Monday, December 29/2008

Cyprus's mild version of winter - temperatures in mid to high tens Celsius and the occasional shower. Euronews shows only European weather, the camera moving across the map at a speed that makes focus a tricky eye exercise. BBC World attempts to cover the whole world in the same inadequate time, so that North America is represented by little more than half a dozen cities. The two chosen Canadian cities are Winnipeg and Quebec, an odd choice but reasonably interesting for us. Presumably Winnipeg occupies a spot on the map for which there is little competition.

Sunday, December 28/2008

Lazy day for us, but we're an hour away from Gaza (by air) and the utter misery is intensifying as the Israelis play tough for a pre-election audience.

Nice bits of year end retrospectives beginning. Gwynne Dyer's look at the year in today's Cyprus Mail is disappointingly thin on analysis - looks like he suddenly realised it had to be done by five o'clock - but BBC World shows some of its best documentaries of the year, including a couple of excellent ones on China, a contry that has changed enormously in the almost 20 years since we were there.

Saturday, December 27/2008

Coffee with Maggi at the market - a smaller market for the Christmas meal but we don't need anything. Then in the afternoon we walk out to M&M's. The road has been eroded a bit by the sea during the last storm - undercut as well? G&T, melon and parma ham on the balcony overlooking the sea. It's hot as long as the sun lasts.

Woolworth stores in the UK began closing their doors today, early victims of the recession. They've had a long history. My father used to tell us about going to Woolworth's with his brothers and sister to buy Christmas presents. They would take turns having one wait while the other four went to buy his presents.

Friday, December 26/2008

Boxing Day and would have been my grandfather's birthday - I think his hundred and twenty third. He never knew any of his grandchildren and we have - the oldest grandchildren at least - a few distilled sayings and memories of him through our parents. In the Depression, for example, he wouldn't let his sons caddy because there were grown men trying to feed their families by caddying. It was also Grandpa who, early in his marriage, made the mistake of telling my grandmother that the cake she had just made was as good as a store-bought one.

Shops closed and we, like many others, tourists and locals alike, walk along the beach front promenade (named Finoukides after the date palms that line it) and the pier. It's warm in the sun and everyone from babies to grandparents is out, the children displaying Christmas presents. A little girl is unsteady on her new roller skates and helium balloons in animal shapes are much in display. Popcorn, roasted corn on the cob and ice cream on sale. One brave man goes for a swim. The water is probably quite warm, but there is a bit of breeze across the beach.

We stop to examine the new large abstract sculpture at the pier end of the beach. Tell me, I say, that it isn't something horrible like a monument memorialising victims of some Turkish atrocity. Well, not quite - but sort of. It's not Cypriot victims anyway. Loath to miss any chance to demonise the Turks, the southern Cypriots have erected a monument in memory of the victims of the Turkish massacre of the Armenians. It's true, of course, that the massacre occured, though not recently and true that Turkey has not taken responsibility and that many Armenians took refuge in cyprus - but all the same it seems like an opportunity they just couldn't let pass. But there is also on display along the walk winning entries from a Cypriot art contest with multicultural emphasis. Some quite impressive works and a sign of hope. They don't seem to attract as much attention as the sculpture though.

Thursday, December 25/2008

Christmas Day. Traditional and not. We go to Mass in the moroning, stopping for koulouri at the bakery on the way back. Bakeries and news stands are open (and newspapers published) but not much else. No one condemned to day old bread or news.

J has outlined a Christmas tree shape about five feet high on the front of the wardrobe using tinsel made from silver paper donated by Maggi. He's "hung" baubles (saved from last year) on it with bluetack, decorated it with curls of paper chain and cut a gold star for the top - and all of this in two halves so that the wardrobe doors still open. He's also draped coloured foil curls and balls made from chocolate wrapper across the arch in the middle of the room and we have a couple of christmas posters, full broadsheet size, courtesy of the December 10 and 11 Guardians. As well as our menorah style five candle wrought iron candelabra that J rescued from the street two years ago.

M&M to dinner for what is now our 7th Christmas together. This time we have a leg of lamb, largely because it works better with the large pot but no oven facilities. And because Cypriot lamb is so good. Just after the vegetables are on the table and J is finishing making the gravy, the two burner hot plate blows, audibly. As Maggi says, pretty good timing. Dinner is done, and we can still make the brandy sauce and heat the Christmas pudding in the microwave. Lovely lamb and good company.

