Sunday, January 25/2015

Greek election the big event of the day, and by bedtime we have presumably reliable results. Tsipras and the Syriza win big. Just short of a majority with 149/300 seats, but in Europe's patchwork coalitions pretty impressive. Ran on an anti-austerity platform that was highly popular. No doubt that Greece had been doing many things wrong and no doubt also that the most vulnerable paid the highest price. But how much debt relief would be possible, even if the creditors were so inclined, with Spain and Italy looking on and Ireland huffing indignantly. Will be interesting.

Saturday, January 24/2015

Hotel much fuller, although two of the Norwegian couples not here this year. One has moved to a slightly more central spot due to the wife's disability - now in a wheelchair. The other couple, our next door neighbours, Arvid and Eva, aren't here this year but are expected back next. Lots of young people round though, and as a result they seem to have turned up the thermostat on the water heater. It's almost reliable now, in the mornings at least.

Friday, January 23/2015

Three petrol station owners arrested over arson attacks last summer. The target: a fellow petrol station owner who had failed, even after threatening texts, to raise his prices in accordance with the others. In retaliation, his house and his wife's car were subjected to arson attacks. So, while Cyprus can be violent, tourists are seldom at risk - unless, of course, they're young, male, and hitting on Cypriot blokes' girlfriends. In which case little sympathy due.

Thursday, January 22/2015

Brief winter seems well and truly over. Short sleeve shirt weather now - and head for the shady side of the street.

Over to Smart to see what the procedure is re our draw ticket. There are actually two Smart stores side by side, one that has mainly non-perishable food - coffee, tinned veg, pasta, cereal, nuts, dried fruit, olive oil, etc - as well as things like shampoo and toothpaste, and the other a sort of dry goods cum general store place with pots and pans, towels, light bulbs, candles, toys, and such. They're both discounters with prices usually, but not always, better than the supermarkets. The dry goods place is much less busy and one of the two women working there speaks very good English. Yes, just use it as a voucher. No cash back but you can ask for things from the dry goods store to be taken over and rung up with your order. Then use the ticket to pay. Rather exciting, and requires a little thought first. We're only here for a couple of months so no point in stashing away enough tins for a siege. Still less point in acquiring heavy things to take with us when we leave. The young assistant is gratifyingly pleased for us, saying Bravo.

Pink grapefruit from Prinos so succulent. Bag of 18 for €2 (£1.52, $2.82 CAD).

Wednesday, January 21/2015

Before meeting J, who is walking morning laps on the beach, for coffee, I check our lottery ticket from the Christmas period draw. Tickets come free with a purchase of some minimum (€25 or some other amount we don't usually spend at once since we have to carry everything) from the Smart discount store near us. The draw was January 14, so I'm not as late as it might seem. Last four digits must match (heaven knows what the first two digits are meant for). Had in fact got as far as taking a photo of the winning ticket list the other day with the ipad mini, which is better than with the occasional previous tickets we've had that were probably just forgotten until we cleared out the drawers on leaving Cyprus. And, there it is - our number at the top of the list. Entitling us, it would appear, to €200 worth of purchases. Take photo of numbers and ticket to show J, who, somewhat to the surprise of both of us, reads it the same way.

Tuesday, January 20/2015

Remember that we are only 120 miles or so from Syria, usually an impossible distance in these days of war, but in peace time less than an hour's flight, most of which is ascent and descent. Were the distance filled with land instead of water, everything would be different. As today, when the Cyprus Mail reports that a 39 year old woman (why do newspaper reports always regard precise age as so important?) is arrested for attempting to sell her daughter's passport, having previously succeeded in selling her own passport to a Syrian woman for €2500.

Monday, January 19/2015

Coffee with M. Then we check out a couple of charity shops. J always looking for a 6 volt charger to use with radio that took batteries. Everything but 6v always on offer. Then stop at M's for nibbles and brandy. She has both south and west facing balconies, so always sun.

Come home to find that the sheets have been changed. Can hardly object, but the theory is that it's done weekly. Last time it went to 12 days before I finally got tired of letting lethargy take its course and asked. Recognising that Venera is overworked - but all the same. This time it's only been five days. Suspect them of keeping no records at all. Certainly you never see the girls with any notes. Only Kiki, in afternoon and evening reception, writes things down. And it's no surprise that she follows up what she writes down.

Sunday, January 18/2015

Playbooks still behaving oddly, though not quite bricked, as we first feared. (For non geeks, bricked as in made as useless as a brick, of value as paperweight only). Upsetting in a number of ways, but particularly annoying as we have 6 days left on ebook library version of Party of One, and it's much handier if we can each read it on a separate tablet. Ipad mini still ok.

Beautiful herb crusted salmon fillet for dinner. Lidl may be discounter but some of its food is prime.

Saturday, January 17/2015

Bit damp for outdoor coffee, having rained in the night, so we don't. M stops in for a drink in the pm, though. All of us prefer the cheaper type of Cyprus brandy to themore expensive - less refined means more flavour, like the difference between light and dark rum.

Efforts by management and a techie, who speaks too little English to question, a mixed  blessing. Router moved and presumably otherwise altered. Can now receive signal in flat without benefit of microwave antenna but tendency of wifi to cut out frequently without apparent reason. AND both Blackberry Playbooks developed simultaneous severe neurological problems at the same time as the change. Coincidentally? One was turned on at the time the new regime began but the other was off. Sibling sympathy? Ipad mini unaffected.

Friday, January 16/2015

Phone call from Maria at the travel agency while we're having coffee with M. She's found us a four night (meaning 3day) break in Rome for €210 (£161, $292 CAD) each, which is cheaper than we could go to Egypt, an hour's flight away, or Lebanon, even closer. From Paphos, which is awkward, and with Ryan Air, one of the nastier cheapie airlines, but we go for it anyway. Visa extension would be nice but we have little faith in it actually happening in time. Cypriot bureaucracy is legendary.

