Frank and Joan's news for 11 January 2009 in Northern Cyprus

Frank and Joan's Adventures in Northern Cyprus

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

Thankfully we have had lots of rain during the last week, mostly at night and it has been that steady sort of rain, not the short sharp torrential sort, so maybe it is now starting to get through to the reservoirs. Don't believe that we have had anything like enough to sort out the summer needs, but at least it is a start.

Not too early out of bed this morning as wanted to make a start on the newspaper so that I could try to pick out a few bits for you back there in UK. Then Joan decided that she was going to church, so that meant that 8 o'clock was the end of my possible lie in, no sympathy for a guy still suffering with "man flu".

So when she went out I got stuck in to some of these maintenance jobs that need doing, such as the filters on all the taps that silt up from time to time and replacing some of the silicone fillers around windows etc. This stuff just dries out in the hot summers and then the rain identifies were you need to pay attention. Stops one getting bored I suppose.

Anyway back to the newspaper. Last week a great fuss

about the possible fanfare opening of the long awaited bypass. This week it has hit the skids again, as the contractor has admitted a 4.5 million lira loss, so the completion work will have to go back out to tender. Ah well its only 14 months late and we are all using the first section anyway, probably illegally, but at certain times of the day it shortens the journey.

Lots of praise in the paper for the various fund raising efforts on behalf of charities over the last twelve months. Lots of money raised for cancer charities, children in need, animal rescue charities etc and it is clear that many retired expats spend lots of time working for these charities.

Our neighbours in the South at at it again. Now they have issued a 23 million euro compensation claim against one of the biggest building companies here and another against a builder of a development in Sadrazamkoy, where it just so happens that our President owns a villa, for 2 million euros. Now the lawyer involved from the south has openly stated that it is not their intention to put political pressure on the Turkish Cypriots during the current negotiations, but that the gathering of evidence has just taken a long time. Now if that is not a big joke, then what is. Anybody like to hazard a guess as to the value of the Turkish Cypriot owned land, that is now Larnaca airport.

We all lost our internet connections for about three hours on Wednesday, because once again some builders managed to cut through the fibre optic cable which connects us all to Lefkosa, across the mountain. This is not the first time, but clearly the cable is not very deep, very well identified and certainly not protected.

Good news for one member of the Home Buyers Pressure Group. They won their case in the local court for shoddy building work and the builder has been ordered to pay compensation of £175,000 to enable them to buy an alternative property that is actually suitable to live in. At least there are cases being recognised where building standards to do not exist and historically anybody with no building experience could set themselves up as a builder.