

W et and chilly - and we note that this is not the case in Sioux Lookout, where temperatures seem to be hitting the teens.

Dave has a meeting just off Trafalgar Square, so we head down to the National Gallery and meet him on the steps. Time for a quick visit to the gallery. Interestingly, Dave is intrigued by the changes in men's dress over the centuries.

Then jam-packed tube to Paddington. Dave has found a nice Victorian-looking pub with fireplace, local clientele and good food - fish and chips (J), chicken and leek pie (me) and beef brisket sandwich (D. Good bitter. Tea afterward in Dave's hotel room - the Cardiff. We work off the meal by climbing the four storeys to his room. Good view from the top though. Dave calls home on Skype and the kids have a great tie making faces and hamming it up.

Sunday, November 7/2010

We've bought a week's wifi from the Welby, which enables us to make arrangemets with Dave, who flew in to London early this morning. We go down to Mass at Westminste Cathedral. Choir lovely as always, with boy sopranos. Now up to three collections (!). Though it is a pretty expenive place to maintain and, unlike Westminster Abbey it (and all the Catholic churches) is free to the visiting public.

Meet Dave at the Marble Arch Marks and Spencer. Then we go for coffee and take the tube back to our place for some supper and a pint. Nice relaxed meze, and Dave doing quite well in the face of jetlag.

Saturday, November 6/2010

Take the netbook over to Swiss Cottage Library, which is meant to be free. Fifteen minutes' confusion as the password of the day fails to work. Turns out that someone has misspelled the password card on the library desk - misinforming the public in letters six inches high.

We go down to St. Katharine's Dock to see the launch of a full-sized boat made of heavy paper. The giant origami exercise is to begin at 12:30, with launch time set for 3. We're there a couple of minutes after 3, in time to see a white boat close to 20 feet long but not much more sophisticated than a child's paper boat, a little lopsided and dented but strong enough to hold a man who is risking not death - he has a lifejacket - but a pretty cold dunking. The paper boat is towed slowly past the dock by a small motorboat, to the clapping of a few dozen spectators.

Down to Queensway by tube. A little sad, as we remember it - scene of our first meal together - as a quite different road. It was gritty and alive - full of tiny shops spilling out onto the pavement and aromatic little family owned restaurants. A street that didn't sleep until the early hours of the morning. It's still busy but now there are fast food chain restaurants and much less sense of village where people live.

Dark by five and the staccato of fireworks left over from last night.

Friday, November 5/2010

Guy Fawkes Day, though rain is predicted later in the day, so we probably won't head out to Clapham Common for the fireworks. Jenny texts to suggest we meet up at Waterloo Station late this morning. First to the bank to sort the card problem and then, with a bit of extra time, to Canada House on Trafalgar Square, pausing on the way to admire the model of Nelson's ship in a large bottle (4 tons in all) on the fourth plinth. Lucky stop as it happens, as there's an email from Dave saying he'll be in London Sunday.

Collect Jenny and we head to the Museum of London for coffee and a look at some of the new displays, many based on recent London excavations. There's a movingly attractive and modern looking bust of a woman based on a skeleton found in a lead coffin. We're interested to learn that when the Romans left in the fifth century London fell into deserted ruins until the Saxons began to arrive.

Then lunch at the Olde Cheshire Cheese. None of us has been here for years, and it would be a classic pub even without the astonishing sign proclaiming it to have been rebuilt in 1667 after the Great Fire. Good chat and catch up time. Jennycatches a bus to Waterloo and we go home via Camden Town.

Rain and bonfire night fireworks beyond the trees outside our window as we make dinner.

Thursday, November 4/2010

Tube to Camden Town for setting up part two. The intent is to go to Inverness St. market, but we never actually get there because there's a new Lidl store on Camden High Street with some fairly impressive sales - a kilo of bananas for 40p.

Over to the South Bank. It's seventeen degrees and a warm breeze off the Thames. Antique prints for sale at an outdoor stall (prices between £15 and £75). There`s a nice one of Hungerford Market, which was bought in the 1860's for the construction of Charing Cross Station. Collect the schedule for the plays at the National Theatre.

On Finchley Road, near the station, a young chalk artist is quickly completing a crucifixion picture with a sky blue background. When we come back past it, he's gone, but there's a cup beside his work saying "homeless soldier".

The HSBC bank card, which worked yesterday, fails to work twice at Sainsbury's and once at Waitrose - so it will be locked now.