Thursday, January 15/2015

Spot some fairly attractive offers in a travel agency window. Maria, the only employee in, is about to go for lunch but stops to talk to us, and is not only pleasant but remarkably quick about picking up what we are looking for - which is basically a cheap but interesting visa run before mid-February. Cairo is possible, or Rome. She'll check more prices and call.

Dinner at Vlachos with Jane and Bill, Ailsa and Harry. First visit this year and always a pleasure. Best part is we're treated like Cypriots, welcome friends to be well fed. Very good food and lots of meze style starter dishes. I have moussaka and J lamb kleftiko. Actually mine alone would have done both of us. As usual, A&H have brought little plastic bags for leftovers for their numerous pets, six dogs plus cats. A Noah's ark of rescued animals. And, as with all Cypriot restaurants, there's no hurry - a meal is an occasion.

Jane and Bill get serious with the menu before the taverna fills up

Wednesday, January 14/2015

Suspect that, given that we have less than five weeks left to extend the visas or leave the country, we're going to have to opt for leaving the country, temporarily at least. Last year Mr Andreas said confidently that he could get us an extension with immigration if he had a month's notice, so this year we brought up the subject a week before Christmas, complete with all the documentation, thinking nothing to lose. And also expecting nothing much. But Mr Andreas has apparently visited immigration, telling us at the beginning of the week that he had been and that we would need to go to Nicosia. We assumed this would be the bureaucratic run around and were dismissive, but he looked so crestfallen that we asked if he really thought it would work. Yes, yes, just that the office is in Nicosia. So in a couple of days, when the weather is nicer....

Does he plan to come with us, I ask J. Otherwise why worry on our behalf about the weather? But more probably he is buying time to write a required letter.

Tuesday, January 13/2015

Aerial? For whatever reason, the tablets all work better on top of the (non-operating-at-the-time) microwave when we're in the flat. Not nearly as well as they work in reception, where any serious use takes place, but better than anywhere else in the flat. Closer to the router - which it is, very slightly? Obvious electronic answer or just mystery?

Monday, January 12/2015

J sitting next to me in reception reading, online, Cypriot financial newspaper, The Financial Mirror, with the following indicators of the country's financial distress:

➡️Cyprus Airways closed down on Saturday after the troubled national carrier's last flight was operated from Athens to Larnaca on midnight Friday, ending decades of squandering public money and abusing EU aid. 

➡️The Registrar of Companies and Official Receiver has struck off 84,780 companies to date due to lack of reporting or wilful liquidation as some were dormant and had no directors. [The decision is probably the result of the EUR 300 annual tax levied on all companies in recent years, as part of the cash-strapped government’s efforts to find additional sources of revenue, following the EUR 10 bln bailout plan imposed by the Troika of international lenders.]

➡️Deposit rates in Cyprus remained the highest within the Eurozone in November, with lending rates the sixth lowest among the Euro member state, according to Central Bank of Cyprus data. [The interest rate for household deposits of up to one year decreased to 2.59% compared with 2.67% in the previous month, compared to the average Eurozone rate of 1.05%. The interest rate for non-financial companies rose to 2.53% compared with 2.49% in the previous month, the highest in the euro area, while the corresponding average of the Eurozone was 0.41%]

.➡️..according to Eurostat, Cyprus’ rate of unemployment marginally rose to 16.8% in 

November compared to 16.5% in October "1.81% m-o-m) and 16.6% in November 2013 (1.21% y-o-y). 

The age group most affected was the under-25 (at 34.8%), while the Eurozone and EU unemployment remained unchanged on a monthly basis at 11.5% and 10%, respectively. 

Cyprus ranked third amongst all EU counties, while the highest joblessness rates were observed in Greece (25.7%) and Spain (23.9%). 

Of course the interest rates are not distressing to the population, but may be a part of the problem. And the Cyprus Mail columnist who goes by the name of Patroclos is scornful on the topic of Cyprus Airways' demise:

➡️We believe it would be better to celebrate its 68-year life during which it made quite a few of our countrymen very rich, provided well-paid, unproductive employment to thousands of losers who could command only the minimum wage in the open market, gave social standing to countless nobodies appointed to its board and allowed union bosses to secure privileges for their members that would have been unheard of in any sane country.

It was very successful as an employment agency even though it cost the taxpayer in excess of €100 million to keep going in the last few years, not to mention the rip-off air-fares we were forced to pay in the pre-open-skies days when it engaged in price collusion, as a matter of policy, with other airlines. But the Cypriot taxpayer has always been stupidly generous and feels no resentment over his money being wasted on one of the world’s most badly-managed airlines.

Meanwhile our own financial obligations are remembered. The month's rent was is due, entailing a stop at a bank willing to dispense at least €500 in one go, thus limiting the access charges. Fortunately there is one, the Hellenic Bank, down the road. Some give as little as €200, and running out of money at the cash points is not unknown. But we're in luck.

Sunday, January 11/2015

Maggi has invited us to the Sunday buffet at the Flamingo, and arranged to collect us after she has been to "Sunday meeting" - about 12:30. Single slice of toast for breakfast as this seems very early for the main meal of the day, but need not have worried about our ability to engage in indecent amount of consumption when confronted with buffet which exceeds the laudatory descriptions people have given of it. The food we skip looks  as good as that we choose, but it's obvious we can't hold everything - soup (delicious), salad, four kinds of meat at the carvery, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes and seven different kinds of vegetable, all in large round silver coloured tureens with lids keeping them piping hot. So we're selective but not delicate eaters. And there's a choice of desserts, which we should be unable to hold but aren't, all of us opting for apple crumble with lavish amounts of warm custard. We keep expecting hordes of people to join us, but the largish dining room remains nearly empty. Does this go on for hours and are we extremely early? If not, what on earth happens to all the leftovers? Have visions of their being incorporated one way and another into meals for the hotel's half board guests for the remainder of the week, although surely with some diminishment of quality. Brussel sprouts reincarnated with a Polish butter and toasted crumb sauce or incorporated in bubble and squeak?

