Battles

The Harbour in Kyrenia.

I have once again been wearing my tour opperater hat taking our visitors island wide. We have been valley low and mountain high, enjoying every corner of this beautiful place and soaking up all that it has to offer and the cherished memories that we gain from experiencing it together. Sharing these moments with a sufferer of Altzheimers, and watching him fight this degenarative disease like a true hero in his own battlefield, makes it even more important to cherish every moment for the moment and live the here and now.

Inside The Castle Walls Kyrenia.

Today the castle in Kyrenia is beautiful quiet and peaceful place where one can sit in tranquility and soak up the stunning scenery that evelopes it's exterior. However, it wasn't always this way. In a time gone by this would have been filled with men preparing and returning from war. Walking across the bridge and up the cobbled street of it's entrance one can imagine the horses gallpoing in with their riders, the likes of Richard Lionheart exhausted from battle, their armour weighing them down, drained from the blistering heat, returning to the saftey of the castle walls.

The High Walls of The Castle.

As I sat here imagining this bygone era, I wondered how much have we learned? Battles are fought, wars are won, but do we actually learn from it or does history just repeat itself?

Chip Off The Old Block

Saturday morning we set out with our visitors to have a stroll along the beach at Alaminos, on the way we stumbled across this Sculpture Museum which is a private house open to the public for viewing on most days. TBH and I had passed it beofore but didn't bother going in, but this time, curiosity killed the cat so to speak. We ventured through the entrance and were astounded by what we found. We didn't get the sculptures name, but we did meet him and he showed us around and explained some of his works to us. This is his hobby and he has been doing it full time since he was 50.

Forest Man on All Fours

Europe, each strand of hair around the statue represenst an EU country.

The artist described this as his depiction of a mass grave of Greek and Turkish Cypriots during the 1974 war. He explained how there was little if any time to bury the dead for fear of being killed ones self, so shallow graves were dug and covered with earth, but when the first rains came, the earth was washed away leaving a mound of body parts and corpses. A strong reminder of the sadness and loss that this Island has had to endure over the years.

Lemons.

His wife is also very talented and has done the icons for the little church that they have on the property and she also paints and this was one of her pieces in the gallery there that I fell in love with. The pensive look on the womans face is really moving and the stunning contrast in colour of the blue of the butterfly and the blue in her eyes and in the bead dangling from the and the stone in the ring on her finger is just exqusite, and how she managed to make the fabric of the dress come to life like that I will never know. Totally beautiful.

Pensive Woman.

Pensive Woman.

I so admire people who have the ability to tell a story with art. It was a wonderful visit and I recommend it to anyone coming to Cyprus.

The Latest Addition

10 days after Mischief passed away, this little tinker arrived in the garden howling for food and begging to be loved........................ I tried hard to resist and on the first eveing gace her a little food and water and left a box outside for her and I decided that I would see if she was still there the next day and decide what to do..............

I took CHI CHI LE ( she arrived the day the miners we rescued, CHI CHI CHI, LE LE LE, LOSS MINEROS DE CHILE)the vets, got her jabed and chipped, de fleed and wormed...... she has been with us nearly 3 months now and though nothing will replace Missey, we love our new addition and she brings much joy to our life.

Reuse,Recycle, Restain.

We have visitors again at the moment, and before they arrived I did the usual spring clean. We have had a lot of visitors this year so inside was looking pretty good already, but due to the heat of the summer I had neglected a few things outside and the sun had bleached a lot of the wood furniture that we have.

In the past I would have taken the furniture to the dump and gleefully wizzed of to a garden centre and replaced it with new.............................Not any more!

Instead I did what my Grandfather would have done,I went to the hardware store purchased a brush and some wood stain, rolled up my sleaves and got stuck into restaining the furniture. It was a good few days work but very satisfying, and every evening when we sit out and watch the sun go down across the valley and dissapear behind the mountais in the distance, I am really proud to be sitting on furniture that I have reused and made new, another step further towards simple living and changing ones mindset.

The Pil's

The View Point Near Macharias Monestery looking towards Nicosia.

No this isn't a post about what medication I may or may not be taking.... it is an update on what we have been doing recently.

We had TBH's Ma and Pa with us for a couple of weeks, and to me they are foundly know as The Pil.... (Parents In Law). It had been a year since their last visit so there was lots to catch up on and of course during that time we had moved to a totally different side of the Island so there were many more things to see. So, after having prepared for their arrival and tried to make sure that the place was spick and span, and planning a few menus, naturally I dropped my CHO ( Chief Household Officer) hat and reached once more for my CTO ( Chief Tour Officer) hat. I am not sure which one I like wearing best. It is always good to get out and about when people come, and it is a great oportunity to see places that you haven't seen before or haven't been to in a while, but it also takes one out of the daily routine and gives the wrong impression to those who visit that all you do all day is swan around the countryside of Cyprus enjoying the delights of what it has to offer. Obviously that is not the case in my regular life.

