Monday, February 7/2011

Cyprus lulls one - but there are other places to see, so now busy setting up side trip to Syria and also a trip after we get back to London. We fly to London March 16 and February is a short month.

Sunday, February 6/2011

Another beautiful sunny day. Brunch and the newspaper - which J points out is getting worse by the week. It always had a high proportion of fill - ads, standard bits from the international press, and lightweight reports on local services, verging on advertisement. but there have always been some fairly good local opinion pieces and they're thinning out. The paper is also our weekly telly guide though. Overpriced as such at a euro sixty perhaps, but we're not likely to give it up, especially as it also includes a guide for BBC World Service radio.

Walk down along the promenade. It's busy now but not on weekdays, so presumably most of these people, whether Cypriot, Asian, or East Europen, have day jobs keeping them occupied. There don't seem to be very many genuine tourists. Stop at yesterday's café for Cyprus coffee. Exactly our best image of retirement - sitting at a little sidewalk café in the sun, sea view, old buildigs, short sleeve weather in February and a friendly café owner who remembers us.

Saturday, February 5/2011

Sun back in evidence and M has sussed out a café where the sun hits earlier and stays later It's just round the corner from the Athene - the best of our former hotels, now half rebuilt and up for sale. Tables a bit weather warped - and nice wicker chairs just off the pavement with views of sea and lovely old Larnaca buildings across the road and lots of interesting foot traffic. The owner is a painter as well, so his paintings are in evidence as well as large blow-ups of old Larnaca photographs. Friendly relaxed atmosphere and even biscuits with the Cyprus coffees. Good find!

M to dinner in the evening. Spaghetti with vegetarian sauce - lots of mushrooms.

Email fro Lilly in Syria. She's planning to take the bus in from Lattakia - four hours up the coast - and meet us in Damascus for a day and is giving us several possible plans of what we could see and do. Quite exciting.

Friday, February 4/2011

Cloudy, bits of light showers, and cool - about 15. Then it occurs to us that in mucay h of the world this would pass for an incredible spring day in mid-winter. But we make soup and read. Currently Ian Rankin's Black and Blue alternately with Paul Scott's The Towers of Silence, third book in the Raj Quartet. M and I play Scrabble in the evening.

Thursday, February 3/2011

Home from Carrefour with an enormous stalk of celery - a good three feet high, many stemmed, with luxuriant dark green leaves. As J says when I get back, "You've come home with a tree." No waste, though. We share part of it with Maggi and J dries the leves and powders them before starting on the stems.

Watch the last two episodes of Downton Abbey.

Wednesday, February 2/2011

J and I to town hall to check on hotel tax update. Not astonishingly, there is no update - try back about the 10th. Run into Maggi there, come to ask for a Larnaca calendar with historic pictures of the town. We admire the pictures and are shown large ones on office and boardroom walls as well, the office occupants looking a little startled at finding themselves part of a tour.

Mobile rings outside. It's Larnaca Tourist people. Back when we were first at the town hall in mid-January, Androula, who we spoke to, said that the city likes to honour long term tourists (we've confessed to eleven years). We obligingly filled out a form, feeling that there was no need to be rude about refusing to let them type up a certificate. Turned out there was more to it than that. They wanted to arrange a ceremony. So we left, hoping it would all disappear into the bureaucracy and be forgotten. Back to the ringing mobile - turns out we've just missed the ceremony and everyone was waiting. Didn't we get the fax? They sent a fax to the hotel. Ah well - a new date will be arranged. So be sure to ask for the fax.

We're watchig the next bit of Downton Abbey when Kikki arrives with the fax, having guessed that if we weren't in our flat we'd be in Maggi's. So no escape this time.

Throughout the night the protestors in Tahrir Square are attacked by pro Mubarek forces - many of whom admit to being paid thugs.

Tuesday, February 1/2011

In evening watch first disc of Jane's Downton Abbey DVD on M's laptop - and are hooked.

Watching Cairo for a week now. we knkow Tahir Square. It's big, but not huge. Certainly not Tiananmen. Can't help wondering about some of the baser practicalities of the demo. Do hundreds of thousands of people use the loo at KFC - or what?

