Frank and Joan's news for September 2004 in Northern Cyprus

Frank and Joan's Adventures in Northern Cyprus

Our adventures in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus continue....

Well, Joan went back to school on Monday, this is pupil registration and teacher preparation week, school proper starts on the 6th. Does that mean the summer is now over, I think not. We still sit outside to eat and also sit out until late in the evenings; and swim every day just to cool off, so I suppose it just means that life has gone back to the normal daily flow.

Joan's back to school brought up some interesting urgent work for me. The school had been promised a website by the start of the new academic year, but in true Cyprus fashion, it doesn't seem to have even been started. Mark called me and asked if we could do anything so now its me to run around taking photos, collecting data, getting feedback from teachers etc. whilst Nic over at Bassett" target="_blank">www.bassettgreen.com">Bassett Green is squirreling away on the pages. Lots of e-mails to and fro to the UK, whatever did we do before we had also this easy communication ? Hopefully by Monday we will have some temporary pages running on www.sunnylaneschool.net" target="_blank">www.sunnylaneschool.net">www.sunnylaneschool.net followed over the next couple of weeks, with something which will be more permanent and regularly updated.

Speaking of websites, the Dolphin Sailing School site is now included on our link pages, so anybody coming over, either for holiday or permanently, take a look. It's great fun and gets you down on the beach and out to sea a couple of times a week.

The saga of the bananas. Well they have now been hanging in a darkened room for 5 weeks but still remain green and taste horrible. We can't see them ever becoming edible so it looks as if we got something wrong. Anne-Marie's father is over from St Lucia at the present time, so we spoke with him and he says that they just continue to water and leave the fruit on the plant to ripen. Also I had a look on the internet for some information and it seems to vary so we reckon that next time we will leave them hanging on the plant and see what happens, even the garden centres here give differing advice. Its great fun all this experimenting, but if anybody out there really knows, then come on give up the knowledge, I really fancied some of those on my morning toast.We are still cat sitting for Barbara and Michael and yesterday the kittens were 5 months old. Daisy spends quite a bit of time around with us at the moment, probably because our Tiggy tolerates them both and even plays with them sometimes, but Joan takes her home for food etc so that she doesn't get too attached to our house. Also when we walk up and down between the houses we get escorts and I get help with the garden watering. Friday evening and Joan was tired after her first week, back so I was allowed out to Deano's with George and Susan for a couple of beers. I met another couple there, Julie and Chris, who had been looking at this site. It's always good to hear from people to find out if they enjoy the ramblings from us

We did a little early morning gardening before the sun got really too hot and were amazed to find yet another beautiful flower on a recently planted cactus. We had decided some weeks ago to plant cacti in big pots and things as a sort of terrace border near the pool and one has turned into a lovely flowering cacti. It puts up these big, pale lilac, bell shaped flowers on long slender stems, but they don't last too long in the heat and the stems are too slender if we get some wind blowing.

This evening I collected Tony, who recently took up residence in Lapta and we met Del down at Pine Bay for the England/Austria game. Once again the England team managed a wonderful performance, from being 2/0 up they came away with a 2/2 draw. This from a team who are rated seventh in the world against a team rated number 90, don't hold out much hope for the rest of the tournament. Disappointing.

We, together with around 10 others had been invited around to Sandy & John's for an afternoon BBQ. Their son Christopher is over at the moment, with a friend, so it was an excuse to just have some of their friends around for an afternoon of food and fun. As usual over here, the pool is an inviting place in the heat of the afternoon, but it seems also an inviting place later in the evening. Absolutely nothing to do with the fact that we had all had more than sufficient to eat and drink. Great afternoon and evening Sandy, thanks for the invite. I really should take more photos of the superb food presentations and some of the many people at these events, but I always seem to be enjoying the festivities so much that I forget and regret it later. Must try harder. Sounds like my old school reports.