The doors and streets of the pretty village of Lefkara

We took them to Lefkara which is a village where both Lace and Silver are made in the traditional way. It is a very pretty village and one that is quite popular with day trips by Cypriots from Nicosia. On one of our visits to the restraunt that I take visitors we were somewhat perplexed at the security at the entrance, there were police everywhere, and plain clothed men with walky talkies milling around. We were seated and found ourselves fortunate enough to be sat on a table next to a rather large deligation of ministers and the President of Malta, with whom I had very brief but pleasant conversation.

The Streets of Northern Nicosia.

We went across to Northern Cyprus, the borders have been open for a while now and so we made our way to Lidras street and went through the immigration formalities and crossed into the other side. It is a pretty simple procedure but a very stark reminder of what happened here in 1974 and I cannot begin to imagine how awful it must have been and still is for people on both sides of the green line.To see a city divided like that in modern day Europe is very disturbing, peoples houses used as the buffer zone and family and friends divided by a crazy war. United Nations flags and signs everywhere, but one has to wonder what they have achieved.

It was pleasant on the other side, and I guess in a way somewhat comforting, with familiar sounds, smells and sights all around us. The call to prayer from the mosque,the street stalls cooking food, Sharwarmas!!!!! We have not had any of this since we left Dubai and it was strange how 'Normal' it all seemed to us. We had a very pleasant lunch in a square near the check point and then ventured back to the South.

On another ocassion we went North again,this time with the car. We drove to the crossing near the Nicosia horse racing track, obtained our insurance, showed our passports and drove through, once again a very simple procedure and there were obviously people doing it on a weekly or daily basis. The drive once out of the City was glorious and once we had climed the mountians the views from the crest out across the sea and Kyrenia were breathtaking. Once again it reminded us of Fujairah in the UAE, with the moutians so close to the sea. We found a parking place in Kyrenia and walked along the promanade to the little harbour where we stopped for Pa to have is midmorning coffee. It was very quaint and picturesque and I almost felt like I could have been in Muscat, Oman. Coffee over, we walked around the castle and meandered back to the car.

Kyrenia.

Then, we made our way to Bellapaix, which is a village tucked into the mountain side where Lawrence Durrell wrote Bitter Lemons. We found a beautiful little boutique hotel that I had already seen on the internet and marked as a possible weekend retreat for the future, The Bellapaix Gardens. It is next to the dramatic Bellapaix abbey.We decided to stop and have lunch here and we were very glad that we did. The views were stunning and the food drinks and service very good too. We are hoping to return very soon.

View from The Bellapaix Gardens.

Naturally we visited Larnaca and the littel villages in the surrounding area. The Pil's took themselves off to Cape Greco and on a boat trip to celebrate their 43rd wedding anniversary!!!! Congratulations to them. We took them to Lord Kitchener's restaurant in Psematismenos village to celebrate. It is actually the building in which Lord Kitchener stayed when he was here mapping the island. We love it there, the food is wonderful, the owners Pina and Chef Dean are great, very friendly full of humour and chat, we always enjoy our visit. If you are on the Island try it. http://www.lordkitchener.eu/

A Sad Fairwell

Mischief

It is never easy to let go, and sadly on many ocassions in life the choice of letting go is taken out of our hands.

When we came to live in this village we searched for the area with the least traffic away from it all in the countryside,there is a road but very few cars come down it as it only leads to the goat farm on a dirt trac. We wanted a place where we knew that our cats who had lived in doors in Dubai would be able to finally run free and live the life that cats are meant to lead.

We didn't plan on this happening.

Yesterday morning we were awakend by the sound of the farmers tractor idoling outside our bedroom window. As it had gone on for some time TBH got up just as the farmer pulled away..............

He had been trying to get our attention, 'what is wrong' I said from my slumber, and as TBH was racing to get dressed he replied ' It's missey, I think she has been run over'

TBH raced downstairs and I shot up out of bed and ran to the window, and sure enough, there lying in the middle of the road was Mischeif's lifeless body, ' Missey Missey get up come Missey please get up please ' I screamed from the window, TBH had a vague glimmer of hope that she was still alive as the early moring sun had kept her body warm, but as he lifted her limp and lifeless off the tarmac I knew that she had gone. I raced down stairs screaming for her to come back and faced TBH who had gently put her down in the garage. He threw his arms around me and begged me not to look. Sweet adorable little Missey had slipped out of our grasp all because of some mindless humanbeing behind a car wheel.