Then to M's for a Cyprus brandy. Fruit cake and chocolate on offer but totally impossible.  Could in theory fast for the next three days, but know it won't happen!

Saturday, January 10/2015

Cold enough at night that the balcony functions as an auxilliary refrigerator for vegetables, or even a pot of soup stock, although this is pretty temporary, and there's not much point in acquiring what won't fit in our tiny fridge. But vegetables and citrus fruit so fresh, and good, and cheap here that we are always unable to resist getting too much.

Friday, January 9/2015

The Cypriot news of the day is that Cyprus Airways, endlessly propped up by governments of various stripes and by the hapless taxpayer, has finally bitten the dust. Official shut down is at midnight, with the last plane landing mid-evening. The EU had ruled that the massive government support, amounting to over €100 million in the last few years, is essentially illegal subsidy and must be repaid to the taxpayer, which the bankrupt airline was unable to do, and so it was ordered to cease operations. By this point down to six leased aircraft and a 500 plus employees.

Thursday, January 8/2015

With Jane and Bill to Famagusta, in Northern Cyprus, for the weekly market. Nice rural drive through Sovereign Base Area (British) and past a village deserted by Greek Cypriots at the time of division and now in Turkish Cypriot area but still unoccupied. Girl checks and stamps our visas at the border without pausing in her apparently social chat on the phone. Chilly, but we've dressed for it and it's pretty warm in the sun.

The market is a big one. Flowers and bedding plants as we enter. Very cheap, says one seller. Only one lira (50 cents CAD, 28p). But Bill and Jane's admirable garden is full and we could offer only a pretty limited lifespan on the balcony. So on to the market proper. Plenty of inexpensive clothing - jeans, jackets, children's wear - and all kinds of produce and meat. We buy lovely looking leeks and dark, fresh broccoli as well as some large mushrooms. Can tell when I taste Jane's dried apricots that we should have bought some of them as well - they're so plump and juicy they scarcely seem dried. J points out some dried berries that are labelled blueberries, complete with coloured illustration of same, and says that they can't be. Taste one and find it's a dried cranberry. Stop for Turkish coffee and then work our way back to the car, past nuts and berries and bits of jewellery.

Then to the old city. Its gone a bit upscale since we explored it fifteen years ago. Spiffier shops, a few sporting designer names, mixed in with restaurants, cafés, small tailor shops, and souvenir places. We pick our restaurant for lunch in large part because it looks sunny and sheltered. There are a few people eating at outside spots but it's a little cool for that to be a pleasure. The waiter asks if we would like the mixed meat plate and we agree with no clear idea what to expect. And what we get is a feast. First a large salad with feta and at least a dozen meze style appetizer dishes, both hot and cold, and delicious. It would have been a complete meal at that, but it's followed by an enormous platter with meat - chicken, meatballs, lamb of various sorts - and peppers, tomatoes, lemons, stuffed aubergine. There's also a plate of fat, hot, succulent chips and a basket of warm pitas. As with all Cypriot meals, there's no hurry. It's an occasion and is treated with the respect that good food and good company deserves. And we're fully appreciative and none of us lacking in healthy appetite. We do it justice but can't quite finish. How lovely that we said yes to a suggestion we didn't quite understand.

We don't have coffee at the restaurant but go to a bakery cum coffee shop at the bottom of the street, looking out on the old city walls. The bakery specialises in cakes, which are works of art - a hat, a crown, a car, mice with cheese, all as full size cakes with coloured hard icing. As well as smaller pastries and wedding favours and huge  chunks of Turkish delight waiting to be carved. Unable to hold another morsel we're content to admire, but do stop at J and B's on the way back for coffee and some of Bill's cake. No need to eat again this week!

Wednesday, January 7/2015

Stop at the tourist office to pick up a bus schedule. They're available online but a hard copy is handy, and besides I'm suspicious that updates may not occur regularly enough. A suspicion similar but opposite to that of the young woman working at the tourist office. She checks online because, she explains, they don't tell us when there are updates. We should be the first to know but they don't tell us, so I look online for the latest. None of which prevents unrecorded changes or drivers attempting to finish a route early in order to enjoy a relaxed coffee, but it's a start.

Pick up the news of the massacre at Charlie Hebdo online first. Totally appalling. The magazine is thoroughly offensive (although, as Flo once said about Andy Capp, "'e's 'orrible but 'e's fair - 'e's 'orrible to everyone") and it's not subtle, or even reliably witty, about the offensiveness. But in the end that isn't even a part of the point. Not only was the response overkill, in the most dreadfully literal sense, but free speech includes the right, although certainly not the obligation, to be offensive.

Equally distressing, in a completely different way, are photographs of Syrian refugees facing our storm of two days ago which has, in the Middle East, become a snow storm. Families living in primitive tents trying to clear snow from them and children in flip flops. There have been deaths and will, no doubt be more. And who is to blame here - terrorists, Syrian politicians, or westerners who want to turn their backs - and especially North Americans, nations of immigrants who are able to ignore these refugees in their hundreds of thousands.

Evening reading provides a little light distraction. An article on perceptions of time explains that Americans and northern Europeans perceive time as a linear quantity, fast disappearing and not to be wasted, southern Europeans and Arabs tend to be focused on people and events - why would you let a schedule dictate? And in much of Asia time is cyclical - people die and are born and seasons repeat. Perhaps most unusual are the people of Madagascar, who see the future flowing into the BACK of the head. One can look out on the past, view and review it, but the future is unseeable, unknowable.

Tuesday, January 6/2015

Epiphany. Christmas season here is crowded with major feasts. This isn't a very nice day for the last of them. Less stormy than yesterday. The rain is intermittent but the winds are strong and cold. There would normally be a parade from St Lazarus Church to the waterfront but it won't be pleasant if it's on at all. Try checking on the telly but the only Cypriot ceremony we can find is in the Troodos Mountains, where it doesn't seem to be raining. Not inclined to check it out for ourselves. Instead we call Maggi and invite her over for nibbles at two. Which eventually stretches out to serve as both lunch and supper, with rhe aid of a couple of gin and tonics.

