Sunday, November 29/2015

Bus to Bill and Jane's. An older man joins us at the bus stop, also waiting for number 424 to Pyla. He says he left Cyprus at age 17 (about 1955?) and has only returned this year. Enormous changes, mostly for the worse. But he is philosophical; he must change as Cyprus won't. Lunch is duck's breast à l'orange done in foil packets on the barbecue, along with salads looking like an artist's palette. Super. The black olives we picked the other day won't be ready for a year or more but the 2012 ones we have are the best I've ever eaten. J and Bill trim the flowering trees adjacent to the olives. 

Saturday, November 28/2015

Reading Alan Johnson's memoir of childhood, This Boy. Johnson, arguably the best leader Labour never had, came from one of the toughest backgrounds, and it's hard to say which is more interesting - watching his development as a child or seeing a part of London more recent than it's easy to believe (1950's) where outdoor toilets were common and families might live in two rooms with a stove on the landing. Pre-gentrification Notting Hill, or part of it.

J "roasts" peanuts. Raw ones he's bought at the greengrocers. Done in the frying pan they are unsalted   but fresh and very good. Never seen them in Canada. Maybe in big cities.

Friday, November 27/2015

After coffee J and I pass a small second hand shop. Would say a junk shop as it's chaotic and dusty, but some of the "junk" is quite interesting. There are four books lying on a dresser, one of which is Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth. In one of those coincidences one would know better than to put in a novel, I am currently reading its sequel, borrowed electronically from the Open Library. What has drawn us in is the sight of a ghetto blaster. (That does sound offensively politically incorrect - must find out what they should be called). The radio in ours, also acquired second hand locally, is not very good. Almost impossible to tune it to the British base nearby, which provides English radio, much of it retransmitted BBC. The shop owner is helpful. More interested really in discussing politics and the current state of Syria than in pushing a sale. He has been following events subsequent to the shooting down of the Russian jet which did (or alternatively did not) invade Turkish air space for 17 seconds, and has a number of perceptive comments. Then, continuing with the same quiet consideration he goes on to say that it's all down to Zionists who have implanted chips in everyone and can get you anywhere. Sudden vision of the world as a madhouse full of seemingly normal, intelligent, well-informed patients who without warning excuse themselves as the Martians are waiting.

Stop at St Helena's charity shop and it's abuzz with women in hijabs examining everything, especially the clothing. Apparently they are refugees who meet nearby on Fridays and the shop is handy afterward. Pick up a sleeveless top, despite being warned that this is likely to bring an end to the unusually warm weather. 

J to Prinos in the afternoon and back with a bag of sweet, succulent pink grapefruit. When we spotted them first we thought that the sign said 49 (euro) cents each, which still seemed desirable. Turns out it was per kilo, making one grapefruit about €0.20 ($0:29 CAD, £0.14). And they're beautiful. J, with admirable patience segments them, removing all the membranes and their bitterness, as he learned to do in Japan, and they're sweet and delicious.

Thursday, November 26/2015

In the morning Ailsa calls. Last night their phone rang after midnight and Harry got up to answer, thinking, as one would, that it meant bad news. The ringing had stopped and he couldn't make out the caller, but in the morning they determined that it had been a call from our mobile. So apparently when J was attempting to revive the phone pressing random keys despite the lack of any visible info on the screen, he must have connected with Contacts - and as they are alphabetical Ailsa would have been first, before he switched off. Fortunately whoever stamped on the mobile and left it unusable, didn't remove its SIM card, which has €15 remaining and is now in place in our other Nokia. 

Home to find we've missed a call from Jane. Mobile was in my handbag but muffled by traffic noise. Return the call and find they're driving back from the olive oil mill in Anglisides. They stop with oil, a lovely pale green colour. As they're constantly adding oil as people bring in their bags of olives, it's impossible to get back precisely the oil from your own olives. A little like cremation, Jane says - who knows which ashes you get back. They are told, though, that our 8 kilos of small green olives translates to a kilo and a half of oil. Quite surprising.

Wednesday, November 25/2015

Jane picks us up after her painting class and takes us back for a "snack" - which turns out to be a stunning chilled seafood pie and a lovely, colourful salad. Then the olive picking. They're small and green and, apparently perfect for making oil. Four of us have the tree picked in under an hour and spend longer than that separating out leaves and twigs. Eight kilos worth of olives.

Dinner at Vlachos - first time this season, with Aylsa and Harry and also an Irish friend of J and B from marina days. Vlachos's usual, with starters that would have been enough for a whole meal. 

