Saturday, February 28/2015

Gloriously sunny. Actually too hot in the sun, though the official high is 20, but nobody is complaining. We join the Norwegians down at the Fort Pub, between the old fort at the beach end and the mosque. The Norwegians say they meet there every Saturday for a drink and the cake baked for the occasion by the pub's cook, Androula. There are in the end about 30 of us, pretty much the same as the crowd on Green Monday, and Tore has brought his accordion again. Have a good laugh when the proprietor takes my money and says "takk" - Norwegian for thank you. A Greek speaker talking to an anglophone.

Then down the new seaside walkway to the Flamingo, about another to km, to get the painting of Jane's we've been planning to acquire. The art group she belongs to meets at the Flamingo and their paintings decorate the walls until sold. It's very Cyprus and light enough to bring back. 

Friday, February 27/2015

Mr Andreas seems to have vanished since the advent of our new bedroom non-reading lamps a few days ago, just as I've decided to be truthful in response to his (possibly insincere) "tell me what you think."

Mr A: (proudly) We have put new lamps in your bedroom

Me:  Will I still be able to see to read?

Mr A: (slightly deflated) Tell me what you think

But no sign of him since. The lamps in question are designed to cast a dim glow on the ceiling and replace perfectly satisfactory ones that provided adequate reading lights with flexible direction. Absolutely maddening, considering the number of genuine improvements he might have undertaken and the fact that the sitting room lights are dim wall fixtures unsuitable for evening reading. Even buying a lamp is not a real possibility as there is only one ill-placed outlet in the sitting room.

Thursday, February 26/2015

Dental appointments for cleaning, which, happily, appears to be all that needs doing. Same three National Geographics that have been there for years are all the English reading material, although I have an electronic library book with me. Actually the NGs are quite good, but we've covered them pretty thoroughly over the last decade.

Wednesday, February 25/2015

J's glasses are ready, so down to collect them. He's mostly happy but not sure about the focus on the left eye. They say try it for a day or two and come back if there are problems. Optician checked that they're made right - so fingers crossed.

Dinner at Vlachos tonight. Bill and Jane pick us up and we notice that Bill is wearing jacket and tie. All revealed when we arrive and realise that it's in honour of Jane's birthday (actually a few days earlier when they were away). Joined by Ailsa and Harry and also Keith and Villi (sp?), friends whom we've not previously met. As usual, the meze starters alone would have made a super meal. Can't resist the moussaka, but really must vary it next time as there are other very good things on the menu. Tiny sweet spring roll sized pastries at the end in honour of the birthday. As we're leaving with H and A, watch B and J strolling hand in hand to their car. Lovely.

Tuesday, February 24/2015

M phones to see if we're up for coffee. Too late, as J is back from his beach walk already and we're not going back again, so she comes for lunch and a drink instead. As she's off to America Thursday to visit relatives.

Monday, February 23/2015

Green Monday. Pretty overcast, which is hard luck on those planning the traditional kite flying picnics. Not including us, as we've been invited to join the community of Norwegian winter stayers. Two couples are staying here at the Sunflower and two other couples used to be here but have found other accommodation, but there are, amongst the various hotels in Larnaca, quite a few Norwegians, all of them here today, it would seem. There are thirty of us, including J and I as honorary Norsk. 

Knut and Rigmor, who invited us, seem to have done the arranging and persuaded Mr Andreas to let us use the large dining room in the hotel's currently unleased restaurant and to order a catered meal, leaving us to each bring our our own wine or beer. Lovely meal and tons of it - skewers of chicken, Spicy Cypriot sausages, meatballs, Cypriot pasta, salad, and more. We'd been feeling sorry for the unlucky Norwegians who ended up sitting next to us and had to speak English throughout the meal. But as it turns out it's OK. Those sitting near us speak very good English, and in one case worked in England. Everybody very friendly. Meal stretches from 2:30 til nearly seven as it moves to coffee and pastry and then on to comic readings (with some later attempts at translation for us) and then singing, as Tore, who used to stay at the Sunflower until the distances became too much for his wife, who uses a cane, plays the accordion.