Monday, January 31/2011

Nicely balanced day. Morning listening to the Today program (BBC Radio 4) and in the afternoon M and I meet up with Jane for the Monday hash. It's in extensive parkland near Aridippou, which is now more or less suburban Larnaca. A nice walk with lovely views of surrounding hillsides which have, somehow, raken in enough rain to be as green as Ireland. I chat on the walk with Fatholsa (spelling almost certainly wrong) a Cypriot woman who has lived ingermany for over 40 years but spends frequent extended holidays in cyprus where she maintains a flat. She's a translator and fluent in five languages. Very interesting.

Sunday, January 30/2011

Follow the Egyptian demonstrations throughout the day on BBC. Sound of explosions outside at supper time - almost undoubtedly war games on the part of the army here, but the sound effects go well with the Cairo and Alexandria pictures. Al Jazeera reports demonstrations in Jordan calling for the replacement of the prime minister.

Saturday, January 29/2011

Market day - which means coffee at Jimmy's Café, just outside the market. We walk down with Maggi and are joined a bit later by Jane and Bill. Then a wander through the market, though we donèt buy anything. Just not as good prices or quality as it used to be - or as Prinos. So J heads off to Prinos while M and I browse the charity shops and end up with a petticoat, CD's and a lamp (M) and paperbacks (me), feeling that if these are not strictly necessary they're at least a contribution to the animal shelters.

Down before dinner to M's flat for a drink and to admire the new lamp in situ. Then spaghetti carbonara with sautéed mushrooms and artichoke hearts.

As we finish the day, the curfew has proven ineffective in Cairo, though no ore ineffective than Mubarek`s efforts at providing a new government without actually making any ovesdoward democracy or even elections.

Friday, January 28/2011

Egypt in chaos, with major street demonstrations. We watch as Lyse Doucet, looking as if she hasn't slept since Tunisia, interviews an Egyptian BBC correspondent whose shirt is soaked with blood after being attacked by plain clothed police who were not at all interested in his press credentials. The streets are as full as ever. Someone reports having seen a sign saying "Mubarek, Saudi Arabia Awaits You." Mubarek may well prove a tougher nut than Bel Ali, though, if only because he's enjoyed considerably more US backing, though official US commentary is now wavering, perhaps because America is reluctant to emerge on the wrong side of history - or of future leadership. There have been close to a thousand injuries but, interestingly, the army seems reluctant to oppose the people.

Thursday, January 27/2011

Thunderstorm in the night and the day is threatening, but not bad. Meet with Maggi, Jane and Bill at an Indian restaurant with fairly good reviews for dinner. The good reviews aren't helping it much. For most of the evening we're the only party there - seems to be another for part. The food is nice enough - though the highly ambitious menu does lead one to assume much of it must be frozen. Veggie samosas are excellent and we order a variety of mostly chicken or lamb dishes, which, fortunately, Jane suggests we share Chinese restaurant style so that we all get a taste of several. Not bad at all. The service is polite to the point of gratitude though it takes some effort to waken anyone to ask for coffee. We order Cypriot coffee (which is on the menu) and should have been warned when the young Indian waiter is unfamiliar with the terms sketo and metrio (no sugar and medium amount of sugar) and also asks if we want milk - never served with Cypriot coffee. The result is odd, but drinkable. The writing is on the wall though Fourteen euros each is a lot of money for what is not a lot of food. You can do much better along this road, and with food at least as good.

Wednesday, January 26/2011

One of the explanations provided for the terrible sound on BBC World is that we are a long way from the British base at Dhekelia. This sounds, initially, irrelevant - and then simply wrong. After all, the reception was much better in the Kition, which is half a mile further. However, J's suspicion that the signal is stolen seems probable, and may also accout for frequent (inaccurate) messages that the service is unavailable or scrambled - programming continuing beneath the message. It would also explain a reluctance to solve the problem by complaining to the provider.

