April 9th: Most fruit in Cyprus is very seasonal
- but the seasons tend to be quite long. Winter has plenty of
citrus fruits in the supermarkets as well as our garden, but
the only other fruits that are available then are apples, pears
and bananas. So we're always pleased when April begins and others
start to appear; I particularly like the strawberry season, which
is rather earlier than that in the UK, and also rather longer!
They actually started a few weeks ago, at quite a price, then
ten days ago were more reasonable. Yesterday our supermarket
had some most delicious looking strawberries in the usual green
plastic punnets, costing 80c for 500g - an excellent price.
I bought two punnets which
we've been eating with breakfast, then today I walked there and
bought some more, as I felt inspired to make the first batch
of jam of the year. So this afternoon the house was filled with
the wonderful aroma of strawberry jam in process... I made four
jars in all. We've worked out that a year's supply of jam is
about 40 jars: last year I made a bit more than that and when
we checked the cupboard today, there are still five jars left
from those I made.
April 11th: I keep hearing about snow in
the UK, but here in Cyprus it's starting to get distinctly warm.
This morning was the first day this year when I didn't even put
on a sweatshirt after my shower - and haven't felt the slightest
bit chilly. If only it would stay like this all summer!
I keep an eye on the weather
in our town at the uk.weather.com site - bizarrely it says that
today's maximum temperature is 24C, but that it's currently 27C.
Hmm. I would have thought the maximum would automatically get
updated when the actual temp is higher! No wonder it feels a
little over-warm today, although our house is very pleasant -
it almost always feels cooler than outside. Several of the windows
are open and there's a gentle breeze.
Tim says he's going to
cut the grass in the back garden this afternoon. It does look
as if it needs doing - unfortunately it has to be done about
once a week at this time of year. Its growth slows down when
summer starts (June) and then eventually it gets brown and stops
looking like grass at all until after the first rains in the
Autumn. We tried using a sprinkler on it a couple of years ago,
and some of it stayed green longer than usual - but it took up
masses of water, and was such a nuisance to keep remembering.
And then the bits that stayed green kept growing, so we had to
keep mowing. This year I don't think we'll bother though of course
I'll keep watering the trees through the hot months. The weather
site tells me it's going to rain on Thursday and Friday this
week, which would be good. But I'll believe it when I see it...
April 13th: Last night Richard and I, and
a couple of colleagues from Egypt who are working with him at
present, drove to Limassol to have a meal with a couple in another
organisation. Egyptian husband, Cypriot wife. We had a very pleasant
evening with excellent food, and it was warm enough that we sat
outside after eating until about 10.30pm, when we left.
Warm again today. I did
a little weeding first thing, and a bit of lawn-mowing late afternoon.
It's a pity it's dark so early as the evenings are really very
pleasant, although even by sixish the garden is full of mosquitoes,
even when we keep the weeds down. I suppose it's all the trees
that encourage them, and we love the trees. We don't get bitten
as much as we did at first, and the bites no longer swell up
or become itchy, but I still prefer to keep out of the way of
mozzies.
Tim got up early and did
some of his home ed curriculum work. Maths and English only,
but he did the final workbook test in each so he'll be doing
official tests tomorrow. He's doing geometry in maths - American
style, so full of formal proofs of things that are really quite
obvious. No enjoyable proofs like we had to do at school - actually
finding things out and being able to use whatever techniques
we liked. Still, Tim seems to be making more sense of this than
Daniel did. For Dan it was too painfully detailed and he always
wanted to use some other method than what was expected. For Tim
it's just boring, but he likes it better than algebra. I wish
these American curriculums used the British style of introducing
algebra and geometry at a much younger age and then doing them
interspersed with other maths, rather than making such a huge
deal out of them. It's not as if either is particularly difficult,
but so much focus on just one topic becomes heavy and tedious.
There was a jumble sale
at lunchtime at the Anglican Church. They do them about four
times a year and often have a good selection of stuff. Not too
many books today, but I picked up one that looked interesting,
and a few classical CDs at 50c each (a little less than 60p sterling)
which seemed good value. Oh, and a few jigsaws, which the lady
on the stall said were almost certainly complete. I'll do them
in the summer when it's too hot for anything much more. We haven't
had any new jigsaws for a few years now.
Tim's piano lesson was
cancelled because his teacher was helping at the jumble sale.
But Daniel had a busy afternoon, teaching the 7-11s at Antidote
Theatre because the directors were away. Unfortunately they didn't
ask him until just under a week ago so he didn't have a chance
to spend time in the class beforehand, and just to make it even
more difficult, they didn't have the class in the usual theatre
place, as the stage is being re-built. So they started in the
car park and then moved to the foyer. Dan said it went reasonably
well, which is encouraging as he was quite worried about having
to teach 20 children he didn't know! Rather him than me...
