Living in Cyprus - November 1998
20th November:
As I look out of the window it hardly looks like Cyprus as we
know it - the sky is grey and we almost need the light on, though it’s
only 4pm! I think all the praying for rain must have been effective
because last weekend it rained again - scattered showers on Saturday
and fairly heavy steady rain on Sunday - and it’s rained off and on all
week. I don’t suppose it’s made much inroads in the reservoirs yet, but
the garden certainly looks much better: things are growing and looking
greener at last, and my bougainvillea is growing at a huge rate - it’s
now covered in dark pink and nearly up to the roof of the front porch.
I expect we’ll also have a real glut of weeds!
With
the rain it’s got distinctly colder too; even I’m wearing
jeans and a sweatshirt now rather than shorts. When I open the shutters
in the mornings, I quickly shut the windows again, and we keep them
shut at nights now too. It seems to have changed from Summer to Winter
within just a couple of weeks, although of course it’s not frosty or
anything like that. Cleo is growing up fast but still plays like
a kitten, and is mystified with Daniel's K'Nex 'dinosaur' that
apparently walks across the floor!
Our kerosene heater was serviced today, so we’ll start using that if it gets any colder. Richard has taken our three gas heaters to be serviced as well; one of them wasn’t working at all last year but then we only paid £10 for it, so we hope it won’t cost more than that to put right.
Richard and a colleague spent a couple of days this week driving around looking for possible places to film the video series for which they now have the funding. I gather it’s a little like an Alpha course but aimed at Middle Eastern culture, and of course will be in Arabic. Filming in Cyprus seemed the easiest solution to the problem of where to film, since it’s very relaxed and open, but it has to be places that aren’t very obviously Cypriot.
Now that it’s started raining more, Richard’s a bit concerned that there may not be sufficient good weather for the filming; however one of the people who’s funding it wants it done as soon as possible, so he’s hoping to get going in early December. Since January and February are usually the coldest and wettest of all, he can do the editing then, but if he doesn’t get the filming done very soon it would have to wait till about April.
The shops are suddenly full of Christmas things - decorations and cards and chocolates, and the Metro supermarket has an entire section devoted to ingredients for British traditional things like Christmas puddings and mincemeat. I was amused to see Whitwoths raisins and sultanas suddenly appearing, at twice the price of the normal unbranded Cyprus equivalent! There was some vegetarian suet this year - last year I had to buy Atora beef suet, though I didn’t really want to, but this year when I saw the vegetarian type I bought a couple of boxes immediately; sometimes there’s a glut of something new and then within a couple of weeks it's all disappeared.
I couldn’t find mixed peel anywhere, but suddenly realised that I ought to be able to make it myself with the number of citrus fruit available. Sure enough my ‘Good Housekeeping’ cookery book has a recipe for candied peel, so I’m trying it out. Our oranges have suddenly all ripened together, and with the rain they’re tasting juicy and refreshing; when we first tried one about three weeks ago it was a bit dried up inside. The lemons aren’t ready yet, but they’re starting to appear in the shops so I made my first batch of lemonade; however it wasn’t as nice as when our own lemons were ripe later on in the season last year.
The youth group is continuing to thrive, Daniel seems to be loving it and Richard enjoys being back leading teenagers again. His Sunday night older-teens group seems to have fizzled out; three of them decided they would rather have coffee with their friends on the sea-front than have a serious discussion! There isn’t much for teens to do here that’s Church related; there aren’t Christian Unions or anything like them in schools, but a lot of them have rejected their parents’ more traditional Greek Orthodox traditions, so people are worried about the next generation - however I suppose that’s true everywhere in the world these days.
Anyway the youth group on a Friday seems to be going well; in a couple of weeks they’re holding a ‘poverty awareness evening’ in aid of TEAR Fund, charging £2.50 for a meal of rice and watery soup! However they’re also going to do some skits and music so it should be fun. Daniel is creating the posters and menus on the computer, and taking a major part in one of the skits.
Timothy has enjoyed the last couple of weeks at Cubs: one week they all watched ‘The Jungle Book’ which of course is the story that’s the basis of Cubs. However they showed the English version without any Greek subtitles and his bilingual friend Philip wasn’t there, so apparently Tim was the only one laughing at the funny bits! Then last Saturday they did a clean-up operation after the Cypriot army had a week of training, collecting rubbish into bags etc. Tim said they were very careful about safety, they all wore disposable plastic gloves and washed very thoroughly afterwards, so he thought it ironic that to get there they squashed two to a seat in the mini-buses without any seat-belts!