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Our
adventures in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus continue....
 
A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL.
Back to school day for Joan. All this part time bit, over the Christmas and New Year holidays has now come to an end, so with me still stuck at home and Joan out mornings, I am getting through a few of those books I have been promising to read.
A curious thing of late. Our Smudge keeps going off in the mornings and we thought she must have found somewhere to snooze away in the sun and only this morning I discovered where this secret place is. She goes over the back wall into the field and then climbs about 20 feet and sleeps in the top branches - Smudge up a tree!.
I had seen this white thing up the tree and assumed it to be a plastic bag blown up there by the wind, only accidental closer inspection reviled the truth. She must feel safe up there, although that high up she does blow gently in the breeze.
Michael and Barbara came back in the early hours of this morning, off the Stanstead night flight. Joan found them already at home when she took their Daisy down for her breakfast. They are heading to bed for a few hours and coming round to see us this evening.
Well they came round for a few drinks, armed with some goodies from UK. A Melton Mowbray pork pie, some black pudding to add to the one Roger and Jill brought back for us, should keep us going for a few Sunday breakfasts, about three days of English newspapers, happy reading for me tomorrow and a couple of small presents from their cats, to thank us for looking after them. Michael had also located a special tap fitting for me, so that I can re-site the front garden tap. This came complete with about 3 foot of 1/2 inch copper pipe, so there is a little job to do in a couple of weeks time.
This afternoon I had a check up at the clinic and took the opportunity to take some boxed Quality Street chocs, which Barbara had kindly bought at Stanstead, as a thank you for the girls who had looked after me so well. I also took some pictures in and around the clinic so that I can prepare a web page of information for you all. Will let you know when that is up and running. This evening it was George & Susan who came round for a drink. They arrived back late yesterday evening so came round to talk about their visit and bring some more newspapers for me to read. Nice to see them back, they are in fact the last of the returning flock.
Michael & Barbara took me down to the Pegasus Pub this morning as I needed to establish the situation on road tax for all our vehicles and the B.R.S. meet there every Friday
Historically all road tax was due on 1st January each year and we were given 4 weeks grace to obtain the tax. As you can imagine this caused chaos in the tax office every year, with us all there at the same time, huge great queues and often a wait of a couple of hours before your turn came around. Well now common sense has prevailed and we each have to pay our new road tax dues, during the month that the vehicle was first registered here. This means in our case that, one car is due in May and the other in August, but it does not apparently mean that we get away with not paying for this period. I understand that we will have to pay the back tax to 1st January and then one years full road tax forward to the next due date. At least at the end of it all we will all be able to get to the tax office and renew in a sensible timescale in future and the pressure is taken off the tax office employees. Not a bit like posting it to Swansea or slipping in to the Post Office each year. Don't ask what the road tax per vehicle costs, because it depends on:- fuel type, age of vehicle, weight of vehicle and engine size, so you need to establish before you buy.
This evening it was all down to Deano's, for the post Xmas "Lapta Layabouts reunion.". Seems like they have never been away. The only thing we miss is the music, but will have to wait until it's a bit warmer before Roger gets his keyboards out again and we can all sit there tapping our fingers and shuffling our bums on the seats, more or less in time to the music. That's Roger standing in the middle, with Michael's beer perched on his head.
This morning Peter and Averill Davies came round for coffee. They are over again checking on their house completion out in Karsiyaka, which they say is coming on nicely. Last time they came over they carried in their suitcases, an electric blanket, from the Argos store and we where able to tell them that it is getting well used at this time of the year.This evening we went round to Michael and Barbara's for dinner. Barbara had a nice piece of roast pork with all the trimmings and Joan contributed a lemon cheese cake from the freezer, which she had made pre-Xmas. Another pleasant evening and just a short walk home, accompanied by Tiggy, who had come round to see what time we were coming home.
Ertugral picked me up this morning so that we could get the engineers to install 4 air conditioning units in a house in Alsancak. This caused a little problem as this house is built with these new thermo blocks they are using over here and it was not possible to get a secure fixing for the large external fan unit for the 24,000 BTU air conditioning. Clearly we have to look for special fixing devices suitable for walls made with this material, so a discussion with the builder is needed and lets hope that somebody has thought to import the right fixings.This evening, Joan and I went round to Roger and Jill's for dinner. Both Roger and I spent ages trying to remember how to get the self timer function on our cameras to work, clearly what Keith Norton would call an RTFM fault, I'll leave you to work that one out!! Eventually Roger got his to work and theresultant photo is there for you to see.