April 25th: Although, theoretically, we have
mains water on all the time - unlike when we first arrived -
there are still odd times when it goes off without warning. Sometimes
we see or hear workmen digging up a road nearby and assume it's
been switched off to build some new sewers or lay some new pipes.
It's a nuisance when it happens - almost more so than when it
was predictable, since there's no guarantee that we have any
drinking water at all if nobody has filled the bottles! However
it doesn't usually last for more than half a day, so it's not
too much of a disaster.
Yesterday when we got
up the mains was at good pressure - and before going to church
I had a sudden urge to fill up the bottles, all of which were
empty. So I filled about five of them. When we got back from
church, about 11am, the mains had gone off. We didn't expect
it to last long and I was pleased we did at least have plenty
of drinking water. I was a bit surprised when there was still
no water by the evening, but I washed up carefully - though I'm
afraid I just poured the water down the sink rather than over
plants! - but still assumed it would be on by this morning.
It wasn't when I got up.
There was only one bottle of drinking water left from yesterday,
and although I assumed the tanks would still be all right for
another day or two, I know we're nothing like as careful as we
used to be. It still wasn't on by 8.30 so I had a very quick
shower. But... thankfully by nine o'clock there was a dribble
of water, which got slightly stronger in the next hour or so,
and now it's fine again. So I could water my new plants - which
is rather important! - and fill the water bottles again. The
laundry will have to wait till tomorrow, though.
No idea why it was off
this time; they don't usually do maintenance on Sundays, and
an emergency wouldn't need the water off for nearly 24 hours.
Still, it ensures I'll keep the water bottles filled more often
at least for the next few days....
April 28th: Last week when we were in Metro,
doing our usual weekly grocery shopping, another British couple
mentioned that they had found a much cheaper supermarket out
near Aradippou. That's two or three miles away, but the prices
they mentioned sounded excellent. They said that if we spent
typically about £80 on food, we would probably save at
least £10, maybe twice that much, if we went to the other
place. They told us how to find it, and we decided to visit it.
Tomorrow is Good Friday
in the Eastern (Orthodox) calendar, so it's a public holiday
and we thought probably the supermarkets would be closed. So
we went today, and drove out to this new place, which is called
Elomas. It's a cash & carry style supermarket with things
just in boxes rather than neatly arranged on shelves. That's
fine: it's rather what we thought. A bit like Kwik-Save in the
UK, which we used regularly. As we went in we saw a wide variety
of fruit juices, for 50c per litre (we usually pay 86c per litre)
- so we picked up several!
However, we became gradually
less impressed as we went around. Yes, the prices were excellent
- but the choice was limited, even more so than Kwik-Save. There
seemed to be a vast number of Nestlé products, which we
don't buy [the babymilk action site explains why, just in case
anyone wonders]. There wasn't anything whole-grain or organic,
no fruity teas, no nuts - at least, not that we could find. The
refrigerated section was small with only a few types of cheese
ready-wrapped - no delicatessan at all - and the freezer section
was even smaller, with a few types of frozen vegetables and other
convenience foods. There didn't seem to be any fresh meat at
all.
Still, we picked up some
inexpensive toothpaste, baked beans, and evaporated milk (when
we found a brand that wasn't Nestlé after some searching!)
and one or two other bits and pieces. The prices were certainly
very good. There was a large fresh fruit and vegetable section
which looked good, although the prices were no better than Metro's.
So we bought a couple of bags of oranges, and a couple of punnets
of strawberries.
In all we spent about
£15, and I suppose if we had bought the same at Metro it
would have cost nearer £20. But we still need to go to
Metro for all the things we couldn't buy. On the way out we decided
it might be worth coming back if we have a party: prices on juice
and other drinks were excellent, and there were bulk buys available
on crisps and other party-type food. But for ordinary weekly
shopping it doesn't seem worthwhile driving this far out just
for a few items, when we would still have to go to Metro anyway.
We were less impressed
still when we opened up one of the punnets of strawberries, and
found that several of them had gone bad. Not just a bit squashy,
but actually black with mould. Yuck. I suppose about a quarter
of them were affected and had to be thrown away - which makes
them considerably less good value! We've never had that problem
in any of our Metro strawberry purchases. Perhaps the problem
is that Elomas doesn't appear to have any air-conditioning. I
should think it will be unbearably hot in the summer.
(For even more detail,
general rambling and some other photos - with the most recent
at the top - see the April
pages of my Cyprus blog)
times since 5th June 2005