Epistle from Cyprus III - 12th September 2006
We have at last discovered the name of the barman/owner/farmer at the local watering hole. 'Orthonos' or Otto as the ex-pats know him because Orthonos is too difficult for the English tongue apparently. Otto told us of the expected arrival of 'Jimmy' who was his best customer and a close friend. The name 'Jimmy' immediately conjured up the image of a savage and tattooed Scotman almost certainly using Cyprus as a base to spend his illgotten gains from the ice-cream wars and remain out Her Majesty's custody. Apologies to any Scots reading this but the name 'Jimmy' always seems to be accompanied by the words 'See you Jimmy' in a strong Glaswegian accent with an implied threat and a potential bottle fight.
A few days later we called in at the coffee bar which was unusually busy and we took our place outside. It is a strange fact that the ex-pat comes to Cyprus for the good weather and then likes to sit inside a smoky barroom to drink his beer. The locals on the other hand sit outside in the shade and fresh air and drink coffee. After a few minutes a tall and well upholstered ex-pat wearing the white singlet vest so beloved of the holiday makers on Blackpool promenade came to join us. He invited himself to our table. Actually these are not tables but small white stools that Otto puts outside his customers to rest their drinks on. The chairs that we use are handmade rustic ones which I am sure would fetch a high price in trendy London shops. The new ex-pat starting talking and his accent was immediately apparent as a Scouser and then the penny dropped that it was not so much 'See you Jimmy' as 'R A Jimmy R A'. As it happens Jimmy comes from Whiston which was/is a small village near to Huyton where I was brought up. At that time both Whiston and Huyton were separate villages which have since been consumed by the ever expanding Liverpool district. Jimmy was back for a few months recuperating from his second heart attack. His arms are covered in bruises and cuts caused by the warfarin medication he has to take. They should not last long he tells us as he has to cut down on the warfarin to be able to consume more alcohol.
J. has already made an agreement with the local Greek Orthodox priest that he can be buried here on the island as it costs only £300 and that is much cheaper than flying home.
Ah the practicality of the hardened drinker.
J. was the first English person in the village. He is so well known that after his first heart attack which happened here the local taxi driver took him to the hospital for free and then picked up his dry cleaning afterwards. You certainly do not get that kind of service with the NHS.
Cyprus is famous if not infamous for its cats. If it was not for the Cyprus cats then there would only be a third as many postcards for sale. They are not as obvious this time as they have been on earlier visits here when they were at every restaurant, bar and hotel and under every chair and table they could have been mistaken for a carpet. The tourist office office have obviously got their act together on this since joining the EU. On one previous holiday there was an occasion when we were driving through a small mountain village and the local children greeted us by waving a dead kitten through the car window. Obviously a quaint local custom.
The Cyprus cat is a thin and spidery creature that appears to have jumped straight out of an LS Lowry painting. (Actually Lowry wrote "I can't do a cat yet. The only way I can do a cat is by doing a very bad dog and then in a way decapitating it and it becomes a cat'")
Cypriot cats exist in one of three states. (I was going to say three categories but that would be too much!) The first state is asleep and always in the coolest and shadiest place. They are the exact opposite of 'Mrs. Chippy' the cat that accompanied Scott to the Antarctic. It was said that Mrs. Chippy was the best thermometer on the ship in that he (Mrs. Chippy was indeed a male) always found the warmest place on the ship whether below in the galley or on deck in the Antarctic sunshine.
The Cyprus cat however is more akin to a vampire and never willingly walks in direct sunshine. If they are forced to move from one location to another they enter the second state which is hurtling from shadow to shadow with legs and tail thrashing and flailing as though all are moving independently. For some unknown reason they usually do this in the evening, across roads and in front of the oncoming traffic.
While performing this trick they frequently enter the third state where they can be returned to their owners by quietly slipping them under the front door.