Today I completed a couple of pages of Doctor/Dentist and Medical Centre information for those of you who are interested. You will find them by opening up the Northern Cyprus Information tab at the top of this page and then clicking on the medical info bit. I have a feeling that the medical centre might have an e-mail address. I will find out when I go in next week and then add to the information page.
Today was big George's birthday and Joan had promised him a party, so we set too and made up a bit of a buffet and The gang came round to join in the celebrations.
Susan had made a big chocolate and nut cake for the Birthday boy. and reluctantly George allowed us all a small piece.
A real tragedy in this weeks newspaper. One of the school buses has gone off a ravine near Bellapais and an 11 year old girl died and other children are seriously injured. There are two other road fatalities reported also, but unfortunately that seems to be the weekly total of traffic deaths reported. Someday soon the authorities have to get a grip on the traffic and driving situation here, it really is some of the worst I have ever seen.Our friends Bob & Maggie, of Henson's restaurant, are back on the island and today they started their Sunday roast lunches again. Six of the gang booked and enjoyed a superb roast lamb lunch. We all find that the quality of the food here is very good and are more than happy to avail ourselves of the opportunity to enjoy.Bob was a little upset, as his car had gone bang this morning, which sort of left him stranded trying to run a restaurant, so Joan and I decided to lend him mine for a few days, it is after all just sitting in the garage, unused at present
Joan has a half term holiday coming up at the end of the month, so after some discussion we decided that we should avail ourselves of the cheaper flights, which are on offer at the moment and come over there to the cold UK. Mind you we have to admit that we are in the cold and wet period here right now, so we may not notice the difference too much. Les & Jill will put us up for the week and we will get a chance to visit other friends around our old home town and I guess Joan will get some chance to do a little shopping.This evening we went to meet Lynne Gough at The Ship Hotel. Lynne has come over on her own to do some house hunting, a pretty thankless task in this wet weather, but she had been sending us e-mails for some time and wanted to put names to faces and ask a few other questions about living here. Lynne bought us dinner at The Ship and I must say that it is the first time that Joan and I have eaten there and the quality and price of the food is to be recommended. Thanks Lynne, nice to know that you can recommend both the food and hotel when people ask
A three day Bayram holiday starts here tomorrow and Joan is in fact free already, as the schools close one day in advance. So we were able to collect Peter and Leslie Dent from their hotel and take them through to Nicosia to pick out their kitchen equipment for the house being built in Alagadi. Its good to have a chauffer to drive me around, but I expect that Joan would rather that I was able to do my own driving.
Because today was the first official day of the Bayram holiday, everything here was closed and for once this week the sun was shining and the temperature back up at 17 degrees. Add to this, the fact that I am supposed to do some walking, as exercise, we decided to drive to the central Nicosia crossing point and walk over to the Greek side. There they don't celebrate the Muslim holidays so all the shops and restaurants where open. We walked through to the centre of town and Joan even managed to buy some black shoes in the sales, then sat in a pavement cafe and had some lunch, whilst watching to world go by.
Last night was the standard trip down to Deano's, which happens on a Friday night when we have nothing special on. A few beers and a chance to put the world to rights is always good for the soul.Another walk across to the south this morning. Why, you might ask. Well Joan spotted these black boots in the Bata shoe shop sale on Thursday, but they didn't have her size. The lady said she would get some sent up from their Limassol shop if we cared to go back. Low and behold, true to her word, the boots were behind the counter waiting for Joan to try and buy. I know they were a good buy in the sale, but what's the betting that she would find he same ones in UK, when we come over for a week early February
This lunchtime we met Gloria and Bryan Tattersal, at Henson's. This couple we had briefly met last week and they have been an e-mail contact for sometime now as they are having a house built here in Lapta.We did here some very disturbing news from them. They had booked with Green Island Holidays, a two week stay in The Jasmine Court. On the first day of the Bayram holiday, they were politely asked to leave and move to a hotel in Bellapais for two days and then return. It would appear that this hotel, which has a casino, was requiring the rooms for mainlanders who were going to spend money in the casino. Bryan and Gloria naturally refused, as they had a contract with Green Island for two weeks in this hotel. The holiday rep was called and it would seem that they also had no clout with the hotel and it was made very clear that there was no option but to move. As they had had a couple of bottles of wine charged to their room during their short stay, they suggested that the hotel might like to offer these as a small compensation for the inconvenience and again they were told that they would not be allowed to leave without making payment, they actually felt that there was a likelihood of the police being called. In the end the holiday company paid this bill and they moved, but clearly have no intention of ever going back there again. This to me is a sad story for an island that is doing everything it can to boost tourism and is supposed to be trying very hard to get direct flights and grow the economy in this way and in my mind reflects very badly on The Jasmine Court Hotel, which is claiming to be a 5 star establishment. They sure have a lot to learn about customer relations and along way to go before justifying such a claim.Anyway we had a good lunch, as always at Bob & Maggie's and they are to pick me up tomorrow morning, for a trip to Nicosia, to sort out their kitchen equipment ready for their house completion in April/May