Wednesday, November 3/2010

Oddly enough, the day begins, technically, with last night's dinner, so to speak. That is, it's past midnight Tuesday when we board and are served our meal. The extra money from this year's fair increase has clearly not been spent on the food - a bland, overcooked penne with chicken and a strange salad involving peas and bits of what looks, but doesn't really taste, like peach. The Cabernet is quite all right, though.

We arrive to mild weather (we wear jackets only because it's easier than carrying them) - and a partial tube strike. But not much hassle with the revised route. Rates at the Welby have risen, though, a hefty 16%. We are supposedly getting an upgraded room, but it looks reasonaably basic - though extremely clean. Full stove, though; not just two burners with a mini oven.

Down to Sainsbury's for a few basics - and the pleasure of a huge range of cheeses. We pick a Stilton, an extra-old cheddar and one identified as Parlick Fell sheep's cheese, lucky to have similar tastes. Also olives, yoghurt, bananas, peanut butter and seeded bread.

The leaves have turned orange and bronze, and we're shuffling through them, but there are plenty of flowers still blooming, including beautifully scented roses.

Tuesday, November 2/2010

Janet picks us up at one and we have a leisurely lunch at Smitty's before the airport. It's been ages since we've seen her, so a nice visit. At the airport discover that I've failed to take the penknife off my keychain and put it in the checked suitcase. It's a little Swiss Army one - losing its red paint but of sentimental as well as practical value since Dad gave it to me, so J acquires an envelope from the currency exchange people and I mail it to Ian.

The airport in Toronto has free wifi - a fair drawing card when choosing airports for transfer. A page of limited liability terms, but it works well.

November 1/2010

Alarm goes off at 4 am. Telephone proves to be disconnected, as we suspected. An hour's worth of last minute jobs - antifreeze in the plumbing, scraps to the birds, pull the main power switch.

In town we pick up coffee to take to the train station. Station is overstating it considerably. It's next to the nice building that was once a station, but is a prefab about 24 feet squared. A chatty worker explains that he has to leave to help with the hospital's move to its new quarters. Translation: he is leaving us in charge of the waiting room. It is warm enough, heated by construction heaters fixed to the ceiling. There's even a sink, which has been clearly used as an ashtray. The coffee, as 5:30 becomes 6 and then 7, seems not to have been a brilliant idea. Two small compartments, neither of which appears to be a washroom, one padlocked and the other with a fist-sized hole underneath the doorknob. There's a bag of recycle tins in the corner and, interestingly, about a dozen and a half empty wine bottles. Signs of solace for the night crew or salvage from the dining car for a home winemaker short of bottles? No decor as such, but 6 copies of the same notice re scheduled time changes for trains from Hornepayne, as well as a bilingual no smoking notice, the French part carefully amended by hand to read "il n'est pas interdit de fumer dans cet Ètablissement."

At 7:30 the train arrives, and it's not crowded, so we get to spread out a bit. The sun has just risen and the first ponds we pass still have a partial film of ice on them, giving way to open water as it warms up. At Ottermere and Malachi there are boats still in the water and cottagers heading back from rail-only access spots. Two golden eagles soar off on our right.

The car is less than half full and we're sitting near two Chinese men, one young and busy with a computer and the other older. They've made themselves thoroughly at home - the older man heading off to the washroom with his coffee and the younger spreading out the snacks. We debate their origin. The book the young man is reading is in Chinese, as is the writng on the crisp packet, and all their conversation is in Chinese. On the other hand the travel mugs and the resealable plastic container full of peeled oranges suggest a domestic journey. Or is this a Leonard Cohen moment - tea and oranges that come all the way from China?

Bus to Ian and Susan's and then over to Jennifer and other (boyfriend) Ian's place. Lovely meal but almost asleep in front of the tv later - maple liqueurs or the 4 am start?

October 31/2010

The trip hasn't quite begun - but the travel hazards have. We have an email from VIA rail informing us that the train that should have left Toronto heading west at 10 pm last night will be leaving at 7 this morning instead. Keep phoning VIA for updates. No Hallowe'en prank, unfortunately. The real problem is not that we will be leaving tomorrow instead of just after midnight tonight. It's that the telephone has been cancelled as of November 1 - which the phone company will probably interpret as one minute after midnight. So as of midnight we will have no telephone, no pathetically crap dial-up internet, and no idea how late the train will be or when we should leave for the station. We can (and do) keep checking throughout the day. The last estimate is 6 a.m. tomorrow - but will this change during the night? Memo to self: next year suspend the phone from the day after anticipated departure.