Monday, January 5/2015

Pride goes before a rainfall. Not unexpected, because we've been watching the storms moving east along the Mediterranean for days now. But we wake to rain driving almost horizontally against the glass doors to the balcony and darkened skies with silhouetted palm trees whipping around like televised clips of a Caribbean hurricane. A good indoor day. Make stuffed peppers and read books. Current read alouds are an Ian Rankin and Sir John Colville's The Fringes of Power: 10 Downing Street Diaries, 1939 to 1955. Colville had the interesting position of being an assistant secretary to Chamberlain and then private secretary to Churchill, Atlee, and the queen, consecutively. And he writes well. He confesses to having removed mundane daily details but says he has left unaltered opinions with which he later disagreed. 

Sunday, January 4/2015

Wake up and, without lifting my head from the pillow, can see a blue strip of the Mediterranean through the balcony door. J comes through with a cup of the coffee he has just made and there's a jazz cd playing. Hard to think that Sunday mornings can start any better than this. It's not absolute perfection: as usual the hot water isn't quite hot enough. But shower, Sunday lean Cyprus bacon and dark yolked eggs, newspaper from shop next door (and unlike last week's the puzzle page is not missing). Life is good. 

Saturday, January 3/2014

Odd period from Christmas to Epiphany. It's 13 days, but three of them are holidays and two are Sundays. Some businesses close Boxing Day and some, more surprisingly, on January 2. Hangover day? Prinos, our greengrocer, was one of the latter. And there seem to be shops that simply close for the whole period. After all, how many people are likely to have paintings framed between Christmas Eve and January 6?

Down to the coffee shop by St Lazarus where we meet up with Maggi and Maxi for our regular Saturday coffee. Maxi a much more relaxed dog than she was a year ago when M first got her and content to lie beneath a chair watching the passers by. Looks like rain and as we leave Prinos on the way back it starts. Not far to go by that point, though, and J has an enormous bag of enormous fresh juicy pink grapefruit for €2 (£0.78, $2.80 CAD).

Friday, January 2/2015

As we're going out, Venera arrives with clean sheets and towels, all smiles. "Change!" Nice, but unfortunately the suspicion does arise that this unaccustomed promptness is not unconnected to hopes of a seasonal tip. This is the second change in two weeks, which would be normal elsewhere - but we were away for four nights last week. The difficulty about the tip is that the standard of service really doesn't warrant the encouragement, except that Venera is usually expected to do by herself the work of two people, which, naturally she does inadequately, and so a tip really becomes compensation for management's meanness. A little like the American taxpayer subsidising Walmart by providing food stamps to underpaid workers.

Stop at the charity shop after coffee, and stay a little longer than the quick look and chat as it starts to rain a bit. There's a local man in there making a nuisance of himself, seeming to wish to trade various odds and ends of clothing from plastic bags slung about his motor bike - jogging pants and such - for other acquisitions from the shop. This accompanied by interminable narratives about clothing. The proposed deals have a now-you-see-it-now-you-don't quality, and the woman in charge agrees mainly because, as she mouths to me, she just wants him to f_ck off. The two shop women and I wonder briefly if he's drunk, though J, undoubtedly rightly, says no.  Unlike the man two flats down from us who came through reception yesterday (New Year's Day, NOT New Year's Eve) as pie eyed as anyone I've seen upright. And expressed the opinion, re the hot water supply, that the manager was doing his best. Couldn't decide whether this was meant ironically or not, and no doubt our response could have been taken either way as well.

Currently reading Love in Bloomsbury from the open library online. It's a book of the memoirs of Frances Partridge, the youngest member of the Bloomsbury set - Virginia Woolf, Roger Fry, Lytton Strachey, Dora Carrington, etc. She's an interesting and observant writer and her world was peopled with the artistic and literary lights of the early years of the 20th century. There are a number of volumes of her published diaries, with a tremendous time span, as she was born in 1900 and only died in 2004, a month before her 104th birthday, and with wits intact. Dates are sometimes a bit hard to pin down in Open Library books because, like Project Gutenberg's offerings, they've been digitally scanned, with some uneven results, particularly with numbers and punctuation. Hence "January 3rd igzS". 1925? (More entertaining in digitally scanned books are misreadings of adjacent letters, especially with non-standard fonts. Recent reported hilarity over scanner's rendering of "arms" as "anus" - leading a participant on Have I Got News for You to imagine lines such as "Let's lock anus(es) and sing Auld Lang Syne".)

Also reading, non-scanned, courtesy of the London Review of Books, excerpts from Alan Bennet's diary for 2014. A pleasure as always. Used to worry about running out of books (and one of my friends developed in youth the habit of reading slowly so as to make inadequate library resources last). Now, thanks in part to the internet, it's fairly obvious that hoarding is unnecessary. It's not books that will run out but life.

Thursday, January 1/2015

New Year's Day. Accu Weather providing more weather than accu-racy. Showers off and on so we have an indoor day. Lots of reading and salad with pomegranate vinegrette (syrupy balsamic vinegar style pomegranate vinegar from the north plus olive oil, coarse ground mustard and honey) and spaghetti carbonara with caramelised onions and mushrooms. New Year resolutions aren't meant to take effect until January 2 are they?

Wednesday, December 31/2014

New Year's Eve. In theory St Helena's has a used book sale in its courtyard on the last Wednesday of the month (currently reading the second of three Ian Rankin books from one of last year's sales) but clearly the impending celebrations have trumped the book exchange as the courtyard is empty. 

Our age must be telling, as we don't give even the customary pretence that we are intending to go to the celebrations at the beach. There will be a concert, with Greek music that is a bit younger and louder than we'd choose, as well as free wine (très ordinaire but perfectly drinkable) and beer. No one will be drunk and there will be a touching moment at midnight when people will turn to their nearest and dearests via mobile phone. And the walk is only ten or fifteen minutes, depending on which of us you ask. But the fireworks have contracted in recent years to about three minutes' worth of oohs and ahhs and we know already that we won't wish to leave the cosy flat when the time comes, assuming we can stay awake.

