Wednesday, January 17/2024

 

Wouldn’t have needed to go to the store today if we hadn’t been out of yoghurt - although always happy to enjoy the short walk back looking up at the mountain. Stop part way to observe a standoff between two all white cats, rare colouring around here. The male making slow advances and the female unwelcoming but also unwilling to make an effective escape. Very slow unfolding drama. They look enough alike to be littermates. Incestuous? Eventually we leave with the resolution still unclear.

We always buy sheep’s yoghurt. Well, in Cyprus anyway. Canada more or less impossible and London neither cheap nor easy to find. Tried the Istanbul shop on Finchley Road, helpfully telling the man that they sell it in  Türkiye. Yes, he sighed, but….

In part we like the taste but it’s also significantly higher in calcium than cow’s yoghurt - or, for that matter goat’s.  Do know the word for sheep in Turkish although not the word for cow, so no longer totally reliant on the pictures on the labels. Also know the Turkish word for strained - as well as the fact that if it’s strained it won’t be sheep’s as sheep’s yoghurt has the creamy thickness without benefit of straining. There are a number of dairy companies but today for the first time this season we find sheep’s yoghurt in a clay container. Cow’s yoghurt always available in clay and the pots are nice, and reusable as small casseroles for baking, although there’s an obvious limit to how many one might need.

Tuesday, January 16/2024

The Overseer

Round about ramble as we head out to collect essentials at the grocery store. Not possible to get genuinely lost but definitely could get confused for some time. Works best as a discovery experience rather than a task oriented enterprise. Navigation actually the diametric opposite of Saskatchewan (surprisingly - if you haven’t lived there - the province with the most miles of road). Much of Saskatchewan is covered by grid roads, as mathematical as that sounds, with east-west roads one mile apart and north south ones two miles apart. Helps that the south of the province is pretty flat and if you had a large scale map what you see would be what you get.

And then there’s Lapta, sprawling from the sea up the mountainside, roads taking the line of least resistance with no two parallel. Some newly sufaced and others little more than dirt tracks that may peter out - or regain their strength unexpectedly. Roads that look straight and promising can end suddenly at a gated villa or an apartment parking lot. And the maps helpfully provided online and duly copied as screen shots are, as they say, an indication only. So a planned excursion contains happy surprises. Although if your sense of direction is no better than mine much of the surprise may be that the "same" route seems to have entirely different landmarks than it did last time. Google maps and friends do have the main roads but with variations and omissions. Possibly even additions?

Today we pass a hollow. Dry river bed? Garbage tip for unwanted crates, broken and otherwise? Home, anyway, to a variety of contented poultry. We’re not wonderful at identifying, but definitely more than one species. Is that one a duck or a goose? Some proudly outstanding and others well camouflaged. 

Collecting the bread and oranges rather an anticlimax.

 

Monday, January 15/2024

 Ten thirty in the morning a siren sounds for two minutes straight and then stops. Not the wailing kind you get with ambulances or fire engines. Presumably we’re not being attacked, especially as it stops after two minutes. Turns out it’s a kind of in memoriam sounding for the fortieth anniversary of the death of the first vice president of the Republic of Cyprus, Dr Fazıl Küçük. His vice presidency goes back to the time of Cyprus gaining independence and ended just before the final division of the country.

Military service is compulsory in both the North and South for males. In the South there is somewhat grudging recognition of the right of conscientious objectors to provide non military service as an alternative. The period required is substantially longer than service in the national guard would have been, however. 

A bill allowing for similar provisions for conscientious objectors in the TRNC has just been defeated in the legislature here. Leaving one quiet young man,  Mustafa Hurben, who is opposed on principle to taking part in the military, saying he will accept jail time instead of the draft. Actually the man has legally evaded the draft as there was a temporary scheme at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, which allowed him to buy his way out of conscription for £6,000 (€6,974, $10,261 CAD). The issue now is his refusal to attend annual refresher days and as a result he expects to be jailed for ten days each year he refuses until he turns forty.

Sunday, January 14/2024

 

Lovely to wake to sunshine after yesterday’s rain. By tradition we have brunch on Sunday, usually eggs. So today we eat out on the patio and absorb the sun. Vitamin D fix. 

And down to our nearby grocery store as we’re out of bread. Here we hit it lucky. There are sourdough olive loaves on the shelf, still warm from the oven. Take two as we know from experience how quickly the first is going to disappear. Also oranges, peanut butter, bananas, mushrooms. 