Emotions soared and tears fell like the first rains of an African storm, as we faced the daunting reality that we were going to have to find a suitable place for her to be laid to rest.

We decided to burry her on the edge of a field across from the villa where she used to like to roam and where she and the others come and sit with us to watch sunset over the valley, TBH and his father dug a grave beneath the olive tree, overlooking the sea with the valley below her. We wrapped her in her winter blanket and said our last and very sad fairwell to a little being who has brought us so much love and joy and who made our family complete.

I hope that she will be at peace there.

Good bye my dear sweet sweet little friend, though your body is no longer here, you will always be with me and I shall miss you dearly.

Best Friends, Bicycles and Bee Eaters

It has been a while since I have had the time and peace of mind to sit and write a blog. For the first week of the month I had my dear friend T here, she had flown all the way from Bermuda to spend 5 days with us. I felt very honoured. We have known each other since we were 12 years old. We were frineds at school and her Mum used to own a hairdressing salon in Bristol. I used to have sleep overs at her house and on a Saturday we would go with her mother to the salon and help sweep floors and serve coffee. We were probably more of a hindrance than a help but it was there in my young teenege years that I discovered my passion for hairdressing. T and I went to different salons to do our apprenticship and since then even though our lives have taken us in very different directions, we have always kept in touch and our lives remained somewhat paralell in many ways and she too is now about to make a big change in her life and is looking to leave the place she has been in for 16 years and move to Europe. We whized her around the island, and this begun in Nicosia for lunch, when we met with her family who came over from Kyrenia.



What a hoot that was. They were staying in a hotel over there, they got a taxi to the border, and texted to say they were there. In the meantime we are still at least 45 mins drive away from them in Larnaca. We rushed up the motorway, got stuck in traffic, got lost trying to find the Ledra Palace border crossing, which I thought was the only border crossing in Nicosia. When we finally reached the border, we parked the car as you are not allowed to take hire cars across as they are not insured in the North, and then we made our way to the police post and got our piece of paper stamped to allow us into Northern Cyprus. Ok ... where are the family then???? We are desperatley texting but getting no response, then finally we get a phone call, their credit had run out, hence no reply to the text, so they had borrowed someones phone to call us to say that they have already crossed over to the South, 'where we say as we cannot see you????' 'at the Lidras street crossing' they respond................................ it transpires that there are two crossings in Nicosia, one at Ledra Palace and one at Lidras Street, ( both pronounced very similar)we were at the wrong one AHHHHHHHHHH. So we hop into a taxi and drive to the other one, que up at the police post and get stamped out of the North and enter back into Southern Cyprus, mindlessly passing her uncle on the way.......... phew there, on the other side at the end of the entry que is a lady looking rather hot and stressed whith her friend under an umbrella in the midday heat of summer in Nicosia. It was her Aunt! Finally reunited after 6 years, we enjoyed a wonderful lunch over looking the city and the mountains of the North. That was my introduction to border crossing in Cyprus.


We showed T lots of other places too and in all, I think she had an enjoyable time before flying to Malta to check that out possibilities there for her future. Good luck T.


Since here visit there has been much to do around the house, the usual cleaning and tidying of the garden. TBH spent one Saturday cutting back palm leafs and neatening up teh bouganvillia along the back wall. The veggie box is not doing much at the moment. The meelies are coming through but no cucumbers and no tomatos yet, I am begining to loos faith, but keep watering anyway in the hope that at some point we will get fruit for our labour.

my green wheels

On Saturday we drove to Paphos to collect a second hand bike that I managed to find on anglo info Cyprus. So ha ha.. I finally have wheels again, and they are green, not in colour but echo friendly,all be it that I have to use my own energy to rotate them and when I tried that on Saturday evening when we returned home after a very lovely relaxed lunch at Pissouri Bay, well I didn't get very far.................................. it has been a long time since I rode a bike and I think it will take some practice.

Swallows on the wire outside the house.

The swallows appear to have moved and the Bee Eaters are back hovering over the ridge at sunset catching insects on the wing. I thought that this change in birdlife would have coensided with a change of weather and that the cooler nights were going to start setting in, but no such luck, it is still very hot and very humid. Tired of it now.

Bee Eater on the wire.

The next few weeks will be busy too, we have guests coming for lunch tomorrow, and TBH'S ( the better half) parents will soon be with us for a few weeks. So I am once again frantically cleaning, the fridge was done this morning, with teh mopping of the patio this afternoons task.

During this time we also have some friends from Aussie arriving on the island whom we hope to catch up with on a couple of ocassions and we have a 50th birthday party to attend in the village.

Who said life in Cyprus would be quiet?