Sort of busy week so far, with sailing on Tuesday afternoon followed by dinner out with Wayne & Tracey. We went to the Padeşa, as it has to be one of our all time favourites and we had not found time to go out with these friends for a very long time. It's good to play catch up now and again. Last night Roger and Jill came round for dinner. It was a little windy but we still sat around under the gazebo until very late, enjoying the lamb kleftiko that Joan had made and a couple of beers to wash it down. Roger and I had first spent sometime trying to get his laptop to log on to the internet. We got e-mails from his log-on, my log-on account and through his mobile phone link, but could we connect to the internet, could we heck as like, very strange. Today, Michael and Barbara were due back from Turkey, after their two weeks holiday; and we are due to collect them from the airport. Now Michael thought that they were due in at 1.30 p.m., but the Cyprus Today newspaper says that flight YK070 from Dalaman is due in at 11.45 a.m. So to be sure, I rang Ankara travel and Cenk told me they had been trying to get hold of Michael and Barbara to tell them that their flight had been cancelled, but as all they had done was hire a car and go off to old haunts in Turkey, none of us had a contact. Low and behold Barbara called at 10.30 a.m. to give me the news I already new, that they were booked on the later flight at 11.55 p.m. C.T.A. strikes again, everyone's favourite airline. It appeared that they only had a few passengers booked, so just cancelled the flight and rescheduled everybody 12 hours later. Probably makes economic sense, but getting home at 2 a.m. again is not so nice

It's Friday night again and at midnight it was going to be Michael's birthday, so it was the whole gang down to Deano's for the evening. Now it strikes me that I have mentioned Deano's many times but never shown you any pics, so here goes. First Dean himself "working" behind the bar, then the Friday night crooner, Roger B, with a little help from Dean's wife Edna with some backing vocals. There is often some dancing when the mood takes us, but it's usually started by the girls alone. At midnight it became Michael's 66th birthday, so the traditional birthday song was performed and we all had another, to celebrate. Michael said ooh! and seemed very pleased to be around with friends for the occasion

Because it was Michael's birthday and because they had been away when it was our wedding anniversary, we decided to all four go out to the new Ambiance Restaurant ( A new dining experience) on the way in to Kyrenia. Beautiful setting, right on the waters edge, two layers of terracing with stunning waterside views, lovely new building, but Oh Dear!

We had to accept a 9.30 booking because they were very busy, which was OK with us as you tend to eat later out here. When we arrived we were asked to sit at a sort of side table, as our table was not quite ready, we sat there for 10/15 minutes and nobody even asked if we would like a drink whilst waiting. We were then shown to our terrace table right by the waters edge, it's now close to 10 p.m. and getting a little chilly, so we ordered a drink and main meal only. Michael and I both had a fish dish served on a bed of pasta and the girl's had Fish Florentine. Our seafood sauce came on a bed of luke warm pasta on almost cold plates and although the taste was good and the girl's fish was excellent their chips were also almost cold on arrival. Nobody came and asked if we wanted anything else, until we had got pretty fed up and asked for the bill, then the waiter said don't you want coffee and this whilst they were clearing the table up around us ready to close. Sorry folks, beautiful place, nice extensive menu at very reasonable prices for the situation, but lots of work needed to get the service right before we will be rushing back there.

All sorts of newspaper reports about the PROPOSED new government legislation on allowing foreign buyers to have only 125 year leases on land which will be government owned. Lots of e-mails from some of you who are rightly concerned, but sorry folks, two things spring to mind here. One, it is not law yet until ratified by parliament and I understand that there is lots of opposition building up and secondly, I'm no lawyer so would only be telling you what I have heard or read, just like all those of you voicing opinions on the bulletin board. Why don't we all wait until we get one of the very able lawyers, to give us the facts, if and when the law comes on the statute books. I will e-mail the lawyer we used and ask him to give us an informed opinion, if it is needed, then put his answer on here for you all to read.

The worrying aspect from my point of view, is not necessarily the 125 year lease but the ability of the government to introduce legislation which effectively kicks, non citizen-foreign residents, who are currently funding the economic growth of this part of the island, where it is likely to hurt most. There is a definite need to put a curb on the total random development which could swamp the civil service and ruin the island, but I feel sure that there are many of us out there who could come up with many other ways to control things.