Arrive home and realise I must have dropped mobile at Vlachos. Call and speak to Constantinos, the owner's son. He sensibly asks for its phone number to call it. From there it gets weird. C calls back with the news that, within less than an hour the mobile has been taken from Vlachos, discarded in a cemetery, and taken to a police station. (Its small black leather case probably was initially taken for a money purse and then, when the contents were neither cash nor a recent and sophisticated phone, it was not simply tossed away but stamped on). The police return it to me at the Sunflower, noting, accurately, that it is broken, and saying, a little callously I feel, that it isn't expensive anyway. It clearly rang when called, and the battery - which must be about eight years old - lights it up, but nothing registers on the screen, which is cracked, as, actually, is the electronic board inside.

Tuesday, November 24/2015

Fire alarm keeps going off periodically. First time Kiki was amused. Did you come down because you were afraid? Second time we are more skeptical, but head for the stairwell. Met in corridor by Maria and Venera, the maids, going about their business. Oh no, no. Big smiles. But "they" are not quick about turning it off. Nobody knows how? Defective and as glitchy about being turned off as about coming on? Everyone else completely sanguine about carrying on with piercing noise as background? I take to responding to each alarm by going out on the balcony. If there are no people running about outside in panic I take it that reception is unconcerned. Longest alarm I time is nine minutes.

Monday, November 23/2015

Coffee with M at the waterfront after J's beach walk. Stop at animal shelter charity shop. Not much of interest, but it's a friendly place and the Thai woman who is working today recognises us and asks if we've been away. She remembers that our other home is Canada, too. Regular lunch here mostly vegetables and humus - sometimes with bread and cheese. Makes us wonder why we don't have that as the standard in Canada. Partly because of the lack of really enticing vegetables most of the time. Before we began coming to Cyprus I'd forgotten carrots had a scent.

Sunday, November 22/2015

Wake to find that the door to the flat is open. Handbag untouched. Liquor collection intact. No one assaulted. Overwhelming probability we didn't quite shut it last night. Sunlight, jazz, newspapers (mostly electronic but Cyprus Mail on Sunday from the periptero (read corner shop) next door, brunch. Doesn't get much better. Walk in the afternoon.

Saturday, November 21/2015

Stop at East European shop for a jar of pepper spread. Always think of Mr Czekaj, who didn't really read English and chose tinned goods by the pictures. We compare jars, looking for illustrations showing peppers rather than tomatoes, though a supporting cast of aubergines would be ok. Having found a likely candidate I approach the counter, where the woman speaks Russian, and presumably Greek, but not English. Not entirely irrationally I try Polish: Papriki? No. So I point, in protest, to the picture. A fellow customer comes to the rescue. "Sweet." Ah, they are sweet peppers rather than hot. Just what we wanted in a spread. The young man says he speaks five languages. Maybe in Russian the sweet peppers are called something other than papriki. Our education continues. 

And home from Prinos with a kilo of clementine oranges, leaves still shining on some. Fifty-nine euro cents (84 cents CAD, 70p UK) for a kilo. 

Friday, November 20/2015

Wake up delighted to have all the stored boxes unpacked. A little taken aback by the view of the living room - all empty boxes and string and containers - at odds with my edited memory of having finished everything. Though mostly it is. Coffee down at the McDonald's on the waterfront. Not classy but beach view and best filter coffee around. Maggi joins us, bubbling with half a year's stored information. She's rented a house south of Larnaca now and seems to be enjoying it. No dog with her as she came by bus. 

Visit to Carrefour and Prinos, the greengrocer's, for ingredients for a mushroom spaghetti sauce. Then Kiki gives us a tour of the new restaurant, to be operated by Mr Andreas' elder son. Tonight is the opening, a private affair, and several people are busy with the finishing touches. All new and smelling of fresh paint. 

Shortly after ten we're sitting around when the fire alarm sounds persistently. So down five flights of stairs, mindful of the desirability of avoiding elevators during fires. No smoke in evidence, and more oddly no other people. Are we the only tenants. Actually haven't yet run into any others, and it is a slow time of year. At the mezzanine landing we're delighted to run into our friend Mr Walid, the Iraqi Palestinan refugee refugee who lives here, out wondering what is going on. No time for a chat, so we continue to the lobby, unaccompanied by Mr Walid. In reception all is pleasant business as usual. Kiki greets us cheerfully. Fire? Oh no. Maybe someone was smoking. You came down because you were afraid? Well not afraid, no. It's just this habit we have of evacuating a building when the fire alarm sounds.