Meanwhile on the south side of the island there is a demonstration taking place outside the British base at Akrotiri which was used last night to launch attacks on Yemen. The protesters are asking for an end to the attacks on Gaza and also an end to making use of Cyprus to carry out British and - especially - American military operations. Due to its strategic location Cyprus has been referred to as an unsinkable aircraft carrier and the base is part of a ninety-nine square mile area retained by the UK at the time of Cypriot independence in 1960 for military purposes.

Saturday, January 13/2024

 

It’s rainy and we opt to stay in. Have to admit that were we in London and the temperature fourteen, as it is here, we would have been pleased at the warmth, put on our rain jackets, and gone out. And then there’s Regina, with a windchill this morning of -52. Yes, MINUS 52. When I first moved to Regina in 1968 people would say yes, but it’s a dry cold. At that temperature it really doesn’t matter. (OK, cold air does hold less moisture than warm - but it still doesn’t matter). 

Have wondered about the discrepancies between the weather forecasting sites. Would have supposed that radar views would have been similar, given a bit more or less time lag, but this is not always the case. Rain moving in from Greece - and lots of it - can show on one site but not another. Predictions vary as well. And of course they are only predictions. It seems there is a well known phenomenon not previously known to us called “wet bias”. This is the rounding up of percentage chance of rain by forecasters, apparently because viewers are much more upset about being drenched unexpectedly than about having taken an umbrella along only to find it isn’t needed.

So we stay safe at home and make hot soup with our lovely fresh vegetables. And later spaghetti with an aubergine sauce. 

And we really are safe. Have never seen, let alone lived in, a place with a door like the one in this flat. Very solid wood and a total of SEVEN bolts to lock it. Looks like it was designed to protect Mafiosi. Quite astonishing!

 Wake up to see that the chairs and the clothes dryer have gone walk about. Must have been quite the wind in the night and actually still blowing forcefully now. Did hear what must have been the drying rack hitting the patio tiles during the night but wasn’t moved to take any action.

It’s reported in the news today that inflation in the TRNC rose 83% in 2023. Significant rise not surprising but the figures are still disturbing. Breaks down as follows:

Housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels: 89.45%

Furniture, household appliances and maintenance services: 84.36%

Transportation: 83.25%

Miscellaneous goods and services: 80.70%

Entertainment and culture: 72.38%

Clothing and shoes: 70.66%

Alcoholic beverages and tobacco: 69.25%

Staple foods: 64.35%

We’ve noticed some increases while others wouldn’t affect us. In some cases - produce, wine, bread - even the increased price looks good by Canadian standards. Others, particularly imports from places other than Turkey, not so much. And as always when travelling, we eat food that we like that is good quality and a good price locally. 

Petrol here decreased a tiny fraction a month ago to 31.77 tl a litre ($1.41 CAD, €0.96, £0.83). Looks relatively comparable to Canadian prices, while noting that distances are shorter here but wages are also lower. In the South of Cyprus current petrol price is about €1.34 a litre, which gives many people reason to cross the border to fill up. In the North petrol prices, along with things like electricity and canisters of cooking gas are state controlled. There is a proposal to raise minimum wage by about 50% but it’s not certain and obviously would be too little to respond to increased prices. 

Thursday, January 11/2024

 Carpe diem - seize the day. 

We’re sitting in the sun on the patio, soaking up the warmth and enjoying the view of the Mediterranean below us. After we’ve finished our tasks we should sit here and have a glass of wine in the January sunshine and watch the cirrus clouds float past.

We don’t have much to do. A trip to the grocery store for yoghurt and oranges, maybe tomatoes and bread as well. But the sun won’t be here by then. It will disappear behind the mountain at three o’clock. It won’t be dark, or even dusk, and it will still be warm, but the caressing rays will be gone. We’ll be able to to see the sea, but it won’t sparkle. 

So seize the moment. There’s an open bottle of Shiraz Cabernet Sauvignon. We have olives and cheese and J’s made humus and a sardine mixture. The sun is on our backs. The sea is a deep sapphire.  The perfect time is now.

I’m no Latin scholar and J’s Latin lessons were a very long time ago. I’ve always accepted the translation of carpe diem as seize the day, but look it up. It’s from Horace’s odes, and apparently a more accurate translation would be “pluck” - as in picking fruit at the moment of ripeness:

WhetherJove has many winters yet to give, or this our last;

This, that makes the Tyrrhene billows spend their strength against the   shore.
Strain your wine and prove your wisdom; life is short; should hope be more?
In the moment of our talking, envious time has ebb'd away.

