Living in Cyprus - June 1998
7th June:
We bought a microwave oven at the end of last December with some of our Christmas money, but about a week ago it started sparking and making ‘grumbling’ noises, when I was trying to melt some chocolate. We managed to find the receipt and Richard took it back to the shop; he talked to a friendly man who said they’d fix it within a week or so. We’ve not had something break down in such a short time before and hope it will be all right.
Today is a bank holiday (as it’s Orthodox Pentecost) so we didn’t do any ‘home-school’ - Daniel was still tired and aching after Saturday, when he and Richard went to help colleagues put up tents at the 'Rocky Point' campsite in Troodos mountains, about an hour and a half's drive away. This afternoon a Cypriot/English friend of theirs came over and they’ve enjoyed playing with him.
Tim is still going to the Greek-speaking cub pack, which he
loves, rather to my surprise. It gives him the social contact that he
misses with not being at school, and there are a couple of fully
bilingual children there so they can tell him what’s going on! He’s
learned the Cyprus national anthem and it seems to be helping his Greek
conversation a little.
Daniel hasn’t joined Scouts - he said he really only liked Scouts in Bournville because of his friends being there; it’s not really ‘his’ thing so I guess he’d have dropped out sooner or later. However he’s enjoying continuing to learn clarinet and is ‘in training’ to be in the town band, perhaps next year. We haven’t found guitar lessons for Tim yet but someone Richard’s been working with is a guitarist and takes some students, so we hope to start him in September.
19th June:
Although the mail strike is over, today there was a general public strike for two hours, in the hope of getting the government to take more notice of Larnaka. It didn’t affect us as we weren’t out trying to shop or anything! But I gather everywhere closed down. The schools have finished for the summer (their last day was yesterday) or I don’t know what the teachers would have done.
A few days ago Richard discovered that he could change our flights to the UK from July 3rd to June 28th, and save fifty pounds by doing so as the ‘season’ changes on 1st July! So we’ve done that and are now having to rush around doing things to get ready. We’re not going to take much back with us, as the boys hope to buy a large number of second-hand books to bring back here again, and I shall be buying some school text-books for next year's home education.
The humidity has been gradually increasing, particularly around 4pm each day when we feel like we’re dripping all over sometimes. I’m very glad we’re not going to be here for July when we’re told it’s worst month of all. There’s an official siesta time from 2pm-4pm when nobody is supposed to make a lot of noise, and all the shops shut; however it would be better in a way to have the siesta from 4pm-6pm as that’s the hottest, most humid time of day.
Last night there was a special Shakespeare production in Limassol, another seaside town about an hour’s drive from here. Some of our friends were going to see it and invited us too, but as Daniel had his clarinet lesson (and isn’t terribly interested in Shakespeare) he decided to stay here, so I stayed with him. As Tim has been studying Tudor England he particularly wanted to go, although I was a bit horrified when I found the production was ‘Othello’, which has to be one of the most unpleasant Shakespeare plays there is! It didn’t start till 8pm and went on till nearly 11pm, and I think Tim was half asleep for the final part but he said he enjoyed it although it was ‘a bit too poetical’! They weren’t home until 12.45am, and Tim was extremely tired this morning.
There are a lot of feral cats that roam around the gardens, hopefully eating some of the insects and keeping snakes away; until recently we’ve not taken much notice of them but on Monday we were cooking some chicken on the barbecue outside when one of the cats came right up near us with a kitten, who was about six weeks old I suppose. The cat looked very thin and rather hot, so we gave it some milk and then threw it a few bits of chicken that were left over. It wouldn’t come near us and the kitten kept close to its mother.
Next day the same cat and kitten were back and we gave them
some more milk; then today they appeared again and we did the same,
then just found the kitten curled up on the step outside our kitchen!
The mother cat won’t come very near us but the kitten comes right up to
be stroked. We wondered if the mother cat was trying to get us to adopt
the kitten as she keeps bring it here and then disappearing herself,
but she usually comes back again eventually. Perhaps she’s off
scrounging food elsewhere!
We’re not encouraging the kitten in the house - for one thing it’s quite warm enough outside, I should think being in a house with a fur coat on would be most unpleasant - and for another it keeps scratching as if it has fleas. Although we have caught both mother and kitten in the house at times! But it’s extremely beautiful and we all half hope it will decide to adopt us, though ‘house cats’ seem almost unknown here, at least amongst the Cypriots. Even dogs usually sleep outside. Daniel had been asking about having a kitten, even though we’d have to leave it here when we leave permanently, so I suppose a half wild one would be best as it wouldn’t be so traumatic to leave it.
Richard is now going to be here over the summer; he decided he really had too much work to be able to give up three weeks for an Arabic course, and he’s finding Arabic extremely difficult anyway. He has a Linguaphone course which he’s using occasionally, but isn’t sure that speaking the language fluently would be all that useful. Understanding the culture and the way the people think is really more of a help in his work. He was hoping to go to Egypt for some meetings but the funds he’s trying to raise from grant-making companies haven’t come through, so that will have to wait until the Autumn now. He says he doesn’t mind being here on his own for six weeks - I’m sure he’ll work all hours and enjoy the hot weather a lot more than we would, without worrying that the boys and I are finding it too hot. Now of course he might have company with the little kitten too.
Our microwave was fixed without any trouble; apparently some fat had got into the works somewhere and clogged it up. I do know that every time I just melt butter on a low setting for something like a white sauce it was spitting so I was having to remember to cover it, but sometimes the cover fell off or I forgot. I’ll be more careful in future! They didn’t charge us very much to do it, thankfully.
I don’t feel like doing a lot of cooking now it’s so hot here so we’ve been eating a fair amount of cold food, or ‘quick’ meals recently. There is some good fruit in season (peaches and nectarines, and grapes have just appeared in the supermarket) and watermelons at a few pence per kilo so we’re eating a lot of fruit! We also have an excellent bakery just around two corners from our house so we have a variety of delicious bread, baguettes and rolls. I have still been making lemonade, using bought lemons, as we like that so much better than the lemon squash they have here, but that’s just a once-a-week thing so it’s not too bad.
June 24th:
Both boys are still practising the piano sporadically - Tim has spent a lot of time teaching himself to play hymns out of Songs of Fellowship. He heard that one of the pianists at our church never had a piano lesson in his life. Apparently he taught himself entirely when he was a student, although he could already read music and had learnt a bit on other instruments as a child. Tim decided he would emulate him, at least for a few months, and has been diving right in trying to play hymns with both hands straight off. We’ve just left him to it and he gets a surprisingly good sound after a few trials. He even gets the rhythm right usually, as he chooses songs he knows.