Wednesday, December 24/2008

Christmas Eve. There is a Christmas farmers' market today, and the rain has stopped, but we head north instead to Carrefour and collect a few more bits for dinner tonight and tomorrow. The queues are horrific, especially at the butcher's counter - easily fifteen people deep. At Prinos greengrocers I watch a young mother hand her daughter, aged maybe 4, a juicy peach as a reward for watching the shopping basket in the queue and am not sure whether I am more shocked by the casual acquisition without payment of a large out-of-season fruit on behalf of a child or by her handing the girl unwashed fruit to eat. I tell Joe, who says he just watched a woman in the supermarket put in her cart a carton of coke with attached free toy bus. She then tore the bus out of its plastic, handed it to her young son, and returned the coke to the shelf.

Lovely walk back. The rain has freshened things up and we pass bouganvillea, and flower beds, trees laden with oranges and palms swaying in the breeze. Very busy with traffic backed up and store aisles jammed with shoppers.

Christmas for me begins with the broadcast live of the nine lessons and carols from King's college, Cambridge. Or does when we're in this part of the world, anyway. In central Canada it would be at 9 a.m. but here it starts at five pm, always with a single boy soprano singing the first verse of Once in Royal David's City. They've been holding the service for 90 years and every year since 1932, with one exception, the radio World Service has carried it live. Time to sit down, pour a drink, and know that Christmas has begun. King's College chapel itself (not that it shows, this being radio) is lovely - a Gothic chapel dating back to Henry VI, and memories of it mingle with the music.

And on a more secular plane we pick up, later in the evening Ricky Gervais in some slightly edgy comedy with Swedish subtitles on the Swedish chanel.

Tuesday, December we/2008

The television weather map of the Mediterranean shows the eastern end concealed by bluish cloud. It's not a satellite map - just a representation - but it matches the alternate drizzle and heavy showers that happen.

Monday, December 23/2008

Wake to the swish of cars driving on wet road. It's rained in the night, though not enough to do a great deal of good. Cypriot reservoirs are said to be at 3% of capacity and progress with desalination plants hopelessly behind. More rain, and hail and wind, in late afternoon, with attendant damage and flooding. As always, the storm sewers here are completely inadequate. so much of the rain that falls is wasted.

There's a Christmas concert on tonight. It's free and the standard is usually pretty high, but given the uncertainty of the weather and the certainty of flooded streets we give it a miss.

Sunday, December 21/2008

Last Sunday in Advent. At Mass there are two separate, though intermingled groups. The Europeans - mostly English or Irish expats with a sprinkling of Italians, Poles and others - and the Asians - mostly Filippino or, in lesser numbers, Sri Lankan, household help. While clearly in the laid back european camp ourselves, it's hard not to admire the liveliness, enthusiasm and open affection of the Filippinas especially. They don't make much money here, are often badly treatd by their employers, and, in many cases, have left small children behind with grandparents as they search for jobs that will allow them to send money home but the hug as they meet, sway to the music and are all smiles. It's very humbling.

Find a Chinese delivery menu that had been thrust into my hand on the street. See that it features "pecking duck with 4 pancakes," "half pecking duck" and "whole pecking duck," at eight euros fifty-five, sixteen euros ninety and thirty-three euros thirty respectively. For those feeling peckish?

Saturday, December 20/2008

The American Academy has a car boot sale in the morning. Pick up 4 paperbacks for a euro. Then market for oranges, cucumber, courgettes, cauliflower, kohlrabi and eggs. Coffee there with M&M. Good Cypriot coffee with the glass of water on the side and a nice breeze blowing.

In the afternoon to Carrefour. Still getting stocked up. Last time J spotted a Cypriot woman checking out the liquor. She opened the caps of two different fancy for Christmas bottles of vodka, sniffed them, returned them to the shelf, and bought neither. Today we check the meat counter. There's a sign with a price for lamb, but all that appears at that point under the glass counter is thirteen sad looking sheep's heads, eyes glazed, and beside them a pile of miscellaneous offal. No sign of the better bits. What would one do with a sheep's head if one were inclined to cook it? Not that I am.

At Prinos, the greengrocer across the road I get a huge bunch of dill - almost the size of the bouquets of roses in grad photos - as well as lemon, garlic, and onion. A man comes over to offer me a small white paper bag. Turns out to contain 5 hot chestnuts that he's just been roasting, so J and I stop at a park bench to eat them while they're still hot.

BBC World TV shows a circle of policemen surrounding the Christmas tree in Syntagma Square, central Athens. Its predecessor was burned by rioters and t he protests continue. We have fond memories of sitting in Syntagma Square in mid-December the year we retired, pleased that we could leave our jackets open in the winter sun (before we'd first come to shirt sleeve Cyprus). It seemed so exotic then seeing both Christmas lights and oranges on the trees of the square. Now, unfortunately, we've become blind to the miracle, walking past laden orange trees in December without really seeing them.

Friday, December 19/2008

Maggi and I have a drink at the little market cafe with her friend Dino, a British born Cypriot. We drink zivania, a clear Cypriot liquor. I've had it before but this is nicer. Zivania in one glass and ice water for diluting it in the other. Still shirt sleeve weather, so lovely for outside cafes.