Yes, we're awake. A wee dram at midnight and fireworks visible from the balcony glass doors. Welcome to 2015.

Tuesday, December 30/2014

Coffee on the waterfront. Stop for a look and a chat at the dog shelter charity shop. J buys a cd for 50 cents, but when we get home the case proves to be empty. Expect John will take our word for it, or in any case donation to a good cause, but disappointing. 

Monday, December 29/2014

Festivities not quite over, as we get to help Jane and Bill celebrate their anniversary. Number 38, and their grandson has given them a gift of a meal at a lovely little taverna, the Kazani, named in honour of the copper distilling apparatus discovered in renovating the old house to create the taverna. And Bill does brilliantly to find it, ensconced as it is at the heart of the village of Aradippou, approached through a maze of lanes, nearly indistinguishable in the dark but all notable for their narrowness and the awkwardness of their turns. Family run - four brothers and a sister - with old fashioned Cypriot food and old fashioned attention to quality and quantity. To say nothing of detail, as one of the brothers arrives at the table with shot glasses of zivania, a Cypriot drink made by distilling a mixture of grape residue from the wine making process and local dry wines. Little tables with blue and white checked covering. No more than a dozen, though in the summer there is room to eat outside as well. Inside the tiny wood stove glows warmth, but Jane takes us out to see the polished still. 

And when we think we can hold no more we're surprised with baklava and sparkling wine! Bill keeps under the drink drive limit, but the rest of us are pretty mellow. Lovely evening.

Sunday, December 28/2014

Buffet breakfast and the holiday is nearly over. We drive back through a different, and quite striking mountain pass. The roads join up, though, and we get to stop at Wednesday's coffee spot again, our Turkish improving - though not drastically - with practice. Jane is quite good at ordering the Turkish coffees - one medium sweet and three no sugar. Lots of Turkish small change now too. 

Cross the border and go on to the base to get the Sunday papers. Then a last - and delicious - Sunday dinner at a restaurant along the Dhekelia Road. Greek establishment but British style carvery, where you're actually urged to have more - and please do take turkey as well as lamb. Starters and desserts included. Rather obvious what our New Year's resolutions have to be.

Saturday, December 27/2014

West yesterday and (slightly) east today. We go to Bellapais, site of spectacular abbey ruins and former home of Lawrence Durrell, whose book, Bitter Lemons of Cyprus, is a fair disappointment to anyone enchanted by his Alexandria Quartet. The abbey was founded in the thirteenth century for the Augustinian monks who had left Jerusalem following its fall to the Saracens in 1187. Soon after (and almost certainly before the abbey had been finished in those far off days of hammer and chisel) the Augustinians were replaced by the Norbertine order (1206).

The story from that point is a variation on the familiar tale of wealth and power - noble and royal patronage ( Hugh III gave the abbots of Bellapais the privilege of wearing a mitre, bearing a gilded sword and wearing golden spurs) and disputes with the archbishop of Nicosia necessitating papal intervention - followed by a sad, and indeed scandalous, decay. Genoese marauders robbed the abbey of any riches that could be removed, and by the middle of the 16th century the rule had been pretty well abandoned and monks were not only marrying but accepting only their own children as novices.

The abbey was given to the Orthodox after the Turks took over the island in 1570, but deteriorated, continuing to be used as a village church, with many of its stones liberated for use in building local houses - for the descendants of the monks? A further incarnation in the late nineteenth century saw its use as a military hospital. Now, slightly restored, it remains a romantic ruin with impressive views, and a summer home to concerts.

We've explored inside the hall and on the ramparts in the past, so today content ourselves with coffee beside the soaring ruins and looking out to the slightly misty sea.

Wednesday, December 24/2014

Jane and Bill collect us mid-morning and we head north. They live in Pyla, often proudly referred to as the "mixed" village, where Greek  and Turkish families live peacefully together. It's just south of the border between the north and south. Procedures have relaxed somewhat in the fifteen years we've been coming to Cyprus, but visas are required to go north - free and on request.

This is our Christmas "away" holiday - four days hotel break, Breakfasts and Christmas dinner included. We've been before with J and B and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. A couple of hours drive through plains as level as the Canadian prairies (though green and not white), through a gap in the mountains, and west along the north coast, with sun glinting on the Mediterranean. Stop for Turkish coffee (indistinguishable from Greek) and later, on the coast, for lunch. Ship Inn is on the western outskirts of Kyrenia, a pretty holiday escape spot with main inn, pool, tennis courts, and two storey garden villas.

Dinner in the dining room, occupied mainly by expats, some of whom have been coming here for Christmas for fifteen years or more. Dining room attractive with dark wood, stained glass, and a fireplace corner for coffee or drinks. Also balloons and Christmas tinsel. Christmas Eve.

Tuesday, December 23/2014

'Tis the season to be merciful. Justice Minister Ionas Nicolaou announces that more than 40 convicts will receive a presidential pardon this Christmas, but former Central Bank governor Christodoulos Christodoulou, who was found guilty of tax evasion on October 27 and sentenced to five months in prison, will not be among them.

Only inmates who have served at least half of their sentence by December 25, and were not convicted for murder, drugs or sex crimes can be pardoned.

“This year 43 people will receive the pardon; 23 Cypriots sentenced for criminal offences, five Cypriots who were in the open prison for debts and 15 foreign nationals,” Nicolaou says.

Monday, December 22/2014

Assume that it will be crazy busy everywhere and find that, for whatever reason, it isn't. Smart Store nearly empty when we stop to buy coffee. Lots of cashiers on at Metro (streaky bacon and whiskey and Commandaria), and Carrefour definitely unbusy. Waterfront restaurants equally so. Buy coffee and bacon, raising perennial question - why is British/Cypriot side/streaky bacon so much leaner and better than Canadian?

