2nd December - The weather here is still not
bad - Richard considers it to be chilly, and I certainly spend
evenings wearing a fleece and jumper, but it's still sunny and
around 15-16C during the daytime. The forecast keeps promising
us some rain, but we've had hardly any so far. We could rather
do with it as it's been very dry this winter. Still, the cats
are growing their winter coats and looking a lot fluffier than
they did a few weeks ago, and we've had the kerosene heater serviced
at last. We barely thought about it during November as it was
unseasonably warm.
The Operation Mobilisation
ship Doulos is
in Larnaka at present, and Daniel is volunteering there every
afternoon this week - mostly helping in the bookshop, but he's
also enjoying spending time with young people from all around
the world who are working on the ship full-time. In the mornings
he's busy with rehearsals for 'The Dancing Bear', the Antidote
children's Christmas production, due to have its première
on Satuday. He doesn't have a huge part this time, although as
there are only five actors in it, they're all fairly significant,
and he's playing his clarinet at the beginning. Richard's helped
designing the lighting and will be operating them at the premiere,
although as he's so very busy he won't be able to do much more
than that.
Tim's also very busy,
playing piano for church, for the inter-church carol-concert,
and for the youth group band 'Narrow Gate' who get invited to
play at various things, such as the island-wide youth evening
which will be on the Doulos this week, and also once a month
at the Anglican church evening service. He's also just bought
himself a new touch-sensitive keyboard, having saved all his
birthday and Christmas money for some time now, and is enjoying
playing that!
I've been trying to get
organised with Christmas presents - I know some people manage
to be finished by about mid-November, but early December is pretty
good for me! Buying for family in the UK isn't too hard - we
tend to circulate gift suggestion lists, and I use online shopping
for the majority. Amazon UK
does free postage within the UK for orders over £25, and
also offers a gift service, so I can be invoiced here and have
presents delivered to the relevant addresses there. In addition,
the charitable trust which administers Richard's work, TLA Trust,
is now registered at the online shopping affilate site Ushopugive,
which enables a small amount of commission to be donated to it
every time I use Amazon. I've recently discovered another useful
site too, Play.com, which
sells DVDs, CDs and computer games, and which offers free postage
on everything to selected countries - including Cyprus!
7th December - 'The Dancing Bear' had its premiêre
yesterday afternoon, followed by another performance later that
weekend and there are two more tonight! I went to the first performance,
and what a delight it was. For the first time in some years,
Antidote
Theatre had not written the play themselves; instead they
had slightly adapted an American children's production called
'The Arkansaw Bear' (sic) to make it relevant to Cyprus. They
began with live music - clarinet, violin, accordion, melodica
and percussion. The story is actually quite sad, dealing as it
does with the theme of death; it focuses on a little girl whose
beloved grandfather is dying, in the prologue and epilogue. The
main section of the play deals with an elderly famous dancing
bear who is also about to die, but is desperate to leave his
stamp on the world, and so keeps running away from death, aided
and abeted by a mime character, until he can teach his skill
to a younger bear. Although the message is positive, one or two
younger and more sensitive children have found it upsetting.
Daniel's part is that of a star - the 'first star' out at night,
who can grant wishes.
15th December - Work is a bit stressful for
Richard at present. He's lost his administrator, there are communication
problems between various groups who should be working together,
and he's having immense technical difficulties with the Internet
Radio Station which has a live broadcast from Egypt each evening
(in theory!) with facilities and equipment in Cyprus and London.
Just to add to our joy, it's absolutely pouring with rain at
present - we woke up to grey skies and thunder, then rain so
heavy that a crack in Tim's ceiling leaked for a few minutes,
and although we had about an hour when the sun poked out, later
on there was more torrential rain, and it got much chillier too.
The cats go a bit frantic when they can't get out, running up
and down curtains, 'boxing' with each other, chasing each other
around the place like kittens. Usually they're out most of the
day hunting or climbing trees or at least playing their chase
games outside where they can't knock things over!
Life seems to revolve
around the boys' different performances prior to Christmas at
present. There's a showing of 'Dancing Bear' on Wednesday, then
Tim will be going with a group singing carols in old folks' homes
on Thursday, and helping at the church children's party on Friday.
Next Sunday morning the Sunday School teachers and children are
running the service at church, then the town band will be playing
carols outside St Lazarus' church downtown, and in the evening
there's the inter-church carol concert where Tim's playing piano.
This last weekend was taken up with 'Dancing Bear' - performances
in Nicosia on both Saturday and Sunday. Richard went with Daniel,
and helped with the lighting and sound, which he enjoys doing,
but they had to leave by noon on Saturday and 2.30 on Sunday
so they've not been around much and are both feeling a bit tired.
Tim's just confirmed that
his tennis lesson is cancelled today - not surprising given the
weather!! - and is quite relieved as he's still getting over
a streaming cold he had last week. He cancelled just about all
his lessons last week and didn't feel he could do so again, although
he didn't feel much like tennis - so at least the rain is 'good'
from that point of view.
I've finally managed to
get our Christmas
newsletter written - even later than usual. Part of the problem
was that the colour cartridge on our inkjet printer ran out some
time ago and as we hadn't needed to print in colour, we hadn't
replaced it. Cartridges are normally very expensive, so I'd been
researching cheaper alternatives. It's possible to order refilled
or compatible cartridges online, but postage costs from the UK
make them less worthwhile; however to our surprise, a company
called Nuink opened up just five minutes' walk from our home,
doing a refilling service on all kinds of cartridge. The inkjet
ones are well under half the price of new cartridges, and the
lazerjet cartridge (which had also run out) around half price.
We've heard that sometimes refilled cartridges don't last as
long as new ones, but so far they've done very well, and it's
better for the environment to be able to reuse them. If they
last only half as long as new ones it's still worth doing.
I've recently found a
most helpful website selling juggling equipment, Unicycle
UK, since Daniel wants a contact juggling ball. When I asked
what the postage costs would be, they added Cyprus into their
list of countries that allow online postage calculations, and
when I had difficulties using their payment facilities, the site
owner phoned me in Cyprus to get details - all for one small
order. Most impressive.
30th December - It was a relatively quiet Christmas,
but very pleasant. We went to friends in Limassol who don't really
celebrate Christmas as such - they made lasagne and various salads,
and we took a chicken dish for the meat-lovers! There was another
family there too. During the afternoon the adults chatted then
had a brief walk before it got dark, and the teenagers did some
musical jamming, and then played a few games. In the evening
we all played games together, and it was about 10.30pm before
we got home, totally worn out - particularly Tim, who not only
played for carol-singing in hotels on Christmas Eve (from 5.30-9.30pm)
but went to the Anglican Church to play the organ for their midnight
communion service.
It rained almost constantly
for days prior to Christmas, and I found myself trying to dry
laundry almost constantly indoors by the kerosene heater - then
on Christmas morning the sun came out, and although it was chilly
in the evening, it was really very pleasant during the day. Since
then it's been really quite sunny, although rain is predicted
for the new year. Our back garden looks remarkably green - I
did get the lawnmower out about a week before Christmas, one
one dry day, and cut all the greenery which was beginning to
look straggly. It needs cutting again soon, but we do want to
encourage what grass there is.
times since 2nd January 2004