Stop at the Frangiorgio and collect the Christmas card Rachel and Dave have sent with Kieran and Katy's school pictures, both of which turned out really well. There's a broken cable beneath the Mediterranean, affecting both internet and telephone communication. It's somewhere near Alexandria but affecting countries as far away as Singapore. Hard to know what the local effect is - it could easily be confused with the usual apalling performance.

Thursday, December 18/2008

Pre-Christmas sales at the supermarkets and we get our exercise as they're not all in the same direction and none are very close. The priorities are interesting. Carrefour's flyer, for example, has 13 pages of food ads, 13 pages of wine and liquor ads, and 5 pages of miscellaneous - soap, ipods, whatever. Anything with sugar is ridiculously expensive, but alcohol often quite cheap - e.g.700 ml. Drambuie at ten euros forty-five cents or a litre of local vodka at five euros fifty cents.

Wednesday, December 17/2008

M&M drop in for tea in the morning so Magne gets to see our studio as well. Maggi says temperatures have been so warm that there are snake warnings out. Datime temperatures about 22 in the shade, much warmer in the sun, and the snakes have not hibernated as usual. Contrast with the -35 and wind chill warning in Sioux Lookout when I checked at the internet yesterday. The bad part is the drought. Our hotel is only granted water from the municipality 3 days a week. The rest it brings in by tanker. Local residents have similar problems - water rationed and not available every day.

Tuesday, December 16/2008

Meet Maggi at student internet. Had forgotten how maddening it is. Three out of four computers "working" though unbelievably slowly and with periodic crashes and, in at least one case, a mouse that leaves the user feeling neurologically disabled. Increasingly frantic attempts have slow and inconsistent results. Astonishingly little achieved in half an hour, which is the maximum allowed, regardless of whether anyone is waiting for a computer or not. Sourpuss, in charge today, takes a particular grim pleasure in pointing out that one's time is up.

Haircut in the afternoon, put off since back in tunisia. I wait for the man who usually does it well. Not a lot of language in common so it's a more unnerving prospect than usual. Show him 2 fingers shorter and say "layer." He nods and sets to work. Basic "shorter" don and he explains that he will now "layer everything." I have horrible visions of a vicious shingling, but it's fine. He's never given me a bad cut - though the price is creeping up. Nine euros now, and the euro itself is creeping up. Worth roughly $1.50 when we went to Paris, it's now $1.70

Monday, December 15/2008

Wake up in our new home. No couch here, but there are 2 armchairs and a proper kitchen table with 4 upholstered chairs, and lots of light. Maybw we were lucky to have the bed beetles as an excuse.

Free bottle of wine at Metro with 65 euro purchase, but we don't have a hope of carrying that much. Must be at least a kilometre. Would have gone on to the student internet but Maggi texts to say that it's closed for the funeral of former president Papadopoulos. Never speak ill of the dead, but he, an old EOKA man, did as much as humanly possible to prevent the reintegration of south and north cyprus, spending his presidency persuuading the citizens that whatever they were offered they deserved better.

Sunday, Deember 14/2008

Mass at 9:30 with the usual enthusiastic Filippino singing. Father Wilhelm, giving communion, says "the body of Christ" in Polish, so back home.

After brunch we decide to make the move. Frangiorgio not exactly happy and suggest that on the daily rather than long term plan we owe them money on top of the deposit from last spring. But after the bugs they're not in a strong position and we call it quits. Do a flit, as the Scots say, to the Kition, fortunately only two blocks away. Maggi, out for a bike ride, comes to help. There's our suitcases, a bit of food and the three goxes we left in the storeroom last March, as yet unpacked. We'd also left a drying rack for clothes and a wheeled cart, both scrounged/inherited. Dryer there, wheels gone - taken by someone who must have taken some time to untape our name. Good thing it's only two blocks.

But our new home is light, happy and warm, and we're instantly glad we've made the move.

Saturday, December 13/2008

Market morning, and on the way over we meet Dougie, the bus driver, who asks how we're settling in - we spare him the details - and says he's brought Maggie and Magne in. If Cyprus is, as J contends, a tribal society, it's nice to be in Dougie's tribe.

Cyprus coffee with M and M in a litle corner behind the market. Near the rubbish piles, but sunny, nice management, good company and good coffee. Then the basics - if we manage to move we don't want too much to carry. So a couple of onions and some tiny tomatoes and the rest from Carrefour in the afternoon.

Friday, December 12/2008

So after coffee the agenda becomes a search for alternate accommodation. We're a bit put out because the promised CNN has disappeared from the TV offerings. Not our favourite chanel by any means, but still constant English language news, which is in short supply here. There's also a separate charge for heat that was not the case when we booked, and heat is a definite necessit in a north facing flat - and in the evening anyway. But the creepy crawlies are the biggest concern.