Interesting comment on the Cypriot tribal trust - and on the trustworthiness of the Norwegian tribe. We spend four and a half hours in the unleased restaurant with our food and wine, and on the wall behind the bar are the usual bottles of liquor. None of us, of course, would have dreamt of touching them - and clearly the hotel management trusts that this is the 

Sunday, February 22/2015

Rereading (after 40 some years) Anthony Grey's Hostage in Peking. Reminded of it by Peter Greste's comments on his methods of remaining fit physically and mentally while in prison in Cairo, which were somewhat similar to Grey's during his 27 months of captivity during the Cultural Revolution. Happily, found the book online at the Open Library, and am reading it aloud with J. Interest enriched this time by having been in China - and probably by other things across the years.

Saturday, February 21/2015

Warmth is back - at least in the sunshine. It's a long weekend, in that Monday is a national holiday. It's Green Monday, otherwise - and perhaps more accurately - known as Clean Monday. It marks the beginning of Lent in the Orthodox Church, which follows the Julian calendar. This year Lent and Easter are a week earlier than on the western calendar, although they're often later and occasionally coincide. Clean Monday is a fast day, although of a pretty cheerful nature. In keeping with the eastern tradition, meat and dairy products are not eaten. Traditionally greens are eaten, and - less explicably - sea food, though not fish, which is reserved in Lent for major feast days. Picnics in the country are common and kite flying is traditional. 

Today we're back at our favourite café by St Lazarus Church, enjoying the sun on our backs. 

Friday, February 20/2015

Start with J's dental appointment to replace a filling broken last week. And book appointments for teeth cleaning next week. Not beautiful Thai prices, but not bad. This trip €40 (£30, $57 Cad). Wind still pretty cold this morning but ok anywhere that's sheltered. We've been going to Xenia for years now.

Found Anthony Grey's Hostage in Peking at the Open Library online and promptly borrowed it. Think that the accounts of Peter Greste's attempts to stay mentally and physically fit while in prison in Cairo reminded me of Grey's memoir of his long period in solitary confinement in 1967 during the Cultural Revolution. Read it a very long time ago, probably shortly after it was published in 1971, and it's stuck with me. Have always wanted to show it to J and now can.

Thursday, February 19/2015

Billed in advance as the coldest day of the winter, it probably is - and a fair contender for the coldest day we've ever experienced in Cyprus. There are a couple of reports of actual snow in Larnaca, lasting only minutes but almost unheard of here, though common in the mountains. Pretty windy too.

A good day for making marmalade with some of the remaining bergamot oranges. Without a blender it's amazingly labour intensive but a sharp knife and a lot of fine cutting do it and the recipe is more than satisfactory. Seeds have to be put in a cloth bag and retrieved at the end, as they're essential to the setting. Apart from that all the fruit and peel are eaten, as well as quite a lot of sugar and, at the very end, a touch of whiskey.

Wednesday, February 18/2015

Back to the best of the optical shops to order glasses for J. Seem very professional. They tell us that the new specs will be in by Monday, but we realise after leaving that Monday is a national holiday - Green Monday, preceding Ash Wednesday in the eastern Church calendar - so Tuesday or Wednesday seems more probable. 

Call London and book with our usual for April 1-22. Book somewhat more expensively than intended as each of us thinks the other has "hung up" the mobile, which continues to be connected to the UK for much too long.

Tuesday, February 17/2015

The day begins.

Me: This is Shrove Tuesday

J:  What, already! - I just woke up.

Comparison shopping for glasses for J. Getting pretty informed on what he wants. Know a lot more about lens indexes (indices?) than we once did. There are quite a few optical shops in Larnaca but only two labs in Cyprus that make lenses, one in Nicosia and one in Limassol. Would have thought that with all the competition prices would be similar, but not a bit of it. The best quote on frames with high index lenses comes in €165 (£121, $233 CAD) under the highest - comparable quality. Even allowing that the highest might have been prepared to move a little if nudged, that's quite remarkable.

Monday, February 16/2015

M has been looking at a side by side house in Mazotos, a village about 20 km south of Larnaca, so we drive out with her and dog to check it out. Turns out it 's in a little enclave outside of the village, beautifully landscaped and with lovely views over the fields to the sea. Not quite a gated community, but protected, maybe a dozen and a half duplexes, with a swimming pool and gym and a little snack place by the pool. Kitchen and sitting room on the ground floor with a large window looking toward the sea and two bedrooms up, the larger one and its balcony with sea view as well. It's furnished and the management seems very good about maintaining things. They offered it to her for €384 (£285, $543 CAD) per month - four euros more than she's now paying for her flat. She has a friend living a few doors down as well. She hesitates but then, rightly we think, goes for it.