This morning I called our regular log delivery man, as I feel we need an extra ton to see us through to the warmer days. The price has gone up again, as it always does when you get to the end of the winter, it now works out at £60.00 per ton. Me thinks it is time to take a serious look at this overall heating situation, as there is a period of around 12 weeks every winter when we do need some sort of additional warmth, especially in the evenings. The open fire is working brilliantly, backed up by a couple of portable gas fires in the dining room and bedroom corridor area, but that will be 6 tons of wood we will have burnt during the cold spell and this winter hasn't been as cold as last year + of course at least two gas bottles every week at a cost of £6.00 each. I suppose that around £600 per annum for heating, compares very favourably with UK costs, but it has gone up by 50% in the short time we have been here and it sometimes makes you wonder if they saw is coming and are reaping the benefit
Today is Tree Planting Day. So this afternoon I went back to the school with Joan to see the children all plant some trees in the school grounds and then give us all a little show afterwards. First the pupils all got alecture from the headmaster about the importance of trees in our lives and the damage being done in many parts of the world, by indiscriminate tearing up of trees. The children then planted their own trees, each class at a time. Some did seem to think that kicking the soil back with their feet was the easy solution. As each year goes by another section of hedge will be planted alongside the school fencing. After the outdoor ceremony we all went up to the theatre room and the children gave us a performance of their own making all about trees and their importance. Again each class did their own thing, starting withthe little ones in crèche and then finishing off with agrand finale.
Oh yes, on the way home, Joan and I called in the Post Office to collect our mail. In amongst the regular mail, was Xmas card, posted in Berkshire on 4th December. Always did say that the pace of life here was a little slow !!
Today as usual the weekly Cyprus Today newspaper is out. There is, as one would expect, a lot being written about this arbitrary introduction of a 15% rate of VAT on all new build properties and this will only apply to foreign buyers. This is clearly another attempt to slow down the rate of new builds here, but once again these things just get introduced with no consultation with any of the businesses or industries effected. More damaging is the fact that it is an immediate introduction, so all those buying permits etc, which are just sitting in files in government offices, waiting for somebody to actually do something, are to be caught in the trap. There have been many promises to speed up the process but still people are waiting 2 years or more for any sort of action. It seems that digitum extractum only means removing it from the coffee cup handle long enough to light up another fag.
We are not caught up in this latest deal because we long ago paid our stamp duties and VAT but, suffice to say that we got our land deeds two years ago last December. It then took another 15 months to get all the plans for the house stamped and accepted in the land office. Last August I took the original deeds and the planning file to the land registry, 4 weeks ago on a Sunday morning a team of men came to measure the plot again, then today another man turned up to compare the original plans with the actual house and boldly stated that I could collect the revised deeds in 2 weeks. It should also be noted that I had been enquiring amongst my local Turkish Cypriot friends as to who had a cousin in the land office, so that I could use their influence to get something done finally. Wheels within wheels, sad but the best way to get results here.
According to the paper, the local society of Estate Agents, the Construction Industry and the British Residents Society are all making strong representation to the government about these new rules, so maybe this will go the same way as the proposed leasehold bill, into the dustbin. We will just have to wait and see.
Friday night we all did our usual winter thing and took up residence in Deano's bar. There we all agreed that we should go out for dinner on the Saturday. The unanimous decision was to go to The Grapevine restaurant down in Kyrenia.We congregated at Deano's, walked down the road and got taxis down town, sensible if you are going to have a couple of drinks. The grapevine hasa nice little warm bar where you can sit and contemplate the menu. Most selected steak in various guises and all those who did said that it was one of the tastiest and best cooked steaks on the island. Trust me to have the duck. It was nice but all the drooling over the steaks makes one quite envious.Today I am trying to get all the network stuff on my laptop, as that is going with me to UK next week, so hopefully I might even do a web update whilst over there. Had a conversation on the Skype link with my mate Les and he says that he has got in some real ale, ready for me to enjoy on Wednesday. Good lad, looking after his friends
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