Seize the present

Pluck the perfect moment.

Wednesday, January 10/2024

Thunder storm warning second class - I.e. yellow and not red triangle - on the weather app this morning. Initially just intermittently overcast and then a couple of showers, but in the evening it gets down to serious rain. Interesting contrast with some of the rainstorms we experienced in the South when the streets would be suddenly shin deep in water. Once saw a man remove his footwear in order to protect it as he crossed the street. There was no protection from the drivers, up to their headlights in water and gunning it, more out of malice than fear of stalling. Then in an hour there would be nothing but a few innocent puddles, the flooding down more to bad drainage than epic rainfall. Here we’re both on a mountainside and surrounded by orchards so the rain has somewhere to go. Drivers more considerate as well.

The floor to ceiling window in the salon gives us a dramatic view of lightning over the Mediterranean. By evening intracloud sheet lightning in the dark skies illuminating the clouds from beneath along the horizon as it crosses the sea from east to west. Too far away to hear the thunder at first but then the heavier rain starts and the storm moves inland. Loud thunder now and lightning on the mountain side.

Zeus is the traditional Greek god of lightning and storms. Not familiar with ancient Turkish mythology but the closest would seem to be Tanrı, traditionally the celestial god, although the Turkish word simply means god. And in Egypt the god of lightning was Baal, a Middle East import of multiple talents. Tonight the gods are busy over our island.

And as always when it storms here I look at the radar to see whether it’s also storming in Gaza. Because we’re warm and dry and safe.

Tuesday, January 9/2024

 

The Road Home

Second hazy day so it occurs, belatedly, to check the usual cause - dust from the Sahara  (or sometimes Middle East) - in the atmosphere. Sure enough the Met office issued an advisory yesterday saying it was expected yesterday and today. Well, it’s a natural cause and not one officialdom can do much about. Not actually bothering us either, fortunately. 

Regular little sortie down to our local supermarket -  roughly half a mile round trip and going there is downhill. Not a bad slope coming back either, really. We’re semi lucky. There is sourdough bread and it’s still warm. Just not the olive sourdough bread we always hope for. 

And mobile provider, it turns out, can be paid with a credit card on an app, so that’s done now.

Monday, January 8/2024

 

Errand day. Have things to buy at the DIY shop so check to see which other stores are nearby so that one dolmuş stop will do. Dolmuşes are really handy because they will beep lightly if they see you walking, just to see if you’re hoping for a ride, and are happy to let you off anywhere you ask. We ask to go to Ileli, the smartest of the supermarkets on today’s list. Enjoy checking out the offerings but we’re happy to note  that our regular little grocery store near home is pretty competitive in prices if not in variety - and obviously a much shorter distance to carry things. Do buy four bulgur köftesi (known in the South as koupes) at their deli counter. Lovely little sausage shaped treats made of a fine bulgur casing with enough liquid to hold it together stuffed with seasoned ground meat and onion filling and then deep fried. They’re delicious, though we resist the temptation to eat them immediately.

Pass the shop where we bought the mobile and remember that they had said when we went to pay for the provider service that the first month was free. Lovely - but when was that? December. Early or mid? A month ago? Is the phone, which I have forgotten to bring with me, now lying newly dead at home? Could go into the shop to inquire but there seems to be a longish queue inside and I can’t remember my phone number, so probably little to be gained but embarrassment.

On to the little DIY shop. It’s a pleasure to poke around in and the people who work there are lovely, helpful but not overbearingly so. And pretty good at interpreting my non-technical descriptions. What kind of glue did you want? Me: the kind where you mix two things together. Oh yes, over there on the left. Pretty good buy on a plug adapter. And J gets an impressive pair of leather gauntlets. But they’re welding gloves - aren’t they a bit of overkill for our little shrubbery? Yes, but they’re a steal at the price and they’ll come home with us. Fair enough.

Last stop is the Russian shop. Nothing underpriced here but everything super quality and locally sourced. So buy smoked chicken garlic sausage and smoked pork fillet. 

Dolmuş home and message the mobile provider. Can I pay tomorrow? Answer comes back that we have until the fifteenth . Signed with a happy face 😊.