Stop by a field on the way back and pick wild mustard, which then adorns the salad with tonight's meal. Still using the beautiful syrupy pomegranate vinegar in the dressing. Then spaghetti carbonara with caramelised onions and mushrooms mixed in. 

Sunday, February 15/2015

A bit cool, but mostly because it's windy. The sun is out and so are the people. We stroll down to the beach. There are people in swimming, though not many. It's coming out into the wind that would be cold. February and March have the coldest sea temperatures of the year, but that still means an average of 17 degrees celsius. Because it's Sunday couples and families are out walking - dogs on leads and children with skateboards. It's a sand beach and toddlers escape from their mothers and head toward the shallow waters Three booths sell ice cream and snacks and there are cafés and restaurants the length of the walk. The merry-go-round is operating and the atmosphere is festive, although the pre-Lenten carnival parades aren't until next weekend. 

We normally go to sleep at night with BBC Radio 5 playing, courtesy of the nearby British base. It's sports oriented in the daytime but overnight there are news reports, interviews, panels, and call ins. The weekends are a little less structured and as we go to bed the host is saying that fortunately on a Saturday there is a little more time. This turns out to be time to listen to former soldiers with PTSD and suicidal inclinations calling in and talking at some length. A sad situation and perhaps a therapeutic service but makes for rather depressing bedtime listening.

Saturday, February 14/2015

Valentine's day, so lots of cherry tomatoes, sweet red peppers and radishes on the veggie plate. Actually Cyprus grows radishes that are closer to baseball than tennis ball size, but these are from Holland and look normal. Maggi over for a nibbles lunch for which she has brought three small Christmas puddings, hoping that I would make brandy sauce, as I do, after J finds the recipe where it's been stored in the Polish dictionary since last year. So J's pea soup, mini spanakopetas, and nibbles. Today would have been Maggi and Magne's 30th wedding anniversary.

Friday, February 13/2015

Make bergamot and lemon curd, using the same microwave recipe as for lemon alone. Same intense yellow colour as the lemon curd (colour that comes, actually, from the butter and, especially, the egg yolks - taken from hens that have seen the sun - rather from the lemons) but slightly different flavour. J really likes it and I do - but not as much as straight lemon. Find the slightly perfumy nature of the bergamot zest a mild distraction.

Thursday, February 12/2015

One of the country's nurses' unions stages a 12 hour strike and are told that it's a poor time to ask for increased salary and benefits when 70,000 of their fellow citizens (population under 900,000, many of whom, obviously, are not in the labour force) are unemployed. At the same time students are protesting. Not much sympathy from those writing to the editor, but their complaint that it costs over €100 (£74, $141 CAD) to write the university entrance exams and that this is a hardship for poor families, seems to have some validity.

Wednesday, February 11/2015

Spend ridiculous amount of time trying to order, online, glasses to replace the ones J left in Rome. We'd actually thought of ordering from Zenni before - ever since The dental tech in Regina said how pleased she'd been and I finally got my mouth freed to ask questions. Internet reviews have been (mostly) favourable and prices excellent. Have all the info - prescription, pupillary distance, etc. the site works fairly well. You get to upload a photo of your face and try the various glasses on it, having previously filtered out unwanted colours, styles and materials. Takes a while - and then find that the program won't move to the payment screen. Use the live "help" function and someone called Jade tells me that some browsers work better than Safari. Acquire a Chrome browser via a new app. Begin again. Takes a couple of tries, but eventually reach the final payment page and get a message from Paypal that they can't send the money "right now" - or later either, it seems. Aaaaaagh.

Evening meal at Gregory's, a little establishment along the Dhekelia Road. Ailsa and Harry often eat there, in part because it's a stone's throw from their house. Jane and Bill have picked us up, which is nice. It is on a pretty good bus route but it's raining - again. Gregory's is pretty basic in appearance but friendly and the food is good - even runs to chicken kiev, which J orders. Place isn't busy on a wet Wednesday evening in February but Bill says that it's crowded in the summer as people come over from the beach across the road. Probably busier on weekends as well. Afterwards we go round the corner for coffee at the house Ailsa and Harry share with 5? dogs, innumerable (but named) cats, and various birds. And Ailsa kindly runs us home.