Thursday, November 19/2015

With Jane and Bill over the border to north Cyprus. Very busy British GCHQ listening post by the border. Think of Cameron's announcement re increasing security personnel. Almost all certain to be GCHQ as recruits available on the open market, only requiring vetting and minor training. We're bound for the Thursday market at Famagusta. Lively and full of flowers, shrubs, fresh produce, clothing, dried fruit and nuts, and minor hardware. Buy leeks, celery green beans, mushrooms, and huge bunch of coriander. Have coffee at the market, then lunch in the south on the return trip. A lovely little café that looks like nothing from outside but is busy providing non-stop meals and takeaways. We can see a man busy at the outside beehive shaped kleftiko oven. And we're surrounded by pots of luxuriant basil.

Wednesday, November 18/2015

Set alarms on both mobile phones and both ipads - and they all deliver. They're set for 4:15 AM, and we can all too easily imagine sleeping through in the pitch dark not much more than four hours after going to bed. All packed last night, though, so only dressing and brushing teeth. We pass deliverymen unloading crates of vegetables in front of a restaurant in an otherwise pretty deserted Queensway. The tube station opens just after we arrive and we're on the first District train to Edgware Road. Almost empty at this hour of the morning and no one obstructing our way at St Pancras either. So we're actually slightly early for the 5:52 to Gatwick. No queue at all at the Monarch desk, which has just opened. So lots of sitting around time before our 10:10 flight. Man sitting next leaves his Daily Mail behind. Crap paper, but he's kindly refrained from doing the puzzles.

Flight is good. Not a comfortable seat design and pitch means little leg room, but the plane holds 220 and is less than half full, so its pretty painless; in spite of our not having paid to pick our own seats we each have a row of three to ourselves. And the plane is an astonishing 40 minutes early. Almost the last through immigration, as usual. Down in part to Cypriots queuing at the "all passports" desks instead of the EU, EEC, and CH. Tempted to make loud announcement to the effect that they are, unnecessarily, in line with asylum seekers and North Koreans (and us). 

Bill and Jane meet us. Hugs and home to the Sunflower for more hugs. And, surprise - we'd been told the fourth floor would be under renovation but are handed the key to 403, our old home. Frenzied renovations finishing for reception area and restaurant (reopening tomorrow). We're on hold. Unpack the basics. Then Jane and Bill pick us up for dinner at a taverna recommended to them. Interesting decor. Photos of Larnaca from the 50's and an antique phonograph. Also a bicycle no older than the one I rode as a kid - ok, it was once my mother's, genuine antique. The food is good - moussaka (me), chicken (Jane), rabbit (Bill and Joe) and the service friendly, but it's not Vlachos. Our gold standard.

Tuesday, November 17/2015

Last day. How can it be? Blustery too. A bit wet, but mostly windy. Storm called Barny on its way in. Just hoping that it will have passed by tomorrow without leaving trees on the train tracks. Leaving very early - between allowing extra time for any storm damage and leaving time in case of higher than usual security measures at Gatwick. Pick up sandwiches to take along, as Monarch is cheap, but no frills. Amazingly cheap, really. £123.98 ($251.36 CAD, €176.87) for TWO one way tickets from London to Cyprus. It's a fair distance, too - 2017 miles from Gatwick to Larnaca. Just about the same as the distance from London, Ontario to Vancouver. So we're taking our own water and food and we're not complaining.

Monday, November 16/2015

Back up Green Lanes Road in north Londom, one of the longest stretches of road in London to keep the same lane. London is a series of villages cobbled together, and most often very long roads change names as they progress from one former villlage to another.  The area is Turkish and Greek (largely without conflict, as well as in part Kurdish - and, like everywhere else in London, a bit of everything. But largely Turkish, with Turkish restaurants, green grocers, barber shops, even travel agencies. We pass a pharmacy labelled in both Turkish and Greek, as well as English. I recognize the Turkish - eczane - though probably couldn't have come up with the word if asked. 

We're here to pay our second visit to Sama, a wholesaler that sells to the public as well. Mostly Turkish products - dates, olives, figs, dried apricots, nuts, tea, red pepper flakes, olive oil. We're here for sundried tomatoes in oil and pine nuts to take to Cyprus. But just browsing is such a pleasure.

Sunday, November 15/2015

To the National Portrait gallery for our semi-annual visit. Interesting how some faces look so modern and some so period dated. Thus a terracotta bust of William Hogarth shows a man one might expect to meet at any contemporary gathering. Several Simon Schama exhibit portraits, providing historical interest pictures. I'm taken with an illustrated genealogical chart showing the ill-fated Stuart line. Had never seen it laid out before, but quite obviously those in power preferred foreign (i.e. German) monarchs to Catholics. Otherwise Bonnie Prince Charlie would have been natural heir to the throne rather than a romantic but unrealistic pretender. 

