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Our
adventures in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus continue....
   
This week has seen some change in the weather. The locals all say tha summer starts on 15th March always, so we wait and see if they are right.
So far this week we have had a real assortment, early in the week it became nice and warm and we thought its time to think about casting off a few woollies, Richard even appeared in his shorts to match his Mediterranean lifestyle. Then on Thursday the wind got up a little and the temperature dropped, by today it was blowing a right gale again and b......y cold once more. But he still wears those shorts and refuses to give in!Went off to see the carpenter who would give me a price for rebuilding the gazebo. £700 was his asking price, so it was not even worth negotiating, think he was related to one of the comedians. If I use white pine I can probably buy the timber for £250, so it looks like another DIY job, as there is no way the insurance are going to rethink there decision.This evening Sue decided that she was going to cook for six and follow it up with a game of cards. Vegetable lasagne, very nice Sue, but just cos. you are on a diet. No really, it was very nice Sue and a real change. We also discussed their "Holiday Home Maintenance Service" which is now up and running, so if any of you out there want somebody reliable to keep an eye on things, organise the cleaning, gardening and pay the bills etc. whilst you are in the cold UK, take a look at their link on the Northern Cyprus Information tab of this web and you will find the contact details.
We finished off the evening with a game of " Blob", as George called it. A sort of cross between whist and bridge which relied on individual cards being trumps and you calling the number of tricks you are going to win. You need a few beers and a sense of humour. If you didn't get it right, George took great delight in blobbing you out and then at the end, counting up the blobs to announce winners and losers.
A fun evening had by all.
This evening a whole crowd of us where supposed to go to the LA Hotel, for dinner and a show, but unfortunately they didn't get enough response to ticket sales, so it all got cancelled. Because we had decided to go out anyway, Joan and I rang around and found that Bob & Maggie, of Henson's Restaurant, could fit in a whole gang on Saturday night. We have all used this restaurant before, for large groups or just individual evenings out, the food is great and Bob makes a good "maitre-d" so a very enjoyable evening was had again
Still a cold wind, but the sun is shining, so I decided to start to sand down and repaint the pergola timbers over the terraces, with a preservative stain. These sort of things have to be done here before the really hot weather starts, - March 15th, ha ha!. Have to admit that it wasn't a very early start after two late nights in succession, but did manage to get most of the kitchen terrace area finished.
Joan and I benefited again from not having to cook. This time Barbara had said she would cook roast beef, yorkshire puds and the trimmings for the four of us, so that's three nights in succession when we haven't needed our culinary skills, guess that next Sunday it might just be a change of table for the local Lapta layabouts.
It is just a couple of days away from Joan's birthday and this year the present problem was easily solved. Before leaving UK she had had her engagement ring resized, they had clearly done this by heating up the gold and stretching the ring an extra half size. Not good, because now it had snapped in half. We had taken it to a highly recommended jewellers down near the harbour and he had suggested that the real solution was to take out the existing stone and set it in a brand new ring. Today we went to collect and he has done a beautiful job in 18 carat white and yellow gold with Joan's stone set off beautifully and it only took 7 days. I doubt they could have done such a good job at such a reasonable price in UK, so we would for sure, suggest that anybody coming over and interested in jewellery, give this guy a visit. The shop is called SENAK Gold & Diamond and you will find him at the castle end of the old Kyrenia harbour, up a little cobbled street, on the way up to the Mosque. The owner is busy producing a new brochure, when it is ready I will use to create a link on the Information tab pages
I said last week that the weather is improving now and clearly things in the garden and around the hedgerows are beginning to show signs of spring and summer. One thing that we had almost given up on, was our banana tree, but low and behold this week it has started to produce a big pod between the top leaves, which we assume is going to be our first crop. So watch this space for progress photos as it develops. I did ring Ali our gardening man and he says that I am going to have to make some sort of support as it will get very heavy as the fruit forms and that also, once we have removed this fruit, we are going to have to cut down this tree and encourage one of the babies alongside to be next years crop
Today is Joan's birthday and by coincidence, Michael and Barbara's anniversary, so we decided to go out to Errol's restaurant in Ozankoy, one of our favourites. There you always get a really good steak, as well as traditional local food and value for money quality every time. If you go on a Wednesday and book in advance you can eat the best kleftiko lamb on this side of the island, in our opinion. George and Susan made up the celebration party and we heard from Errol that his new building, just down the road, is nearly ready to open so we shall have to give that a try in early April, he promised that there would even be lots of parking space.