Tuesday, February 10/2015

Discover a review in The Guardian of Patrick Cockburn's newly published (this month) The Rise of Islamic State. Cockburn is our favourite Middle East commentator, excellent analyst of the situation in Syria and Iraq. Available on Kobo, so no sooner seen than acquired. Lovely being able to read a book covering contemporary events as it's published. So our out loud reading alternates between Iraq and wartime London.

Violent rainstorm in the evening - following more moderate raining in the daytime. High winds and rain driven horizontally against the windows.

Monday, February 9/2015

Begin reading No Cake, No Jam by Marian Hughes. A memoir written by a woman who began life pre-war in a London orphanage and then was reclaimed by a mentally ill mother and raised - or rather allowed to run wild and survive by stealing food - in wartime London. Quite astonishing that she survived sane and literate.

Sunday, February 8/2015

Looking forward to a week of rain and wind. Seems to be following us east across the Mediterranean. But much cosier here. Taste the bergamot oranges Kiki brought us yesterday from her garden tree - bergamot being the citrussy twist to Earl Grey tea. The net describes them as sweeter than lemons but more bitter than grapefruit. Seems like a fair enough description. The juice needs to be mixed with water to be drinkable but doesn't need added sugar. Marmalade?

Saturday, February 7/2015

Still slightly jetlagged. Not true jetlag, of course, as we've only crossed one time zone. And to whom could this matter less than the retired who can sleep if and when they please. But the 3 AM start gave a physical feeling similar to jetlag. Lots of internet catch up, although to be honest it doesn't look like we've missed a great deal of news, either domestically or internationally. 

Friday, February 6/2015

 Three o'clock is an indecent time to get up. Taxi to the airport. Then the unhappy discovery that J has left his glasses behind. Full flight back - looked like it wasn't going to be but then we were joined by a number of people who had apparently got on the wrong bus and consequently the wrong plane, discovered no doubt when the competition began for seats. So a half hour late but mostly made up en route and happy to land in warm sunshine. Feels like home. Shuttle from Paphos is waiting. Fields unusually green - down to January rains?

Thursday, February 5/2015

Last day and the rain intensifies. Impossible to go anywhere, even with the umbrellas, without getting wet. (And we have just acquired a new, stronger and much larger umbrella. J is very good at repairing umbrellas that people have abandoned in frustration so we stay a little ahead even though we leave the occasional one on a bus or park bench.) But regardless we do go out to the nearby St John 

Lateran Basillica, the seat of the Bishop of Rome - who is, of course, the pope. This, and not St Peter's, is his home church.

St John Lateran is a surprisingly modern looking building with vast, clean spaces and huge statues of the apostles. It has some reason not to look modern as it's origins are pretty ancient. And so are some individual bits. The central bronze doors, for example, are second century and come from the Curia, or Senate, in the Roman Forum. Following various disasters, though, and much rebuilding, what is left of the structure is mostly 17th century.

Our friend on reception books us a taxi for 3:30 AM. We're pleased because the prim young lady on the morning shift was happy to oblige but quoted €50 (£37.15, $71.05 CAD) instead of the city mandated flat rate of €30 (£22.29, $42.63 CAD), citing a private driver as the reason. So we bring home a funghi (mushroom) pizza and another broccoli and sausage - supper and a bit left over for the trip - from the little shop round the corner. Happy to be in out of the rain. Wake up call for 3:00 AM.

Wednesday, February 4/2015

Some breaks in the rain so we take first streetcar from the roundabout at the corner to Termini and from there the metro to Piazza del Popolo and, more specifically, the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo. Like most Roman churches, it's a repository of great  art, painting and sculpture. In particular, we've come to see the Caravaggio paintings, knowing that the church has two. It's a bit of a disappointment there are two fine paintings by Caravaggio, as well as sculptures and paintings by other great artists, but the light isn't good, especially in the tiny side chapels. It is possible to put a euro in the meter and get quite good good light for about 60 seconds, but a little frustrating to know that we could be at home studying the painting on the ipad and be able to see it much better. Buy two postcards of the Caravaggios (the Crucifixion of St Peter and the Conversion of St Paul) for a better look.