To Roses in Kilburn for the last supper - fish and chips, with a beautiful cod fillet that doesn't really even fit the plate. Too many chips to finish, but we do polish off the fish! Hate to say it, but nicer than Cyprus or even northern Ontario.

Saturday, November 14/2015

Yesterday Friday 13th and as we were falling asleep we heard the first reports of the Massacre. This following some 40 deaths in Beirut on Thursday. And as the day progresses the news continues to get worse, first on radio and television and then, at Starbucks over the internet.

At Starbucks yesterday's oddball is back this morning. Same clothes, suitcase, laptop. Scratch the catching a train theory. Carton of orange juice today. Is this the breakfast and (limited) toiletry location and is there another spot - all night café? - for the nights? Possible on the weekend to ride the tube all night.

Should be more ambitious but BBC is carrying qualifying for the Brazilian Grand Prix, so we watch. Nico Rosberg takes pole. Nothing against Lewis Hamilton, but nice to see someone else getting a look in. Reminiscent of the old days of watching the inevitable Schumi win.

Friday, November 13/2015

At the Starbucks office. Bearded middle aged man at the next table must be waiting for a train. Has a large Lenovo laptop and a suitcase which serves as a dressing case. He stands up, extracts  a deodorant and inserts it inside his jacket to spray his armpits. The black case has not supplied socks, though. He's well provided for otherwise as well. No sign of coffee or other Starbucks purchases, but he does have a tin of energy drink (first taken by us for beer) in progress and the empties - a second tin plus a two litre club soda bottle - beside him on the bench. He spends some time copying from from the laptop screen, using permanent black marker and producing letters large and unformed enough for a ransom note. Am fairly skilled at reading upside down but decency (only just) forbids. Same inconvenient code of behaviour prevents taking of much desired photograph.

Thursday, November 12/2015

Pick up the train tickets for Wednesday's journey to Gatwick. And since we're already  at King's Cross, and so more or less there, we go over to the British Library. The big exhibition is a west African one, a paid exhibit that we're not especially eager to see. We do spend some time in the main hall, though. Visit old friends - from the a letter of the still unmarried Anne Boleyn to Henry VIII and Magna Carta to original Beatles lyrics scribbled on scraps of paper and even on the back of a birthday card of then one year old Julian Lennon. Interestingly the copy of Magna Carta is accompanied by a document signed by Pope Innocent some two months later annulling it in terms that make clear the papal position on hierarchy. No Vatican preferential option for the poor, or even for simple democracy, in those days. Some documents we haven't seen as well. A letter from Cold War spy Guy Burgess, by then long escaped to and exiled in Russia, writing to congratulate a friend on his knighthood. Letter from Karl Marx as well. 

Our original intent is to go back to the London School of Economics for a lecture entitled Shadow Sovereigns: How Global Corporations are Seizing Power. Should be interesting but after the last couple of LSE talks we're a bit wary. What if we're just told what we, and everybody else, already knows? And on the other side of the scales is the best lamb kleftiko in London. So it's matter over mind. The kleftiko wins and we're off to Kilburn and Roses. Kleftiko as succulent as ever. As well as the old men in the café there's a woman at the next table with two girls, aged about eight and nine, in school uniform. Overhear one girl saying cynically "He changes his girlfriend even more often than he changes his job." 

Wednesday, November 11/2015

London School of Economics for a lecture on the Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East rentier states - Kuwait, Qatar and United Arab Emirates. (No clear idea why Saudi Arabia excluded). The content is interesting, though not riveting, and does present a picture of a conservative but much less militant brotherhood in circumstances where it is not in direct conflict with government. Rather a summary of national characteristics than an analysis of the movement's political effects or potential. The presenter, Dr Courtney Freer, is young, engaging, informed, and without ego. Unfortunately, though, she speaks very quickly and softly, while seated, making her extremely difficult to follow. The questions from the audience at the end come from some highly informed people and are often accompanied by compliments on the quality of the presentation. Not sure whether they are naturally much more polite than I or are just used to  a somewhat low standard of delivery. 

Tuesday, November 10/2015

Weather reports can have a dark, romantic tone here, with the word murky featuring in weather Macbeth would have recognised. And today the weather caster refers to a low pressure area hovering over Ireland before its inevitable move east as "lurking with intent". But still mostly dry today and the breeze is a warm one, with a predicted high between 16 and 18.

Beside me on the road leading in to busy Queensway is a motorcycle, followed by two police officers mounted side by side on horses, followed by a Mercedes. Where but in London? Well, Cairo - but there a donkey cart would be more probable than horses carrying police.