I know, it's not really September 14th but more like the 21st and I have not updated for a little while. Truth is, I have bought a new big desktop computer, then linked it to this laptop, so that I get added security of all the data that's sitting on this thing. A sort of peace of mind thing really, because if this went down then I would have serious problems recreating everything again. So there you go, it's taken me some time to backup everything on both computers. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

The sailing season is beginning to draw to a close now, all the boats are going to be stored away on 12th October, so we have just got a few Tuesday afternoons left. Joan and I thought to get a nice couple of hours on our own, but no, Chris decided that he was going to accompany us to make sure that we had not picked up too many bad habits and we also discussed the fact that we could store one of the boats under our house. This should make it possible to do some winter maintenance in the dry and warm.

Joan started her winter exercise regime this evening. She and Susan went off to St Andrews Church hall, where somebody has organised some mat exercises which are supposed to stretch and tone. They said it was quite hard work, but enjoyable, so booked again to go next week. Lets see how long they keep that up.

This evening, President Denktas, came to the L.A. Hotel by invitation from the British Residents Society (BRS) to talk about the current situation here, viz-a-vie the recent referendum and why there is no progress on direct flights and trade with the EU.

At the outset he made it very clear that he would not talk about the suggested leasehold law, as it was not his place as President to discuss these things before they were law. That set the tone of the evening, a politician doing what they are best at, saying very little and not quite answering any questions. What we got was a very able speaker, giving us a potted history of what the Greek Cypriots did between 1963 and 1974, a sort of précis of the book The Genocide Files, he even brought some copies of that book with him. He did make it very plain that despite all the efforts by him and others with the same mind, to make this island into a confederation, the Greek side were not prepared to accept anything but total rule of the island and admitted that whilst the Greek Cypriots had had a tremendous publicity campaign, which convinced the rest of the world that they were the rightful government, that the Turkish Cypriots had failed miserably on this front. Really I suppose at the end of it, he could only make it quite plain that he had been totally intransient, during all his years in office, in what he had tried to achieve, justice had not really been done, despite the result of the referendum, as the rest of the world was not prepared to listen to the truth about what really happened here. Added to this, the Greek Cypriots were now members of the EU and would use every opportunity to block the opportunities for trade with the rest of Europe. So we are back to "Watch this space". It will be some time yet before anything concrete happens.

After spending some time over the weekend getting the garden sort of shipshape, Joan and I went round to Michael and Barbara's for a pleasant evening sitting on their terrace, enjoying Barbara's home cooking, a few drinks and some pleasant conversation. Nice way to round off the week.

David and Glen have arrived back in Karaman, from their other home in Nairobi and at the same time our friend from Holland, Hans, has arrived on the island to take up residence. What a grand excuse to all get together round our BBQ this evening.

Hans actually drove here from Holland with a friend, because he could not get any airline to fly his big Doberman from Istanbul to TRNC. Now poor old Spot is having to sit in the quarantine kennels for the next couple of weeks, despite having had all the necessary injections and his own health passport. Hans is not happy about this but has to accept the regulations here and just hope that he will be allowed out soon.

Now here's one that will probably interest most of you. The Minister of the Interior attended a BRS meeting tonight about the proposed leasehold law on property here. The BRS president had to keep a tight control on things as the meeting sometimes got a little rowdy, mainly due to the fact that the translations sometimes left a little to be desired, the subject was very emotive and the sound system left a lot to be desired. Many people had questions that they did not have time to ask and I think that people went away without being satisfied with the answers given. We did get some valuable information and some promises to consider proposed changes to the draft legislation.