The Pantheon is interesting in the rain because the circular opening in the dome (the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world) without which, oddly enough, the dome would collapse, lets in rain, the area where the rain hits the floor being prudently roped off. The building is nearly two thousand years old and in surprisingly good condition. It was first a pagan temple and then a Christian church. It is this use of it as "sacred" space that leads to the frequent (recorded?) requests for silencio, not, it seems, very closely related to the actual rise in conversational volume. There are also notices which I notice a little belatedly forbidding the taking of photographs, but few people seem to be deterred.

Our experience of modern art is in the early evening when we wield the umbrellas once more and go in search of Sala 1, a combined innovative gallery, which has sponsored shows of contemporary works from such places as Bangladesh and Iraq, and studio space for priest and sculptor Tito Amodei. The Vatican originally supplied the space in a former basilica but its operation is entirely unrelated to the Church. It's a tiny gallery with some interesting works and we're the only visitors on this rainy night. But that is our good fortune as the director, the American Mary Angela Schroth, is happy to show us Amodei's studio. He's 90 now but still comes in every day to work on his sculptures and the studio is a wonderful collection of drawings, studies, and sculptures both large and small. The energy is palpable even in the man's absence, the work varying from the lyrical or whimsical to brute power.

Home with a sausage and broccoli pizza straight out the wood oven from a tiny place near the roundabout half a block away. Not a tourist in sight.

Tuesday, February 3/2015

Room reveals its other deficiencies. Indirect lighting even in the bedside lamps. Does nobody read anything other than on lighted screens any more? Once the shutters are open there is still insufficient light since the sun has deserted us and the rain begun. The only place it's possible to read a map is in the loo. The loo is actually not bad, despite the cheaply made shower doors, and there is not only a hairdryer but a bidet. Though we're a little cynical. Presumably the hotel got its third star by checking a series of boxes - like hairdryer and bidet.

Roman statue bending down reaching for cold scrambled eggs

Breakfast is included, so we duly show up. Mostly it's cold. Ham, cheese, bread, cereal. The pastries are an exception, on a slightly warmed tray and not bad, if not particularly healthy. The scrambled eggs are not an exception - stone cold in a stone cold basin. Well, plenty of cholesterol without them. The coffee, caffè lungo to which we add hot water making them more or less Americano, is from a machine but actually quite good. The couple at the next table take two large pastries with them, wrapped in a napkin, when they go. But they leave a large stack of bread slices on their plate. Presumably they'd thought about acquiring sandwich makings for later but the age of the bread discouraged them.

Off with umbrellas to the metro station, about six blocks away. Our umbrellas are becoming a little the worse for wear, with a couple of the ribs doubling as semi-lethal rapiers. Actually various disconsolate street vendors try to sell us umbrellas, either ignoring our existing ones or dismissing them as sub-standard. Our area not really ideal for brisk sales of any sort. Buy three day public transport passes, €16.50 each. Down to Termini, which has changed significantly in the 20 years or so since we were last in Rome. Gone very much upscale. Used to be rather seedy but had a surprisingly unbad and inexpensive cafeteria. Now very much a for profit enterprise, expensive shops and only about six seats not attached to cafés. Never mind waiting rooms - spend while you wait. Very busy with trains coming and going and a large bus station outside and metro change point beneath. A small supermarket as well now - attractive but not cheap.

Back by metro, and out onto the wet streets. Can't find the little cafés we spotted yesterday, one of which had seemed very attractively non-touristy. Do stop at a local supermarket and buy apples, bananas and cherry tomatoes. Remainder of yesterday's bread and cheese still at the hotel, and the reception area always has a large thermos of very hot water and a wooden box filled with Twinings tea bags. Alarming number of ambulances seen and heard. Not entirely surprising considering the difficulties of crossing roads on walk lights that do nothing to deter drivers from making right turns across crosswalks in the wet dusk.

Evening in with somewhat more heat in the room, though no more light, of course. Many of the television films are American, of course, but with Italian dubbing. Seems quite strange watching the Indians in a cowboy movie speaking rapid Italian.

Monday, February 2/2015

Over to Karnos, near Phaneromi Church, where the shuttle bus leaves to connect us to the larger shuttle bus from Nicosia to Paphos airport. Walk past a large field of yellow flowers where a woman with a small dog appears to be collecting snails, the dog leading the search like a truffle hunter. At the airport, located in fields by the sea, we get sent to have our non-EU boarding passes stamped by the checking service, a relatively new addition to the list of inconveniences. The machine beeps as I go through the electronic security. I am bidden to take off my shoes, and comply. It still beeps and a young lady runs a hand held scanner over me, pretty thoroughly. I am dismissed and, foolishly, venture to ask what caused the beep. Your shoes. But it beeped again after I took them off. That was something else. In other words, my shoes are unlikely to have been the cause and the security staff know no more than I. And if I have no more sense than to pursue the issue I may find myself subjected to more unpleasant examination. 