Sunday, January 7/2024

On the mountainside are two flags, visible from quite a wide area in the village below. One is the Turkish flag, with white crescent and star on a red background. 🇹🇷 The other is the flag of the TRNC - Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. This is the same design with colours reversed, red on white. 

Flags are just barely visible in the photo on the right, taken a couple of blocks downhill from us. Pretty well dead centre in the picture. We can see them quite well from our patio, though, and very useful they are for reasons completely unrelated to nationalism. As we attempt to predict weather they give a clear indication of which way the wind is blowing. It’s usually from the west, although J notes that when, as today, the wind is from the east we don’t normally get the stormy weather we’ve learned to expect. Today is hazy, but calm. We do get winds from the south. You can see the clouds being blown over the mountains from the south side. But the flags are too close to the steep mountain slope to show a south wind.

The most striking North Cypriot flag, though, is on the other side of the mountain range. It’s an enormous flag - 50 acres (426 metres wide) painted, or more accurately chemically dyed, onto the mountainside. It’s visible from Nicosia, as it is intended to be, and also, apparently from space. The largest flag in the world. A sign of the tragic history of Cyprus, it is provocation, bravado, and a memorial to those who died in one of the saddest episodes of mass execution in the time of conflict.

Saturday, January 6/2024

 Glorious weather for market day. We’re pretty well supplied with books, but can’t resist an Ian Rankin from Tulips, the cancer support charity stall. In a good cause. And J picks up a handful of CDs as well. 

Our friendly fruit and nut man is here as usual. J asks for a kilo of peanuts. They’re 170 Turkish lira a kilo so the vendor weighs them. Comes to 178 tl so he’s pleased to announce that it’s 170 - the last 8 is free! Also a small container of strawberries. They must be hothouse at this time of year but absolutely lovely - not a speck of white on any of them.

The old man who sold us the honey last time is back but no sign of honey this time. A little worrying. We’re not finished the jar we bought but it’s going much faster than inferior honey - as is always the case. Had assumed it would always be available here. The man doesn’t speak English so we don’t inquire. There’s also a man squeezing both oranges and pomegranates with a big juicer and selling large glasses of juice. The pomegranate is a beautiful dark colour and reminds us that we haven’t seen any of the lovely tangy pomegranate molasses we used to buy here in the North. It’s found throughout the Middle East so quite possible that we just haven’t looked properly.

Stop at the supermarket on the way home. But it’s been hot walking up the hill, so as well as the bread and sheep’s yoghurt and carrots and peppers and onions that we came for we pick up a half litre tin of Tuborg beer. Danish formula, obviously, but produced in Türkiye. And very nice. Appreciate the fact that few things here are bulk packaged. If you want four carrots or three onions or one tin of beer it’s no problem. And in the case of produce leads to its always being fresh. 

So home to a sunny patio to split a beer and enjoy having a read.

Friday, January 5/2024

 

The weather here continues to fascinate us for several reasons. First, it’s very different from the weather at home in a number of ways, most obviously if by no means exclusively because it’s warmer. But also because we’re not good here - or for that matter in the UK - at reading the signs and making predictions. The clues in the sky don’t seem to lead to the same conclusions. Then there’s the fact that the weather matters more to us here - and also less. We don’t have a car so every place we go involves walking or a combination of walking and waiting in the open for a dolmuş. Preference for not being caught in the rain if we’re going any farther than the grocery store. On the other hand, we have no real responsibilities beyond buying and cooking food and a bit of basic washing and sweeping. So pretty easy if it rains to decide it’s a good day for reading books and making soup.

And there are the dramatic skies. There are floor to ceiling windows on the Mediterranean and mountain sides and we can see for miles down the coast to the west. Raising the bedroom blinds in the morning has all the drama of raising a theatre curtain.  Will the sun be illuminating the highest peak? Are dark clouds gathering over the mountains? With a full wall window and a mountain range immediately behind us there’s always drama. On the north side the sea is farther away than the mountains on the south and the questions are different. Are there white caps? What colour is the water? Can you see Türkiye? Is there a rainbow?