I have had dozens of e-mails over the last two weeks, asking about the political situation and as to the chances of reunification and the whole island joining the EU. Your concern seems to be over land and property deeds and obviously property prices. That is a concern for us all over here and the truth is that we have received certain assurances, but until the whole is resolved nobody really knows the answers. We have been advised that if you have land with a building permit or a property already built, like ours, then there should be no concern, even if it is compensation land, post 1974. Any possible compensation will be dealt with by the governments and the courts, as any compensation awards made in the south also have to be taken in to consideration.
The only thing we know here is what we read in the local press and that appears to suggest that the reunification talks are reaching a sort of stalemate. Some of the major sticking points seem to revolve around equality of both peoples on the island and the protection of their autonomy, property issues, retention of armed forces on both sides of the border area and I suppose most importantly, the south don't need to cut a deal, because they are joining the EU on 1st May whatever happens in talks. So I suppose we will all have to just hold our breath a little longer and the most interesting date will be April 20th, when the outcome of the talks will be put to a referendum of the people and we will all know what is proposed by any revised Annan plan.
Our friend Ertugral, is a member of the TKP party here and they are hosting a reception in Nicosia on March 18th. Joan and I have been invited, so maybe we will get a chance to form an opinion from somebody there, who is closer to what is actually going on in these talks. I will let you know next week.
Well today was nice and warm and dry, so managed to get a coat of varnish on all the pergola timbers over the kitchen balcony and sand down the front timbers ready for them to be treated. Also at long last, the wrought iron gate we ordered for the top of the garden steps was installed. Metal Mickey, as we christened him, has always had an excuse that he is so very busy, but finally he came up trumps, a nice job for only £48.00.
This evening Joan and I went for a special dinner, served at Lardy Da's tearooms by the girls, Lorraine & Anne-Marie. Our friends Derek and Sandra have been married 40 years, so the girls decided to put on a special dinner for their friends, to celebrate this occasion. There were of course the usual ribald comments about the time these two have been together and we all had a very enjoyable evening and must say some superb food, well done the girls.
The weather is still quite warm and dry during the day so managed to finish the varnish coat on the front balcony timbers, that should see them protected for a couple of years. Also went down to the local builders merchants to order the timber for the gazebo rebuild, so expect some pictures of my efforts as things progress. This time I hope the open roof design will prevent it ending up in the next village!
Today was also St Patrick's day and of course the one and only Michael O'Sullivan put on a special spread at his bar and music to blast out the eardrums. A great evening with some of the usual crowd of friends and from somewhere Susan managed to find this really silly hat to dress up for the occasion, pity there was no Guinness to go with it, that would have been a nice change.
The summer has really started now, it has been 20 degrees almost every day for the last week, if it keeps up like this we might get an early dip in the pool. Last year we went in on 6th April for the first time, so lets see if we can beat that date this year. It does still go chilly, almost immediately the sun goes below the mountains, so we have some time to go before we can sit outside all evening. One thing is very clear, I had better get a move on with that new gazebo, to give us shade out on the terrace.This evening Susan decided, as the youngest mum, to cook dinner for all 6 of us, in celebration for Mother's Day tomorrow. We all sat out on the terrace in the sun, watching the world go by, until about 6 p.m. then had a very enjoyable meal, followed by the inevitable game of Mr Blob. Don't know who invented it, but you as sure as hell can't be serious when playing
Today, because it was again so very nice and sunny, Joan headed off to the garden centre and managed to come back with two big concrete flower pots to set on top of the steps, next to the new gate. She also got some new plants for the borders and some sunflower things for these big pots, the idea being that these will now grow and hang down from the pots, down the edge of the steps. Now I know they are not really called sunflowers, but I ain't no gardener and the boss isn't here to help, so a free glass of wine to the first e-mail that tells me what they really are !!! Just to keep out of mischief and to make a good start, I spent most of the day in the garage starting work on the new gazebo. We had bought most of the timber as of yesterday and adding all the other things like varnish etc., the total cost should come out around £260, so the quote we got for £700 was taking the mickey a little. Just hope my new design works and that no strong winds force me to do this again. This evening we had asked John, from the bungalow across the back fields from us, to come for dinner. His wife has had to go to UK for a couple of weeks so we thought it might be nice for him not to have to slave over the hot stove himself. A couple of beers and a bottle of red helped wash it all down well
