Frank and Joan's news for 02 April 2006 in Northern Cyprus

Frank and Joan's Adventures in Northern Cyprus

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

Late start after last night but a lovely sunny and warm day so breakfast on the terrace was the order of the day. At this time of the year we get a few really warm days and then a few days of light rain, a prelude to things to come but not quite time to get the shorts out of hock.

Spent the morning attacking another section of the hedge, only two more sections to go. We are trying to take it down about two foot so it is quite hard work to get through some of the thicker stems. So having worked up a good thirst we drove down to the new harbour in Kyrenia, sat out on the restaurant terrace and had a couple of beers. On a nice day like this, quite a few locals come down to this harbour for lunch with their families, leaving the old traditional harbour for the tourists. We saw our friend Serkan, a local builder, with his wife and two children enjoying the sun and the food.

Recognition at last. At least from the English Royal Family. On Friday

evening, Prince Harry was seen at Roxannes in Kyrenia. It appears that he has been in South Cyprus on the British army base at Episkopi taking part in a military exercise with other Sandhurst cadets and had expressed a wish to visit the North, so front page news is what we now have in the Cyprus Today. Or was it the fact that the paper was printed on April 1st?

Among the other items was an article about the speed camera, installed near the hospital in Nicosia. Apparantly a test was run over a 24 hour period and it was discovered that 5,000 of the 10,000 vehicles that passed by, where going too fast. Please tell me if anyone finds this particular statistic very surprising.

The UN has told our President that the gap was too wide to consider starting peace talks again. Apparantly when Papadopoulus met with the UN in Paris recently he then talked about a joint statement, a Paris agreement and "technical committees" to discuss confidence building measures such as demilitarisation and Turkish settlers. When the local TRNC government, rightly incensed, asked the UN for clarification, a letter was received which said that no joint statement had been issued, there was no such thing as a Paris agreement and no suggestion made of technical committees. What a big surprise, another lying politicain coming up for re-election.

Still no further change or announcment about the 30th April "Census" day, but this week they did come along and hammer a little tin number eleven on our gatepost with a nail, this despite the fact tha we had already bought some numbers and I had made a nice hardwood block to display them on. The little tin plate had to be nailed alongside. Only in TRNC

I don't know if anybody else has noticed, but for the last three weeks there has been a deathly silence over the Gary Robb affair! Curious or not.