It was made very plain that the proposals were only in draft and not as yet law. Also that the minister was having meetings with many interested parties and accepting possible amendments at this stage.
There will be an English translation available by the weekend, hopefully published in Cyprus Today on Saturday. Also, any of us have 20 days from today, to write in with positive suggestions to amend the draft.
We were told, by a cabinet Undersecretary to Mr Denktas, that the proposals were being introduced for reasons that we had all suspected. Property prices were now getting far beyond the reach of the local Turkish Cypriot people, because their income levels where so much lower than ours. The utilities were already stretched and needed much effort in both time and money to bring them up to the necessary level. There was great concern about the environment, with all the random building currently going on. In short there was a need to slow things down.
One very important thing that was made very clear was that the law would not be retrospective. Only building permit applications after the date that the law was passed, would be subject to a 125 year lease on land which would be government owned. Also importantly for all those who have made applications and are waiting for permits, these would not be effected and would be offered on a freehold basis as at present. The minister said that a special team was being put to work to ensure that all applications currently in, some 2,500; would be processed within three months of the new legislation becoming law, should this happen.
It was made very plain to the Minister, that leasehold properties are not the norm in UK, quite the opposite in fact, most current leaseholders now being offered freehold opportunities. He accepted the suggested change in the proposal to ensure that anybody who currently buys freehold, will be able to sell on freehold and made it very plain also that any freehold property bequeathed would remain as freehold in the future. I think he now understands the term "The Englishman's Home is his Castle", the mood of the meeting made this very clear.
Other important points that came out where. No more than 1 donum of land, villa or apartment per applicant. No building to commence before buying permits are approved and building plans passed. This is clearly designed to really slow down the current rush, but in view of passed performances, can they make it stick?

Clearly there will be more points to consider after the publication of Saturday's newspaper and I will attempt to highlight these later, but the above, I feel, were the important pieces from last nights meeting that should put a few minds at rest.

AN URGENT APPEAL FROM THOSE AT LARDY DARS TEAROOMS.

Derek, Sandra, Lorraine and Ann-Marie sold their current home some 8 months ago but with no significant completion date. Suddenly the buyers want the completion to be 1st November. This means that they have to find a 3/4 bedroom property to rent whilst their new home is being built and by local standards that could be 12 months. Maybe not a major problem you would say, but, Anne-Marie is registered blind and has had a guide dog for many years. This dog came with them from UK and now has almost retired because of conditions on the roads etc. here and because she is at home alone a lot, she has a companion.

There lies the problem. They have found a couple of places, but the owners are saying NO to the dogs. So if any of you out there have a home for long term rental and are animal lovers, then please come back to me and lets try to help them out, these animals are very well house trained, just like their owners.

This evening Dave & Glen had their house warming party at their very beautiful home up in Karaman. A grand event with lots of friends from the village present. They had organised a barman for the night and laid on a chef with his own portable doner machine, so the food was traditional and glorious. Anybody who recognises the picture from last years range should no that dumbo here, put his camera in his own car and then took Joan's car up to Karaman, clever move. Having said all of that, it was a great evening with whole being done in style by mine hosts

OK it's Saturday and Cyprus Today has been published: There is as promised, a complete translation of the daft bill on Foreign Property Ownership. Oops I meant to say draft bill. The salient points appear to be:-

Foreigner refers to an individual or corporate body that is not a citizen of TRNC.
Foreigners will be eligible to acquire property through long term leasing, providing they obtain permission from The Council of Ministers, in advance.
The duration of the long term lease will be 125 years, unless determined otherwise by The Council of Ministers. Contract for sale through leasing, will be recorded in the Land Registry, at this time the ownership of the property will be transferred to the TRNC and the lease purchaser will be issued a property possession document.
The immovable property acquired will not exceed, one donum, or a residence or a flat.
The sale through long term leasing to a foreign national, or collecting part or entire value, or initiating moves to enable a foreign national to acquire possession, by putting the foreign national under financial obligation, is prohibited without first securing permission from the Council of Ministers. Violation of this will render the guilty party to imprisonment for 10 years and/or a 30 billion cash fine.
Those who prior to to passing of this law initiated moves to acquire an immovable on a contractual basis without approval of the Council of Ministers, or those appearing as selling agents in the said sale contract, will be liable to apply within 1 month of the law coming into effect, to apply for approval. Those failing to apply will be committing an offence which is liable to 10 years and/or 30 billion fine.
The buyer and or seller are responsible for the paying of all types of tax, fees and charges.
The past transactions will not be affected and immovable property passed on through inheritance will also not be affected. No mention of re-sales, so we can assume that at present these will become leasehold, according to current draft.