Sunday, December 21/2014

To St Helena's Anglican for the annual Nine Lessons and Carols. It starts T six, which has us setting out at five twenty-five, by which time it's completely dark. After fifteen years of winters here it still seems odd to us to find that early darkness corresponds with warm temperatures. The night is brightened with Christmas lights and decorations in the central streets, though. Presumably they've been there for some time, going unnoticed, by us at least, in the daytime. There are an astonishing number of cars about, both driving and parked. Where on earth are they all going? The shops must be closing, and many won't have been open on a Sunday, even one this close to Christmas, and it's far too early for Cypriots to consider dining. The centre isn't highly residential - but the cars are endless.

Fewer people at the service this last couple of years. More going away on Christmas holiday or are the ranks thinning? No choir any more either, though the small congregation does its best, getting through the 18 readings and carols with military expediency. And another change. We used to go upstairs afterward for mulled wine and nibbles. There is still mulled wine, hot and delightful, as well as sausage rolls and little mince pies, but there handed out swiftly along the rows by cheerful clergy immediately after the last hymn. Efficient, but the milling about and chatting suffers a bit. Still, nice to have been, and M comes back to us for a brandy after.

Saturday, December 20/2014

Sign on the wall inside the lift informing us that there may be no hot water tomorrow. There was plenty of hot water today, for the first time in the ten days we've been here. Is it about to disappear? But wait - how long has the sign been in the lift, ignored by us? Perhaps it should already have been taken down. Maybe yesterday was the tomorrow we should have worried about on Thursday.

Down to the coffee shop near St Lazarus (yes, the Biblical one) Church. Maggi and Maxi join us for Greek coffee and sunshine.

(J is wearing a long-sleeved shirt, not a jacket)

Friday, December 19/2014

Last year the fourth floor wifi worked reasonably well until after New Year's when the Norwegians returned and, presumably, the demand on the system was higher. Some gentle prodding involved, but we did manage to stream It's a Wonderful Life at Christmas. No such luck this year. Reception in the flat only possible from the top of the microwave, and then so slowly that it's best to leave the tablet there while doing some other minor task in order to load a page. Slightly better standing outside the door in the drafty hallway. On the other wifi pretty good down in reception where we never seem to lose a connection. Convenience undreamt of by us fifteen years ago, when we congratulated ourselves for having retired in the internet age, meaning that we were able to go to internet cafés and pay by the hour for grubby computers with uneven speed.

Thursday, December 18/2014

The legislature, having duly accepted the December disbursement of the EU bailout, promptly votes today to suspend the required legislation facilitating foreclosure on assets associated with non-performing loans. This will, of course, put January's payment in jeopardy, and the (minority) government, which appears to have been outvoted, is embarrassed, but the sullen resentment of the recipient prevails.

Wednesday, December 17/2014

Cyprus changing over the fifteen years we have been coming. The Cyprus pound has given way to the euro and the early closing Wednesday and Saturday (together with the non opening on Sunday) more or less disappearing. Sometimes less. So when we stop at 1:15 at the little haberdasher's, the sign on the door states clearly that it is open from 9 until 6, but it is in fact closed. 

Tuesday, December 16/2014

Haircut day. J thinks we'll have quite a wait (our unisex place doesn't do appointments) but I have a method. When I take a book, electronic or otherwise, I get taken immediately with no opportunity to read. And so it is this morning. Now good until February. From there to the little cancer charity shop by St Lazarus for a look round.

Then a check on the jewellery shop owned by the Ukrainian girl who is our favourite jewellery maker, source of many granddaughter birthday presents. It's closed, the old arched wooden doors secured with a large padlock. Not easy to inquire either, as the shops on either side are closed as well. It's rather worrying - is she ill, has she gone bankrupt? Her parents farm in Ukraine and were OK last spring, but that was a long time ago....But all is well. As we're looking at the (falling) prices in a nearby real estate agent's window our friendly jeweller appears behind to greet us. Business is slow in the winter, so she was chatting with a friend until she spotted us. Yes, she is well. Her mother was ill in April so she went back to Ukraine then. Fortunately they live near neither Donetsk nor Kiev and can grow some of their own food. The cities are frightening, with military ID checks and press gang style removal of young men. And everything is expensive.

Monday, December 15/2014

Only in Cyprus. The following from today's Cyprus Mail. Note that the Republic of Cyprus only HAS 850,000 citizens.

Portion of property tax uncollected as owners remain unknown

By Marie Kambas

Ten per cent of property, valued at 1.7 billion euros in 1980 prices, is going untaxed because the owners’ identification numbers are not registered with the land registry department’s computerised systems, auditor-general Odysseas Michaelides said adding that the omission affects 305,000 individuals.

Sunday, December 14/2014

Rains over and a damply washed look everywhere. A broken and run over umbrella in the street in front of our hotel. We walk down to the waterfront. No Sunday concert. Used to be weekly - was there supposed to have been one today? The storm drains have eventually done as they should, but a number of houses had to be evacuated. Barring earthquakes, it's good living on the fourth floor.

Saturday, December 13/2014

Rainy day, as promised by Accuweather. Well beyond umbrella weather and definitely into stormy. Just as we think that it can't rain any harder, it does. And being Larnaca the streets are soon rivers with cars plowing through the water and people stepping out into ankle deep puddles. M drops in and stays for Scrabble and soup. After she leaves there are thunderstorms - always good views of lightning from the top floor - torrential rain and (a first for us in Cyprus) a five minute power blackout. We do always have a battery free flashlight with us, so it's not particularly worrying. Kiki is on reception as usual and decides to spend the night as she has heard reports of flooding near her house and her shift ends at eleven, much too late to assess the roads as she drives.

Friday, December 12/2014

Jane and Bill over to catch up. Since we've last seen them Bill's had his eightieth birthday celebrations - though he could pass for 15 years younger - and they've been on a UK coach tour as well as a three week trip to China. Much the same response to China as we had - amazing sights and dubious meals. Although our trip was now an astonishing 24 years ago. Most unfortunately Jane injured her back fairly badly on the Chinese trip and, despite continuing therapy, is still fairly crippled - walking, but pretty short distances and quite rightly not prepared to fly any distance. The smallest, but rather sad, result of this is that it's put paid to their projected visit to us next summer.