While I’ve never lived with such a “big sky” as here except in Saskatchewan, we have obviously experienced seasonal rain elsewhere. So how does London compare? There October and November are typically rainier than December and January, unlike in Cyprus. And surprisingly winter rainfall in Cyprus is typically slightly greater than in London’s rainy season. Compare the London average of 71 and 63 mm for October and November to the Cypriot heavy months of December and January at 75 and 64mm. But I’ve always said that London gets a bad rap. Paris has more rain but no one ever says they won’t go to Paris because it will be too wet. December in Paris averages 78mm. And Sioux Lookout? Winter isn’t a good comparison because the precipitation consists mainly of snow - which doesn’t melt down to all that much water if you’ve ever been reduced to melting snow for domestic  water needs. But summer? June, July and August average 96.8, 93.5, and 87.6mm respectively. Sunny summers quite a bit wetter  than Cyprus’s winter rainy season.

Thursday, January 4/2024

Courtesy of BBC

 The trial has begun this week in Türkiye of eleven defendants with regard to the deaths in the February earthquake of thirty-five citizens of North Cyprus, most of whom were high school students attending a volleyball tournament. They were killed when the hotel in which they were staying collapsed. There seem to have been a number of problems with the construction, including improper provisions when the hotel was converted from a residence and possibly illegal addition of a tenth floor. In addition there are allegations that the river sand used in the concrete was not suitable for high grade building material. 

What will probably not emerge at the trial is the culpability of Turkish President Erdoğan. In Adıyaman and other Turkish centres geologists have claimed that most of the tens of thousands of buildings that collapsed should not have done if they had been built to proper standards for an earthquake zone. Part of the problem was the lax regulation regarding construction standards, including an amnesty retroactively legalising thousands of substandard buildings in the interests of meeting the president’s agenda of fostering a construction boom. Substandard construction and lax inspection practices were more than tacitly encouraged. Those on trial might be guilty but they may not be the only ones.

Wednesday, January 3/2024

Courtesy of LGC

Intend to run errands today but rain begins. Check with AccuWeather to see if radar shows probable improvement. AccuWeather radar purports to show that night rain has moved off to Syria with none showing to the west of us any nearer than Albania. On the other hand, credibility somewhat undermined by message saying no precipitation for the next 60 minutes when rain continues to fall outside our window. So much for trademark “Superior Accuracy”. Must admit, though, to having ignored their invitations to “upgrade to a better weather experience” having cynically supposed that this referred to paying for dubious benefits such as improved graphics. Perhaps better weather was genuinely magically on offer to those of pure heart. Full rainbow appears over the Mediterranean but disappears immediately. Magic vanishes.

Maybe there’s something inherently amusing about weather forecasting. Refer to the Met office here for more, dare I hope, accuracy. Result: “The weekly forecast from today will be occasionally rainy, scattered showers in the eastern parts of the country on Wednesday”. Leaving aside the question of whether it is the forecast or the weather itself that will be occasionally rainy - and allowing for translation glitches - am left wondering about the western part of the country, in which we happen to be living. Doesn’t appear in the next sentence - or anywhere else in the forecast.

And then there’s my all time favourite weatherman line, going back to London in 2015 when the forecaster referred to a low pressure area, hovering over Ireland before its inevitable move east, as "lurking with intent".

Tuesday, January 2/2024

Breakfast oranges are so fresh that J has renewed his custom of squirting the oil from the skins into the jar of honey, although the current wildflower honey is lovely without his assistance. Used to tell him in Larnaca that he could set up a booth on the beach promenade along with the other specialty vendors on a Sunday.

Small ginger cat at the window on the sea side. Quite interested in us. Then goes round to the mountain/deck side which also has floor to ceiling windows. Clearly wants to come in and says so repeatedly. Beautiful cat and quite likely to be homeless but we really can’t be adopting only to abandon it when we leave.

Monday, January 1/2024

 We are still awake when 2024 makes its entrance, somewhat to our own surprise. If there are any fireworks we didn’t spot them, though the neighbour across the road had twinkling lights in what we’ve always taken to be a garden shed or animal shelter. Firecrackers have been sounding on and off all evening leading up to uneven volleys as the New Year begins, at which point the neighbourhood dogs add enthusiastic voices to the general din.

Our last two slices of bread become toast this morning. So incentive to try out the oven which, unlike the burners, is electric not gas so should be pretty familiar territory. And it is. The whole wheat flour, though, is noticeably finer than what we usually get at home. Although we did once buy a 10 kilo bag of flour from India because it was the only available whole wheat flour in bags that big at Superstore and it too was almost powder fine. (Yes, Canada imports wheat from US, United Arab Emirates, New Zealand, India and France. Who knew?) So we have the first loaf of Irish soda bread of the winter and of the new year.