Hilary has been very much looking forward to the arrival of our youngest daughter D. D.is 16 years old and has decided to come and live with us for the moment. At least she will stay until we have our first major disagreement. I asked Hilary if she was looking forward to taking D. out shopping and doing that kind of girlie thing but she said she was mored concerned with acting as a referee between D. and me.
D. arrived at Larnaka airport which is at the eastern end of the island about 2 hours drive away. We had never been there before and I have to say if that had been the first place we visited then we would probably never have returned. Geographically it has all the variety of Morecambe Bay mud flats. An uninteresting landscape covered in holiday housing and interrupted by dried salt lakes. In its favour I have to point out that the beaches are much better there but I can understand why Agia Napa has the reputation for being such a boozy holiday resort. You would need copious quantities of alcohol to compensate for the boring landscape.
One highlight of the trip however was the opportunity to visit the inside of a mosque. We have seen several mosques in the south of Cyprus but sadly up to now they had all been neglected and sometimes vandalised. The Hala Sultan Tekke mosque near to Larnaka airport has been restored and opened to visitors. Even women! I have to say I did not see any women there but there were signatures in the visitors book to prove they had been there and had come from all over the world. There was even a Koran donated by a couple from the exotic location of Blackburn Lancashire. The Cyprus cats were of course there and had probably been there since before the mosque was built.
It was the first time I had been inside a mosque anywhere. What a contrast it was to the many Greek Orthodox churches in the south. Entering a GO church is like an assault on the senses. The smell of candles and incense and the incredible gold and blue paintings are almost overwhelming. The mosque by contrast was quite Spartan and restrained inside. Something that they both have in common though is the high roofs, stone pillars and walls and cool atmosphere.
The second highlight of the trip was of course picking up D. at the airport. Yes yes yes! At last there is someone on the island who is paler than me. She has the colouring of an extra in a vampire movie. Despite Hilary's misgivings it was nearly 18 whole hours before we had our first argument. OK so that includes 14 hours while D. was in bed asleep. Teenagers, vampires and Cyprus cats never arise before Noon and never ever go out in the direct sunlight.
My quest for the perfect suntan continues. I decided that perhaps the factor 155+ sunblock I was using may be preventing me from reaching the bronzed look and a possible new career as a male model. I decided to experiment with factor 75+ and see if that improved things. After one day I was burned red raw. Strangely though the redness and burning was down my front and back and had completely missed my sides which were still grayish white. I looked like someone wearing an Ajax football shirt. My eldest daughter W. insists this is because when I lie down my stomach is that much closer to the sun. Ha ha. Anyway after that I went back to my normal sunblock and within a few days I was restored to my normal unhealthy 'Y-front grey' hue. We must appear a strange sight when out walking together. Hilary with her gypsy colouring, myself like a preserved cadaver and D. like one of the undead. That may explain the locals slamming their doors when we approach.
Those of a squeamish nature should move on to their next email as I am going to touch on a personal subject. Hairy ears. There is no good beating about the bush (pun intended) as this is something that has affected me for several years now. You start to notice these thingswhen the barber spends more time on your ears and eyebrows than he does on your head. In the last few weeks I have noticed another change. At first I thought it was my imagination. Things are getting worse. I put it down to the additional hours sunshine. At first this was just a theory but I believe it has been confirmed as I have observed the ears of the Cypriot men. It is quite astonishing how hairy a Cypriot ear can be. I believe there is a lucrative business opportunity here if I can find a way of transplanting the hairy skin from a Cypriot ear to a balding English head. I envisage planeloads of shiny pated tourists coming here and returning home with a full head of thick dark hair. I just have to find an entrepreneurial balding business man with airline connections. Anyone have Stelios' number? I checked on his website http://www.easy.com/stelios/gallery.html) and easyhair.com is the only thing he does not have already.