Tuesday, January 25/2011

Jane calls and invites over to the marina to see their boat, a catamaran called Doublit, that they have up for sale. We're not in the market of course, but J in particular is interested in the work Bill has been doing on it. It's a fair size - lots of cabin space and a nice little galley. The GPS is a good one, and fascinating. Then lunch at the marina cafeteria with Jane and Bill as well as Harry, who has ridden in to town on his Harley Davidson.

Monday, January 24/2011

In the afternoon M and I drive out to Pyla for a hash meet. Originally marked trail cross-country runs, there is now a walking contingent, which Jane attends regularly. So we're off with her to Khellia, a nearby village, where we follow the trail, false leads included (though these are mostly quickly discovered by those who are faster than we are) for an hour and a half. They're a nice bunch and pretty easy-going and it's fun. Quick drink at the end and then back to Jane and Bill's - a nice corner house with Jane's paintings on the wall - for a g&t and a meal. Lovely day.

Sunday, January 23/2011

Disgracefully lazy day, with sun streaming in our open doors to the balcony and us lounging about after brunch with the Sunday paper and our books. No excitement until early evening when we smell - and then see - smoke. There's some noise outside and it proves to be coming from outside flat 401, where a there's a man looking slightly embarrassed (though not nearly ashamed as he ought considering the stench). He says that he burnt the cooking, so we assume that this can be translated as "I'm aware of the problem and the fire is now out." As an actual explanation, it's almost certainly inaccurate. Nothing organic - except perhaps rubber - burns with that ugly a smell.

Interestingly no alarm has been triggered - audibly at least. Do we have smoke detectors? So open all the windows and doors while leaving the heating on. Does a pretty good job of clearing everywhere but the bathroom, where smoke seems to have come in through vents running above the false ceiling and has no exit window.

Saturday, January 22/2011

The warm weather continues and J and I pick up filter coffees from Macdonald's. Sounds a bit pathetic, but their filter coffee is quite good and half (or less) the price of anyone else's in a place where the usual alternative to Cypriot coffee is Nescafé. A character in the novel I'm reading at the moment (The Island) comments wryly that nobody appears to have had the heart to tell Greeks that Nescafé is no longer a desirable novelty. So off with our coffees to the small pier at the end of the beach where we sit and drink them, watching small boats in the distance.

Friday, January 21/2011

Tony Blair testifies again for the Chilcot Inquiry. Not easy to hear as the inquiry is carried on BBC World tv and the sound quality at the Sunflower is quite poor, although only on this chanel. Perhaps just as well, as it's maddening seeing the patronising way in which he dismisses the concerns of Lord Goldsmith, attorney general at the time, who needed considerable persuading to see it Blair's way. Blair is careful always to refer to him as Peter, thereby establishing Lord G as both an intimate and not quite an adult. This according, actually, with Lord G's own account of being shut out of the process. And, most worryingly, Blair finishes with a quite unsolicited suggestion that aggressive action may have to be taken against Iran. Stay tuned.

Thursday, January 20/2011

J still collecting info from the travel agencies on trips to Damascus. Prices are up, he notes, fro last time, and the length isn't very long - really a long weekend. But we'd really like to go again.\\Dinner tonight with the same crew as last Thursday, this time at a taverna (Greek translaates as Apostle Andrew). Not quite the same bits and pieces beforehand as at Vlachos, but nice little plates of cheese, olives, tomato, cucumber and smoked almonds. Generous portions too, with salad, chips and rice on our enormous plates as well as the meat. No waste either as Harry and Elsa always come with plastic bags to take home any leftovers to their many pets.

Wednesday, January 19/2011

Maggi's invited us to dinner at a little tverna aacross the road (known as "not the Famagusta but the one next to it"). It's very popular with locals and we've seen it doing a lovely business at lunch time. Turns out there's a good reason for this - it's not open in the evenings. In fact it closes at 7:30, which is exactly the time we head over. So M proposes Militzi's - the old standby on Makenzy (yes, that is how it's spelled). We sit in by the fire, very cosy, and have tavas and stifado, which they do exceptionally well.