23rd September: Life is almost back to 'normal'
(as normal as ever, anyway!) after the summer now, with activities
for the boys starting up again gradually. Clarinet lessons don't
begin till October, but Tim's guitar lessons will start again
this week, and his piano lessons started a couple of weeks ago.
Daniel's drama group started officially last week too, although
with various performances and rehearsals over the summer it doesn't
feel as if it ever really stopped! He's still thoroughly enjoying
it, even when just working backstage, as he does in the Greek
productions of 'Nuts'. There are going to be a couple more English
performances, however, and he's also going to be in the pantomime.
So he'll be quite busy in the next few months.
We hoped the weather was
going to get autumnal earlier than usual when we had torrential
rain about 10 days ago - two hours worth! - but after 48 hours
or so it was back to 30C in the shade during the daytime, 20C
overnight. The humidity seems to have reduced somewhat, though,
so that's good. And we were very thankful that our roof was finally
mended a couple of days before the rain - so although I kept
going from room to room expecting drips, the inside stayed dry.
Leaves are falling all over the place and our pomegranates are
ripe - far too many for us to eat - but those are about the only
signs of Autumn so far. The garden's looking a real mess, but
it's much too hot to get the lawnmower out or do anything very
energetic until the evening - and as it's dark by 7pm it's then
too late!
We had quite a busy weekend
- two of the home educating families over for Saturday, then
there was a performance of the Greek 'Nuts' in the evening, so
Daniel was helping backstage; Richard and Tim went along to help
setting up the lights and video projector, and ended up staying
to control them both, with Tim trying desperately to keep his
place in the script, able to read Greek (which is phonetic) but
not easily able to keep his place, particularly when lines were
improvised or slightly changed! Anyway, I gather it went well,
but they were back pretty late.
Yesterday was Tim's birthday,
but all he wanted event-wise was two friends over for the afternoon,
a couple of rented DVDs, and some ordered pizza for supper, followed
by a cake which he made in the morning, and a batch of the easy-to-make
chocolate ice cream. So nothing complicated. Much easier than
hosting parties for small children! When I mentioned this on
a British email list, someone expressed surprise that we could
order pizza and rent DVDs in Cyprus: it seems that this country
has been developing very rapidly in the past ten years or so.
30th September: Well, finally we got started
on repainting! We discovered a small but useful Crown paint shop
not far away, with a much wider selection of paint colours than
we had previously found anywhere on the island. We decided to
paint all the bedrooms, the living-room/dining-room and the Atrium.
Since the ceilings are so high (four metres above the ground)
and there is boarding up to about 1.5 metres from the ground
to cover rising damp in the plaster, we decided to do split-level
painting with an off-white for the ceilings and upper parts of
the walls, and brighter colours to blend in with the curtains
and carpets on the lower boarding. The light colours should keep
the rooms looking large and airy, but the darker colours will
both brighten the general appearance and - we hope! - not get
quite so dirty as rapidly as magnolia has done in the past few
years.
So as Daniel is the older,
we decided to do his room first. He chose a blue that matched
well with his curtains, and an off-white for the ceilings and
higher parts of his walls. Of course painting a ceiling four
metres from the ground is not an easy task! We didn't want to
have to go to the huge expense of renting scaffolding - even
supposing that is possible in Cyprus - and the only step-ladder
we have is a bit rickety. So we used the Cypriot method of attaching
a long extension pole to a roller and painting from the floor.
This is effective, but extremely hard work. Neither Tim nor I
were strong enough to control such a long piece of equipment,
so Dan and Richard had to do all the high painting. I could manage
a roller on a shorter extension for the lower parts of the upper
walls, and of course we could all paint the brightly coloured
section at the bottom.
times since 14th November 2002