Cheapest coffee in the airport €3.60, tea €2.95, water €1.10. Remarkable profit on a tea bag and some hot water. On the plane coffee €2.50 but same 500 ml bottle of water €3.00. Overheads full of carry on luggage larger than ours, in accordance with sign in airport saying that anything that fits in the sizing template box may be taken aboard, and agreeing proudly that dimensions are greater than those they officially require. We appear to be the only people unaware of this loosening of restrictions, probably down to  having checked Ryanair's website rather than relying on word of moth or wishful thinking. Luck with us on the plane, though. I should be squeezed between J and another gentleman, but this man has spotted a seemingly unoccupied seat with more legroom and eventually effects the change with the stewardess's blessing, leaving us with the triple seat. I give him a discreet thumbs up and get a wink and grin.

Ciampino airport is a zoo, but we buy one way tickets to Termini rail station from one of the competing bus lines for €4 each. The walk from Termini is straight along the railway line, past little cafés and then a somewhat deteriorating neighbourhood, which starts improving as we reach the hotels, begging women and bits of rubbish left behind us. We're just past the Temple of Minerva. Apparently it's been misnamed and was actually a nymphaeum, a building dedicated to nymphs. It is a ruin but in pretty good nick considering that it dates from the fourth century. In fact its roof only collapsed in the 19th century. And there's scaffolding up now, suggesting restoration in progress.

[photo not ours but can't find photographer to give credit]

Our room is very clean, but there, more or less, its charms end. Twin beds with starchly pressed sheets and monastic cell dimensions. We're already not best pleased by the city hotel tax, although we were aware of it in advance. Four euros each per day. And the charge for wifi is €5 per day, or €10 for unlimited. Turn it down - don't expect to sit around all day anyway. Final indignity is that the tv doesn't work. We mention this to the young Bangladeshi man on reception, who doesn't seem astonished. In any case, the channels are all Italian. Do we want a different room? Well, there seems little point. I laugh and tell him this is a terrible hotel - even cheap hotels have free wifi. And he laughs and agrees, and finally succeeds in persuading us to look at a different room. It's more or less the same - a clean box - but the telly works, with 500 or so Italian channels and one French one, and the bed is double. Actually more than double. They've done the European trick of pushing two single beds together, but, unusually, have used king sized sheets to make it up as one bed. It is an improvement, and we and the Bangladeshi reception man are now friends, probably because we told him that we didn't blame him for the deficiencies of the hotel and he privately agreed with our assessment. But total cheerfulness.

Explore the immediate neighbourhood. Pass a woman anderson checking the rubbish bins without visible hope. A couple of possible small cafés more or less near us. A small grocery store where we pick up some wine. Haven't yet eaten the picnic we brought, so sandwiches and raisins and nuts and wine. Columbo on telly in Italian. And we've been up since half past five so soon asleep.

Sunday, February 1/2015

Pack today, as we leave shortly after 6 tomorrow morning. Also smaller carry-ons, in line with Ryanair's small minded and strict requirements, have to be packed like Chinese puzzles: 

[8.7.1 You may carry one cabin bag per passenger (no allowance for infants travelling on their parents lap) weighing up to 10kg with maximum dimensions of 55cm x 40cm x 20cm, plus 1 small bag up to 35 x 20 x 20 cms]. 

Not taking a suitcase, and new carry-ons acquired from charity shop at the Maronite convent this week, for the grand sum of €1.50 (£1.12, $2.15 CAD). J's actually a laptop case, from which he has removed one of the dividers. Only real liability that it looks as if it's contents were more valuable than they actually are. Taking only ipad mini and book reader as electronics. Plus J's camera.

Saturday, January 31/2015

Pick up boarding passes to/from Rome. Ryanair now only makes them available online seven days in advance of the flight. They can be obtained at the airport, but for €70 per trip. Therefore round trip for two boarding passes cost €280 (£210, $402 CAD). Makes a mockery of the term low cost carrier. And it's not accidental. Ryanair hopes that extra charges will substantially underwrite the operation.