As we have been here over a month we are starting to get into the Cypriot 'system'. That terrible thing where you have to pay bills. We received our water rates bill. Over here everyone is metered so you pay for what you use. The bill itself was a handwritten form none of that computer generated rubbish for Cyprus and for a little over a month the bill was £80. This was something of a shock as we had been led to believe that everything over here was cheaper this being the promised land of milk and honey. Well yoghurt and honey anyway.We checked the figures as best we could and looked at the meter reading. It seems we had been charged for water before we moved in. A simple accounting error and that was it so we could go and get it corrected. This meant a visit to the village Mukhtar who is the local elected council person. The Mukhtar has an office located in one of the local bars (where else?) and is open for business after 15:00 each day. The office itself is a small room with a desk and a couple of chairs for people to sit and wait. There is no concept of privacy as everyone knows everyone else's business. At least they certainly do after a visit to the mukhtar.
There is also no concept of queuing. The English people arrive and sit in an orderly fashion whereas the Cypriots arrive and walk to the front of any queue there may be. I guess it is their country so fair enough. As the Mukhtar is an elected representative then he has no personal property and the locals are free to help themselves to his cigarettes, drinks etc. I have to admit we were a bit vague on that bit but it is something that the British could learn from. If the elected representatives everywhere had no personal property and the electorate are free to come and take whatever they fancied I am sure we would have a fairer and more democratic system. I think we could learn from this Greek tradition after all Greece is the cradle of democracy. "Excuse me Mr. B I will just take the 3 piece suite you are sitting on. You can tell Sherie later OK?"
When all the locals were done we spoke to the Mukhtar and explained the situation. We thought there was going to be a long process of changing the bill which would take for ever. Not a bit of it. A scribble here, a tap tap tap on his Casio calculator, another scribble there and it was all done. The bill was down to £28 for 2 months. Not a computer in sight and it all worked fine. Having spent 6 weeks trying to get BT to persuade their computer to issue a final bill I am now convinced that computers only slow things down.
Our only other dealing with the Mukhtar was to enquire where our mail was going. Silly us! Didn't we know the postman was on holiday for 6 days? Do not worry the post will start to arrive when he gets back or maybe a few days later. One of the few Greek expressions we have picked up is 'Sigah sigah'. 'Slowly slowly'. If the plumber says he will visit tomorrow then that is Cypriot timescale which could be tomorrow or could be next week. Don't worry it will happen .... eventually.
Enough for today.
A few days later we called in at the coffee bar which was unusually busy and we took our place outside. It is a strange fact that the ex-pat comes to Cyprus for the good weather and then likes to sit inside a smoky barroom to drink his beer. The locals on the other hand sit outside in the shade and fresh air and drink coffee. After a few minutes a tall and well upholstered ex-pat wearing the white singlet vest so beloved of the holiday makers on Blackpool promenade came to join us. He invited himself to our table. Actually these are not tables but small white stools that Otto puts outside his customers to rest their drinks on. The chairs that we use are handmade rustic ones which I am sure would fetch a high price in trendy London shops. The new ex-pat starting talking and his accent was immediately apparent as a Scouser and then the penny dropped that it was not so much 'See you Jimmy' as 'R A Jimmy R A'. As it happens Jimmy comes from Whiston which was/is a small village near to Huyton where I was brought up. At that time both Whiston and Huyton were separate villages which have since been consumed by the ever expanding Liverpool district. Jimmy was back for a few months recuperating from his second heart attack. His arms are covered in bruises and cuts caused by the warfarin medication he has to take. They should not last long he tells us as he has to cut down on the warfarin to be able to consume more alcohol.
J. has already made an agreement with the local Greek Orthodox priest that he can be buried here on the island as it costs only £300 and that is much cheaper than flying home.
Ah the practicality of the hardened drinker.
J. was the first English person in the village. He is so well known that after his first heart attack which happened here the local taxi driver took him to the hospital for free and then picked up his dry cleaning afterwards. You certainly do not get that kind of service with the NHS.