Well now that brought out the gardening experts. Three different answers from three people, David & Diana suggested that the flowers were Osteospermums and theirs was the first e-mail in. Fiona Norton suggested Gazania and Peter Davis suggested Mesembryanthemums. So, I just had to get out Joan's Mediterranean Gardening book and do some research. It appears that Mesembryanthemums are annuals, are even edible, but these have been there since last year, the book says that Gazania are cream, yellow, orange or copper and these are a dark purple, so Osteospermums it is. According to the book these come originally from South Africa and the African Queen variety is dark purple, so when next in Edremit, David & Diana please come and claim your wine.On the continued subject of gardening, take a look at the progress of our banana tree. At the beginning of the month it started to show a flower pod, but now this pod is hanging a good three feet below the top branches and is so heavy I have had to devise a prop to prevent the increasing weight from pulling the tree down. I may not be a great gardener but I do appreciate this time of the year especially, everything is beginning to sprout new leaves , buds and blossom and before long we will be seeing the fruit forming and the garden will be a sea of colour. Nature is indeed a wonderful thing
Last week, Kate and Tony Wilkinson made a flying visit to the island on a house hunting exercise. We had met Kate through her e-mails, when she asked questions some time ago, she also kindly asked if there was anything we needed bringing over with them. Now that was a sheer coincidence, because the gang at Lardy Da's had said if anybody asks, can you ask for some English icing sugar, so I replied to Kate with this request, only to find out that she worked for a British Sugar company. What happened next was an exercise in public relations that was superb, the Silver Spoon company supplied 10 boxes x 500 grams to Kate and then she organised for them to be sent out by courier mail direct to Lardy's. All this was free of charge and a tremendous gesture from the British Sugar Corporation, a great big thank you from Derek, Sandra and the girl's, they will be able to ice those cakes for some time to come, with real English icing sugar in a real English tearooms.We all met up at The Mountain View, where Kate & Tony were staying and Kate has just sent out this photo which was taken in the bar. After a couple of drinks, Joan and I went with them to Henson's restaurant for dinner, I understand from Kate, that Tony is still raving about the homemade steak and kidney pie
It is getting warmer by the day, in fact the papers say that the farmers now need some rain to aid their crops of hay and barley, so work on the new gazebo progress is becoming important. We need the shade around the terrace area, well I do anyway, Joan just goes a disgusting shade of brown. (Me jealous? Never.) By last night I had the basic framework up and now I am going to repair the old trellis sides before commencing the new roof. It all takes time but we will get there in the end. Joan has become quite adept at the varnishing, which frees me up a little for the building work. One of the time consuming things in this work is that you can only get rough cut timber over here, so that means lots of work with the electric plane, on every piece, to get it nice and smooth. Whilst we have been busy doing all this work the old banana tree has been busy creating the energy giving fruit that we are likely to need. You can see that the little banana hands are beginning to form as the pod opens up, we can't wait to see how many we get in total out of this one pod
Busy old week for going out. Monday night we were out at The Mediterranean Breeze with John & Pat Creasey. We met them briefly last September as a result of an internet contact and now they have come over specifically to buy their future retirement home and so we arranged to have dinner together, so that they could ask lots of questions about living here. Last night we went to The Padisha with Wayne & Tracey, something we have been promising to do for some time and finally got round to. It was good to catch up with all their news and it seems strange that now they are living here and both working, we see less of them than we did when they lived in UK. Meantime I have continued to work on the gazebo and have got all the basic frame up, ready for the roof timbers. I even managed to rescue six of the original trellis half walls after a considerable amount of repair work and adjustment, the seventh is definitely a goner, so will have to get the local carpenter to knock me up a replacement. While this has been going on, the old banana tree has been going bananas and has now got 7 hands showing with more to come, anybody got a recipe for banana liqueur? I have also received an e-mail from Carol Blackwell-Gibb who is organising Speaker Luncheons and Dinners in aid of St Andrews Church. There was a list of proposed speakers and dates attached so have included this on our Northern Cyprus Information tab under "What's On" . So if you are coming over and are interested, then contact Carol on carol@cansigorta.com and keep an eye on the local press for confirmation
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