Friday, January 30/2015

Out of raisins. Well, time to take the plunge and go redeem our winning ticket at Smart stores. Can't help thinking how much more an extrovert would enjoy the process, happily explaining to anyone who cared to listen. So we start at the drygoods part of Smart, acquiring a ceramic frying pan and a cafetière (French coffee press, depends what country you're in - the French don't call it French). That's the treat part. Although much of the grocery store things could quite reasonably be considered treats - whisky, gin, wine. Well aware that any similar draw in Canada would exclude these from our haul. And that they would have cost more in Canada to begin with. Estimate the liquor and wine at $360 Canadian, using LCBO as the standard, although sizes have to be adjusted to European (litres) and some things like Cyprus brandy, have no exact equivalent. Everything else is just a prudent restock of staples (well, wine is a staple) that can reasonably be expected to be finished by the time we leave. Some of the liquor won't be finished and will get stored here for next year. Between weight of luggage and Canada customs, that's the unfortunate reality.

Have reckoned without the enthusiasm of Smart employees, who are happy not only to congratulate us but to take a photo. Could nicely have washed my hair this morning but was waiting until afternoon just before I got it cut. But can't imagine anyone caring to look at the pic anyway - certainly not anyone I know. And, very kindly, they offer to drive us the four blocks home, saving about four trips - some of it is pretty heavy!

Ocean Basket with M for dinner. Very busy. Interesting - Friday night and some waterfront places full while others are nearly empty. 

Thursday, January 29/2015

Coffee with M, who suggests we go back to hers for lunch. And very nice too. Homemade tzatziki and guacamole as well as humus. Next door neighbour has given M homemade olive bread and, as we're finishing, leans over from her balcony with a small plate of glyka, traditional pieces of fruit preserved fruit, the preserving done in a sugar syrup over a period of days. They're sometimes known as spoon fruit because the result is a beautiful but insanely sweet piece of fruit (or fruit peel, or walnut or other nut) suitable for serving to a guest in a teaspoon.

Photo not of our fruit today - but ours just as nice!

Wednesday, January 28/2015

Walk up to the shuttle-to-Paphos-airport place sort of near Phaneromeni Church to check out the service for Monday. They cut it a little finer than our natural caution would, but should be ok. Fifteen euros each way. Bus back on Friday is at eleven and our plane due in at 10:30, but no, Despina assures us, they wait for the plane. So that's all right. Walk will be chilly at 6:15 AM, but all to the good because we need to take warmer clothes for Italy so might as well wear them. Won't be chilly coming back Friday afternoon though.

Tuesday, January 27/2015

In the little periptero (corner shop) beside the hotel buying a litre of milk. Ahead of me at the counter is a young woman, blonde hair contrasting with tan of a depth available only in the most carcinogenic of tanning salons, giving the effect of a photographic negative. Very brief black shorts and tiny strapless black top, covering not very much. Shoulder decorated with large butterfly tattoo, though. It's early evening - temperature in the mid teens. Make up definitely not designed for daytime, or civilian life in general. Large patches of very deep rouge and enormous kohled eyes with arcs of blue and silver eyeshadow reaching the brows. Unable to decide whether likely break is from stage, night club or brothel. Perhaps local pubs much racier than we knew.

Jane and I, rather more decorously attired, off to a U3A club sponsored dinner at Bennigan's. About thirty people there. Friendly, relaxed, and chatty. Ribs with Guinness sauce, melting off the bone, go nicely with pint of same - or in Jane's case wine. German and then British football games on the screens.  Meet couple from Canada - he from Alberta? and she, Leslie, forcibly removed from England to Weyburn area at age 13 when family emigrated, as she recalls it. Now retired and living in Cyprus. 

Monday, January 26/2015

And the banks drag their feet on non-performing loans: "As of late November 2014, only 11.1 per cent of NPLs, equating to loans worth €3.1bn, had been restructured," says the Cyprus Mail. Bad enough, you would think, but then comes the definition of restructuring: "Loan restructuring refers mainly to the extension of their repayment periods, and/or ‘temporarily’ decreasing monthly instalments. In some cases, restructuring involves decreasing interest rates or waiving part of the capital and/or the interest due." Nothing extreme that might involve getting assets in return for bad debts.

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.