Cyprus is famous if not infamous for its cats. If it was not for the Cyprus cats then there would only be a third as many postcards for sale. They are not as obvious this time as they have been on earlier visits here when they were at every restaurant, bar and hotel and under every chair and table they could have been mistaken for a carpet. The tourist office office have obviously got their act together on this since joining the EU. On one previous holiday there was an occasion when we were driving through a small mountain village and the local children greeted us by waving a dead kitten through the car window. Obviously a quaint local custom.
The Cyprus cat is a thin and spidery creature that appears to have jumped straight out of an LS Lowry painting. (Actually Lowry wrote "I can't do a cat yet. The only way I can do a cat is by doing a very bad dog and then in a way decapitating it and it becomes a cat'")
Cypriot cats exist in one of three states. (I was going to say three categories but that would be too much!) The first state is asleep and always in the coolest and shadiest place. They are the exact opposite of 'Mrs. Chippy' the cat that accompanied Scott to the Antarctic. It was said that Mrs. Chippy was the best thermometer on the ship in that he (Mrs. Chippy was indeed a male) always found the warmest place on the ship whether below in the galley or on deck in the Antarctic sunshine.
The Cyprus cat however is more akin to a vampire and never willingly walks in direct sunshine. If they are forced to move from one location to another they enter the second state which is hurtling from shadow to shadow with legs and tail thrashing and flailing as though all are moving independently. For some unknown reason they usually do this in the evening, across roads and in front of the oncoming traffic.
While performing this trick they frequently enter the third state where they can be returned to their owners by quietly slipping them under the front door.
Hilary has been very much looking forward to the arrival of our youngest daughter D. D.is 16 years old and has decided to come and live with us for the moment. At least she will stay until we have our first major disagreement. I asked Hilary if she was looking forward to taking D. out shopping and doing that kind of girlie thing but she said she was mored concerned with acting as a referee between D. and me.
D. arrived at Larnaka airport which is at the eastern end of the island about 2 hours drive away. We had never been there before and I have to say if that had been the first place we visited then we would probably never have returned. Geographically it has all the variety of Morecambe Bay mud flats. An uninteresting landscape covered in holiday housing and interrupted by dried salt lakes. In its favour I have to point out that the beaches are much better there but I can understand why Agia Napa has the reputation for being such a boozy holiday resort. You would need copious quantities of alcohol to compensate for the boring landscape.
One highlight of the trip however was the opportunity to visit the inside of a mosque. We have seen several mosques in the south of Cyprus but sadly up to now they had all been neglected and sometimes vandalised. The Hala Sultan Tekke mosque near to Larnaka airport has been restored and opened to visitors. Even women! I have to say I did not see any women there but there were signatures in the visitors book to prove they had been there and had come from all over the world. There was even a Koran donated by a couple from the exotic location of Blackburn Lancashire. The Cyprus cats were of course there and had probably been there since before the mosque was built.
It was the first time I had been inside a mosque anywhere. What a contrast it was to the many Greek Orthodox churches in the south. Entering a GO church is like an assault on the senses. The smell of candles and incense and the incredible gold and blue paintings are almost overwhelming. The mosque by contrast was quite Spartan and restrained inside. Something that they both have in common though is the high roofs, stone pillars and walls and cool atmosphere.
The second highlight of the trip was of course picking up D. at the airport. Yes yes yes! At last there is someone on the island who is paler than me. She has the colouring of an extra in a vampire movie. Despite Hilary's misgivings it was nearly 18 whole hours before we had our first argument. OK so that includes 14 hours while D. was in bed asleep. Teenagers, vampires and Cyprus cats never arise before Noon and never ever go out in the direct sunlight.