We all walk down the road to a small taverna that has a nightly buffet and, on weekends, music. First Larnaca meal out of the season, though not the last. We're scheduled to spend Christmas in the north with J and B.

Thursday, December 11/2013

First day back, so tons of sorting, washing, shopping. Bottled water - not always necessary here but the tap water du jour is pretty chloriny. First food priority is Clementine oranges - so much nicer than Mandarins. Prinos greengrocer has the best produce and there are long tables outside with big bags of oranges and various vegetables for prices ranging from €1 to €2. So we buy a large plastic grocery bag full (count is 61 as I examine them for defects, but down somewhat by the time they pose for a photo). Good buys elsewhere, but who can use a bag of six cauliflowers regardless of price.

Then walk downtown. Note which shops have closed, which have improbably remained open despite lack of visible customer base (our theory is that some exist solely in order to take tax advantage and acquire wholesale goods for the extended family), and which new ones - mainly small cafés - are having a go. Stop for coffee and people and sea watching.

Wednesday, December 10/2014

Moving day. Shared taxi from Paphos to limassol and another from Limassol to Larnaca. Everything from bougainvillea hedges to badlands along the way. Leaving Limassol we get a sad equivalent to the squeegee kid - a man who must be close to retirement age playing the accordion when we're stopped at an intersection. Smile on his face, but he must know that there has to be. We're at the Sunflower by noon. Then out to Carrefour and Prinos, the greengrocer, for the basics. And the day's excitement. We've left five boxes stored here for the winter and there isalways a bit of excitement to opening them. There are the remembered Christmas decorations, including rhe tiny wooden people. And some unremembered surprises as well. A whole bottle of Blue Sapphire gin, needing only tonic and sunshine, and a Matheus bottle that has been relabelled "infamous grouse" and holds, we presume, most of a bottle of Famous Grouse. And, oddly, three jars of peanut butter. Must have overbought at a sale!

Tuesday, December 9/2014

Walk with M and J down the Paphos waterfront. Again nearly deserted, and an almost physical sympathy for restaurateurs coming out to invite us in for lunch or coffee. Business obviously dreadful, but we can't begin to solve the problem with cups of unwanted instant coffee. At the end of the promenade, just before the castle, there is a building exhibiting work by local arts and crafts people. Some of it's intriguing: Maggi is quite taken by colourful accessories made of wool and I fall for stained glass tree ornaments, many of them heart-shaped, that incorporate romantic old-fashioned photographs and fragments of old letters. We both admire a large ornate mirror. We're standing outside discussing our favourites and regretting our total lack of space to accommodate more acquisitions, when we're joined by a couple of the exhibitors, one of them the husband of the woman who made the mirror, happy to tell us how pleased she will be to know how much we liked it. There are heart- breaking stories of lost jobs in the depressed economy and more time spent on the creative side, the refusal to lose hope. The valiant optimism more moving than any anger or bitterness could be.

At the other end of the walk we stop for a pint. Then it's home pack.

Monday, December 8/2014

N

M has plans for a drive up the west side of the island. All distances in Cyprus ridiculously small by Canadian standards but the area is hilly and the roads bendy and some of the other drivers suicidal, if not homicidal. Passing not always easy and some hills have runaway lanes, known as escape lanes, although oddly these may be on the down grade.

It's about 35 km to the town of Polis on the coast. A nice centre with a pedestrian area, seriously underpopulated at this time of year. We'd like coffee but the only café in the sun is next to some heavy - and loud - equipment used for resurfacing an adjacent road.

So on to the tiny village of Androlikou. It's almost a deserted village, down now to a population of 15 living amidst a collection of semi-ruined stone buildings. Androlikou was a Turkish village until 1974 when the UN took the villagers to the north of the then divided country, as Greek Cypriots were leaving the north for the southern Republic of Cyprus. Now, while there are a few human residents, they are vastly outnumbered by the goats. 

M knows a couple here, a Greek Cypriot man married to a Philippino woman, and we drop in. The wife is, ironically, in Paphos for the day, shopping, but her husband is a gracious host, showing us the house, which he has finished beautifully inside, and making camomile tea from the camomile growing in his garden. He's an unemployed builder and the wife has also been hit hard by the financial troubles - working non-stop in the summer tourist season but laid off in the winter. So money is very tight, but the lifestyle idyllic in some ways. A house overlooking the distant sea, a garden with vegetables, herbs and fig trees, a boat for fishing, rabbits to be sold (or perhaps occasionally eaten), hens for eggs and sometimes for the pot, and olive trees and greens growing in the hills. With the wind for company they're very nearly self-sufficient. He drives with us further up into the hills and shows us, miles below, the bay where the turtles come to lay their eggs. Along our hilltop road there is industrious activity. There are EU funds for agriculture and there is new plowed land and recently pnlanted vineyards. No possibility of misusing the grants either, as work can be checked by satellite.

Back from Polis by the western route, supposedly the worse road but seems less hazardous to us.

Sunday, December 7/2014

Maggi drives down after her meeting in Limassol to spend a couple of days in Paphos. She's checked into one of the few hotels that would accept dogs, but the place is a pleasure in other respects. It's a restored 15th century Venetian building. Boasts a restaurant, but we're back to the First and Last Pub for lamb shanks again.

Saturday, December 6/2014

Still unseasonably warm weather (highs just above 20) but we can see on the television weather map the winds and rains of a storm moving eastward down the Mediterranean that is almost certain to hit us early next week. Pool still attracting sun loungers between ten and three.

Friday, December 5/2014

Rereading the blog from two years ago, and can see that we were surprised then by how few tourists there were here, but this is surely worse. Of course this must be close to an annual low point - far from the coldest time of year in the UK, Russia and Western Europe and not yet Christmas holidays. Few people who are not also going to be away for Christmas want to take a holiday in the preparation period immediately before.