Check at the Achilleos and at Petrou Brothers. Achilleos ridiculously overpriced and Petrou sparkling clean, professionally run and with good TV, but still pretty high, as always. Off to M and M's for lunch - after telling Francis at the Frangiorgio about the bugs. Apologies, new flat - next door - OK not to move until after lunch - which we discreetly refer to as an appointment.

So lovely and welcome interlude with M and M, gin and tonics, spaghetti bolognaise and mince pies with custard - and lots of catch up talk and laughter.

Walk back along the seafront and, seeing the Kition Hotel, decide to check. The manager is in at 7:30 and we look at two studios. There is a one bedroom but its fairly expensive. The studio is a last minute bit of inspiration but proves to be lovely - 3rd floor corner and 3 large windows and two patio doors to a balcony gong the full length of the studio. Tons of light and a penthouse feel. It's not large and storage is pretty limited but we're taken with it - and it does have BBC. Forty euros more than the Frangiorgio. So back to think it over.

No bugs in new Frangiorgio apartment.

Thursday, December 11/2008

Up at 4:40 and mini cab to Heathrow 5 - 23 pounds, a fraction more than our joint train and tube fares from Gatwick. Heathrow 5 huge and glitzy but no long queues. Amazingly long bus ride out to the plane though, feels like heading for another town. SMall delay while they find and unload the cases of two people who have not shown for the flight. Undoubtedly not terrorists but Cypriots, who very frequently come late and with staggering amounts of hand luggage, used, we suspect, to a system that runs less on rules than on favours. Huge brunch and lovely crew, especially the young man wh hands us each an extra brandy, saying in confidential tones "one is never enough, is it?" He'd also come up with larger cups for coffee at breakfast with similar sympathetic clucking. BA seems no longer to run to newspapers, but this time we're prepared and have exchanged our overweight British coins for three newspapers in preparation. And the flight's half empty so there's lots of room to spread out and read them.

Maggi meets us at the gate so hugs and then we're just in time to get the bus in. Dougie, the bus driver is into high welcome too, with a handshake for J and kisses - les deux smack - for me. And he refuses to take any fare - oh not the first time!

Out to get enough for a meal of the beans on toast and cheap wine variety. I'm fairly early to bed with The Times - and then the discovery. First a small beele, about the size of a ladybug, crawls past - but perhaps it fell off the newspaper? But there are more. Two or three at a time, clearly visible against the white sheets, appearing endlessly from where - the mattress, the carpet? A half dozen of them, when squished in a bit of toilet paper, have mosquiteo sized amounts of what can only be human blood, though we're not aware of being bitten.

Wednesday, December 10/2008

D-Day. And a few auf widersehn's (sp?). J talks to our friend of flood night, who says that he makes 3 winter trips - to Tunisia, Egypt and Turkey - going back to Germany in between. British Air allows seat selection online 24 hours before departure. Useless yesterday as the internet was closed for the holiday. They're not open today when I check at 9 and 9:30, but are at 10, giving me time to pick good seats on tomorrow morning's flight, though no time to see about today's, which matters less as they're all in banks of 3 anyway.

The transfer is there promptly at 10:30. We're alone in the van until Hammamet, where we pick up another half dozen holiday makers. Past olive groves, in some of which there's a bit of picking going on, with blankets spread on the ground, as efficient a collection method as any. Sheep and goats graze, often it seems on nothing but sand. There's a fair bit of land reclamation going on, tree planting to stop the erosion of grassless wastes. The settled areas are spreading with a lot of buildings in the local mud brick, looking half finished as further storeys are added as money allows, leaving many people living in what looks like - but isn't - bombed out ruins. Gardens and groves are often fenced in quite effectively with cactus plants.

No queue at the airport and no one mentions the fact - or used to be fact - that one is not supposed to leave with Tunisian dinars. We've got a very few and I'm hoping for something in the way of reading material, even old. But once through security - no questions re liquids, mobiles, etc - there's only the big Duty Free with ridiculous prices. Gin about the same in euros as Air Canada charges in dollars. Do you take all currencies? Not dinars. Pounds, euros, dollars? Oh yes.

In the departure lounge a young Asian woman walks round with what looks like a menu, but what's on offer is Chinese massage, behind a not particularly concealing screen in what looks like a nor particularly comfortable chair. Ten euro for ten minutes.

An hour's wait at Gatwick for the luggage, then train to Farringdon and tube to west Harrow. There's frost (snow?) in trace amounts on the platform, but cosy, warm, and a bottle of wine and some Bombay mix waiting at Jean's, to say nothing of a warm welcome.