My quest for the perfect suntan continues. I decided that perhaps the factor 155+ sunblock I was using may be preventing me from reaching the bronzed look and a possible new career as a male model. I decided to experiment with factor 75+ and see if that improved things. After one day I was burned red raw. Strangely though the redness and burning was down my front and back and had completely missed my sides which were still grayish white. I looked like someone wearing an Ajax football shirt. My eldest daughter W. insists this is because when I lie down my stomach is that much closer to the sun. Ha ha. Anyway after that I went back to my normal sunblock and within a few days I was restored to my normal unhealthy 'Y-front grey' hue. We must appear a strange sight when out walking together. Hilary with her gypsy colouring, myself like a preserved cadaver and D. like one of the undead. That may explain the locals slamming their doors when we approach.
Those of a squeamish nature should move on to their next email as I am going to touch on a personal subject. Hairy ears. There is no good beating about the bush (pun intended) as this is something that has affected me for several years now. You start to notice these thingswhen the barber spends more time on your ears and eyebrows than he does on your head. In the last few weeks I have noticed another change. At first I thought it was my imagination. Things are getting worse. I put it down to the additional hours sunshine. At first this was just a theory but I believe it has been confirmed as I have observed the ears of the Cypriot men. It is quite astonishing how hairy a Cypriot ear can be. I believe there is a lucrative business opportunity here if I can find a way of transplanting the hairy skin from a Cypriot ear to a balding English head. I envisage planeloads of shiny pated tourists coming here and returning home with a full head of thick dark hair. I just have to find an entrepreneurial balding business man with airline connections. Anyone have Stelios' number? I checked on his website http://www.easy.com/stelios/gallery.html) and easyhair.com is the only thing he does not have already.
As we have been here over a month we are starting to get into the Cypriot 'system'. That terrible thing where you have to pay bills. We received our water rates bill. Over here everyone is metered so you pay for what you use. The bill itself was a handwritten form none of that computer generated rubbish for Cyprus and for a little over a month the bill was £80. This was something of a shock as we had been led to believe that everything over here was cheaper this being the promised land of milk and honey. Well yoghurt and honey anyway.We checked the figures as best we could and looked at the meter reading. It seems we had been charged for water before we moved in. A simple accounting error and that was it so we could go and get it corrected. This meant a visit to the village Mukhtar who is the local elected council person. The Mukhtar has an office located in one of the local bars (where else?) and is open for business after 15:00 each day. The office itself is a small room with a desk and a couple of chairs for people to sit and wait. There is no concept of privacy as everyone knows everyone else's business. At least they certainly do after a visit to the mukhtar.
There is also no concept of queuing. The English people arrive and sit in an orderly fashion whereas the Cypriots arrive and walk to the front of any queue there may be. I guess it is their country so fair enough. As the Mukhtar is an elected representative then he has no personal property and the locals are free to help themselves to his cigarettes, drinks etc. I have to admit we were a bit vague on that bit but it is something that the British could learn from. If the elected representatives everywhere had no personal property and the electorate are free to come and take whatever they fancied I am sure we would have a fairer and more democratic system. I think we could learn from this Greek tradition after all Greece is the cradle of democracy. "Excuse me Mr. B I will just take the 3 piece suite you are sitting on. You can tell Sherie later OK?"
When all the locals were done we spoke to the Mukhtar and explained the situation. We thought there was going to be a long process of changing the bill which would take for ever. Not a bit of it. A scribble here, a tap tap tap on his Casio calculator, another scribble there and it was all done. The bill was down to £28 for 2 months. Not a computer in sight and it all worked fine. Having spent 6 weeks trying to get BT to persuade their computer to issue a final bill I am now convinced that computers only slow things down.
Our only other dealing with the Mukhtar was to enquire where our mail was going. Silly us! Didn't we know the postman was on holiday for 6 days? Do not worry the post will start to arrive when he gets back or maybe a few days later. One of the few Greek expressions we have picked up is 'Sigah sigah'. 'Slowly slowly'. If the plumber says he will visit tomorrow then that is Cypriot timescale which could be tomorrow or could be next week. Don't worry it will happen .... eventually.
Enough for today.
posted by /s at 12:20 pm
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