There is clearly lots of other mumbo jumbo in the draft, but I think the above cover the important points. There are also two other articles in the paper which relate to this. Firstly a report on the meeting last Tuesday. The points I put up earlier in the week still apply according to the reporter, with one exception. According to the paper report Mr Murat said " That although the government and legal experts involved in creating the new regulation would look again at at the question of what would happen if the owner of a property wished to resell the property, he did not think that the issue would be solved in favour of the owner. Nor he added, would there be any distinction among the various types of foreign owned properties under the new law. All of them, including the British pre-74 title deeds are going to be treated on the basis of the same law." Now I have checked with 4 or 5 friends who attended the same meeting and our understanding of what he said is slightly different, maybe something got lost in the translation or just maybe the reporters version was edited prior to publication, perish the thought! Second article was by an English QC with 40 years experience in property and development law in England. This article was designed to make the government think as it made very plain the issues involved and the unlawful regulations that they are about to try to introduce. Clearly there is a long way to go here and somebody will challenge the government at some stage and they are very likely to lose, especially in the EU courts. Lots to come yet I think before this subject is closed, maybe for ever. Much lighter note. Take a look at this huge caterpillar that we found munching one of our shrubs. Far be it for me to say that he moves as quickly and looks just like a politician

Today was a very sad day. Last night, we heard from David, that Glen had had a very serious fall in their garden. This morning, before leaving for Larnaca, we heard that she had passed away overnight. Glen was a very lovely lady, full of personality, always fun at every occasion. It hardly seems possible to remember that she was sitting under our gazebo last Tuesday evening, being the perfect hostess at her own party on Friday and now she is no longer with us. Life is very fragile, cherish every moment you have

We collected our very special friends, Les and Jill from Larnaca airport, yesterday afternoon and left them to recover after the journey, by having a quiet day by the pool. This is the first time they have been over since we lived in the temporary house in Catalkoy. Masses to talk about to catch up with all the news from New Romney, Kent. So it was a late night sitting on the terrace in temperatures that they have not seen all summer.

Joan is working for the first three days of this week so it was down to the sailing beach as usual this afternoon. It's getting almost to the end of the season now, so each Tuesday we seem to have a full house withall three boats going out. Joan got in to do all the workgetting sails up etc on our boat before we set sail. Very unfortunately there was hardly any wind out there today so it was really hard work trying to get anywhere at all. Maybe next week we can get Les to take some good pics.

Joan took Les and Jill down to Friends Beach this afternoon for a swim in the sea whilst I tried to organise a couple of kitchen installations.

We also had a brilliant result today. Last week we had asked the carpenter to make us a nice long bookcase to go up the corridor outside the bedrooms. We didn't actually ask him the obvious question - How Long?- so were very pleasantly surprised, when he turned up today, with the completed article.

Our friends George & Sue also have a house full at the moment and Michael's two sisters are also over from UK, so a large party was organised at Acmenya Restaurant. This is one of our restaurants that we like to use for occasions like this, because they have such a varied menu, so there is something to please all. They had organised a long table for all 14 of us,so George's party started at one end and the four of us took our places atthe opposite end. All agreed that a very pleasant evening was had by all and good food in to the bargain.

Last day of another month and as Joan had these two days off, we took Les and Jill over the border again, to do some shopping in the hypermarket. We had to stop in Jumbo Toy's on the way. The excuse was that they had some very nice plastic glasses for use around the pool, but in truth, Les and I enjoyed the playtime we were allowed.

Prior to going across I had left my car for servicing at the local village garage. All ready for me on our return and at a cost of 24 pounds sterling. Brilliant.

By mutual agreement we decided that Jeannette's Seranada Restaurant was a good choice for the evening and no cooking for the girl's. Also we had planned to go up to the Karpaz tomorrow morning early. Added to which, I had to get up at 5 a.m. as I had agreed to take David to the airport. He managed to get Glen's coffin out on a plane yesterday and get tickets for himself and Glen's sister Valerie on the flight this morning. He says that he is likely to come back in 2/3 weeks time and try to organise things over here.