Still, we go for a walk along the waterfront in the evening in what should be the tourist centre and there is almost nobody in sight. The occasional British couple and sometimes a small family, probably immigrant workers. Empty sidewalks.

Thursday, December 4/2014

J and I reading aloud - when not sunning ourselves our walking - Howard Zinn's autobiographical writing. Mostly on the importance of civil disobedience. A brave man with an admirable history in the American civil righrs movement for racial equality and the anti-war movement. All courtesy of the Open Library, lending books electronically, free and world wide. Very handy for those of us with no fixed address:

Wednesday, December 3/2014

Wednesday, December 3/2014

Bus up to the inter-city bus station in order to catch the interurban bus to Limassol, near the village of Erimi, where Jenny's dad has invited us fo visit for the day. 

Sam picks us up and takes us back to Erimi. A lovely house and all the flowers still in full bloom as autumn has been unusually warm. Paddy is away visiting her relatives in Northern Ireland, but Sam has invited another couple, Cynthia and Peter, and his neighbour Klaus to lunch as well. Lovely Middle Eastern dish with rice and chicken, and good conversation. Sam always a pleasure to talk to. He was born in Haifa to an English father and Arabic mother and is now retired from a legal career but is fluent in Arabic and maintains a keen interest in the Middle East.

No time at all before it's getting dark - always a faint surprise to northerners finding that it's dark before dinner when the weather is still shirt skeeves - and we're on the bus back to Paphos.

Tuesday, December 2/2014

Housing bubble fueled by expats long since burst and some fairly good prices around now. So, when we pass a small bungalow (2 bedrooms max, largish but unbeautiful yard, solar panels, a little too central, busy road) plastered with for sale signs we idly inquire of the man watering the shrubs what the asking price is. A more than astonishing €900,000. Four times its apparent value, if not more. It is expensive, the man says unapologetically. J makes unfavourable comparisons to prices in California with similar climate. Yes, yes. No mention of superior have-to-be-seen-to-be-appreciated assets and no offer to show. As we leave, we can only conclude that the desire to sell is entirely fraudulent. Perhaps an attempt to convince creditors, the bank maybe, that every effort is being made to raise funds, while preventing actual loss of home. 

Some 45% of Cypriot bank loans, as of July, were non-performong - repayments not being made - accounting for €27.1 billion out of loans of €60 billion, or almost 140% of GDP. Bizarrely, special legislation is needed to streamline repossession procedures so that the process takes months instead of years. Wildly unpopular in Cyprus where almost everyone is, or is related to, a non-payer, the legislation is, understandably, required in order to access continuing EU assistance funds.

Monday, December 1/2014

Sunny, and warm enough that I pick what at 12 noon passes for the shady side of the street walking back from the post office. There's always some breeze at the waterfront, but not inland. Much competition near the seafront for (mostly UK) tourist money. Souvenirs seldom underpriced but some genuine undercutting in restaurants. Thus one offers to take sterling, with £1 equalling €2. Much better than the official exchange rate. In fact worth changing money for if one intended to go for a meal. A €20 dinner would cost £10, which is actually worth only €12.75. 

But then some things Cypriots just look at differently. The same cafés that entice tourists and others by offering full pints of local lager for €1.69 are pleased to advertise cups of Nescafé instant coffee for €1.50, assuming that this is similarly attractive.

 [Some dispute here as J says that people no longer know what a pint is and I say that A) All Brits know what a pint is, and B) in any case everyone knows it's half a quart. Concede that this may be generational, as we do live in the land of litres.] 

Sunday, November 30/2014

Try the Britannia for this week's Sunday pub dinner. We're a bit late in thinking of it. Sunday pub meals are UK style, meaning that they're typically mid-afternoon - think of the Christmas meal. Last week was the First and Last Pub, which fortunately runs later because we had the Formula 1 final to watch first. Today we're not really thinking and arrive five minutes before the 5 PM finish time. Pub almost empty because we've caught them between dinner and the evening's entertaining and drinks. Couldn't have been nicer, though. Yes, they can still get us a meal.,choice of roast beef, pork or chicken - or maybe a little of each. Comes with Yorkshire pudding, roast and mashed potatoes, four veg and gravy. In anticipation of which we have prudently not eaten since breakfast. Lovely meal and nice familial feelnto the place.

Saturday, November 29/2014

Questions about the intercity bus routes: the net brings varied answers. We're going to Erimi on Wednesday. Will the bus stop, most conveniently, at the first roundabout going into Limassol, known to all as the McDonald's stop, as the bus map implies with a little zig there, or will it insist on going to the official stop at the next roundabout? The girl at the tourist office says no to the McDonald's stop, but is likely to be basing this on the partially illegible photocopied schedule rather than personal knowledge as few Cypriots use public transportation - it's perceived as mainly for servants and other foreign workers or tourists too cheap to hire cars. Theory and practice on schedules in Cyprus are often only vaguely related. A bus driver once told us that it wasn't his fault if the company didn't update the schedule to match the current reality. Thus the best course for accurate information would be to ask a driver on the relevant route, but if the stop is an unofficial one it might depend in the event on which driver was on or even what mood the driver was in.

Not only do online schedules purporting to be official vary, but we know from experience that, on the urban lines at least, there are drivers who are quite happy to finish a route early, presumably allowing for an extended coffee break at the end of the line. This doesn't appear to be a mortal sin but a cultural quirk. We consider what threat would be sufficient to change the practice. "If you do that again you will be fired. We will give your job to a Romanian and you will have to go home and tell your wife you are unemployed." Wouldn't happen. Nor is there much chance of the drivers/company putting themselves in the position of the would-be passenger who has arrived at the stop ten minutes early, happily unaware that the bus has passed by five minutes before - and Cypriot buses often cover the route only once every hour or two. But it doesn't matter - only Philippino maids or tourists or students take the bus and they're not in a hurry.

Trouble with us is that we've been in The UK too recently and it's distorted our expectations.

Note on official bus page: "You can register the route you want and we willinform you via email or sms for hours and routechanges" As opposed to posting the changes on the site and telling everyone?