Epistle from Cyprus IV - 26th September 2006
The end of the previous epistle gave some of the more mundane details of Cyprus life such as bill paying. We are expecting our local rates/council tax bill shortly. Rumour has it that this in the order of £100. That is £100 per year not per month. If I lived in the next village at the top of the hill then for my £100 council tax I would receive £200 winter heating allowance per year because the village is above 600 metres altitude. Unfortunately we did not know about that when we were choosing a house. Even so £100 to have your bins emptied twice a week (Monday and Thursday) is not bad. Emptying the bins twice a week is essential because the stench is overpowering when left for a full week.
Jean-Baptiste Grenouille would love Cyprus. For those not familiar with the name he is the main character in Patrick Suskind's novel 'Perfume' and is a man with a superhuman sense of smell.The variety of smells in Cyprus is astounding. From the truly gut-wrenching stench of the bins behind the restaurants in the tourist areas to the heavenly delights in the medicinal herb gardens in the monasteries high in the mountains. Fortunately the majority are pleasant. When you walk through the village in the early evening there are the smells of the barbeques that the Cypriots love and the herbs like rosemary, basil and thyme that seem to grow wild on every patch of waste ground. On Thursday evenings there is the smell of 'kleftiko' around the large supermarkets. Kleftiko is lamb that is oven baked in a traditional half-round oven. Then we are able to pick rosemary for cooking our roast while walking back with the Sunday papers.
Talking of smells there was a bit of a stink at Otto's bar recently. (Sorry could not resist it.) His neighbour a lady who runs the coffee bar opposite complained about the smells coming from Ottos drainage system. You have to remember that most of the village drainage system is one step from a plastic bucket. Otto at least has a flushing toilet and tap. OK so the toilet runs into a septic tank in his back yard and the tap runs straight into the ground but his is quite high-tech. The tap drainage was thought to be the culprit because it was running directly onto the ground that was used as the urinal before the inside toilet was installed. I think his neighbour may have had a bit of case.
Cometh the hour cometh the man and up steps Jimmy to the rescue. Jimmy you will remember is Otto's resident scouser and Jimmy has warfarin bruised fingers in many pies. He stays with Stefan a builder so they volunteer to fix the problem. They duly arrive on Sunday morning Jimmy wearing his preferred headgear of black baseball cap and start to dig for the drainage system which no one can remember exactly where it is. At least Stefan digs and Jimmy supervises. After a short while he digs up a very large black spider. Now Stefan is not too keen on spiders but pushes the spider aside and he soldiers on. Soon afterwards the rest of the spider's family appears and Stefan is bit more jumpy. Jimmy chooses this moment to knock his own cap from his head and the cap falls and hits Stefan on the leg.
Stefan beat that cap to death three times over before he realised what it was.
In addition to these occasional notes I have been using a webcam to keep in contact with people at home. I think I should proffer the benefit of my experience of webcam use. The golden rule for using a webcam is that no matter how hot it may be in Cyprus when using a webcam you must always wear a t-shirt. People watching you will *always* assume that because you do not have a shirt you also do not have trousers.
I have mentioned that there are two coffee bars on the main street of Tremithousa, Otto's the one we frequent and the other selling only coffee, water, soft drinks and postage stamps which is run by the little old lady opposite. This lady does not speak a word of English and combined with our lack of Greek leads to very short conversations each morning when we fetch our newspaper and essentials. She is always pleasant and smiles to everyone in the village and is one of the local matriarchs treated with great respect. One local arrived on his motorized bicycle. To call to call it a motorcycle would be to offend others of the type. He duly stayed ordered his water and Cypriot metreo, or medium sweet coffee which to anyone else is sugar with a dash of coffee and slowly drank it and talked over the next 45 minutes. A single coffee the size of a thimble will take a minimum of 45 minutes. When he was done he walked to his cycle lifted the seat and removed his motorcycle helmet which he keeps there and removed a single lemon. You have to remember that Cypriots will never use a motorcycle helmet if they can avoid it and instead it decorates their elbows or is kept warm and safe under the seat lest it be damaged. Anyway he then took the single lemon with two hands and presented it to the lady in the coffee shop with such reverence and care it could have been mistaken for a Faberge egg. She accepted it with equal dignity. It is wonderful how such small gifts can appear so great.
Finally today I wanted to say a word about cars. We have settled our transport problem and far exceeded our budget with a old Nissan March 1000cc. After some initial teething problems it has performed OK but it has set me looking around at the locals and the ex-pats. It is quite simple really. The ex-pat drives a Honda. It has to be a Honda and best of all the CR-V. The Cyprus Retirement Vehicle as they are know locally. A 4 wheel drive CR-V is absolutely essential for negotiating the tough terrain of the recently tarmac ked car park at the UKCA Club (UK Citizens Association) after a heavy Sunday lunch.
The Cypriots are equally demanding. They want a truck. A Toyota HiLux or Mitsubishi L200. A big one. A huge 'dont-mess-me-with-me' one. Doesn't matter how old or what condition. In fact the older and worse the condition the better it is to intimidate the ex-pats in those head on situations. The Cypriots are best I have seen at engineering those head on situations. Yes the Italians, French and Spanish are mere amateurs when it comes the head on confrontation. The Cypriot is king of the brown flair, eyeball to eyeball car showdown.
The standard of Cypriot driving is a matter of great concern to the ex-pat community. So much so that it is the source of an unending thread of letters to the Cypriot English language newspaper. The Cypriots are totally unconcerned so much so that they have developed their own language form that they use while driving. It is an abbreviated form of Morse code performed with the car horn. An example would be as follows.
A Cypriot truck (T) overtakes a Cypriot construction digger (CD) on a pedestrian crossing outside a school at the start of the school day.
CD - "Beep beep"
T - "Beep beep"
CD - "Beep"
Translated into former empire ex-pat speak it would go as follows.
CD - "I say old chap that is an extremely dangerous maneuver there are children about."
T - "Sorry about that I hardly noticed them while I was chatting on my mobile phone. I will get them next time."
CD - "No problem. It could happen to anyone. I wish the little blighters would stand still. I nearly missed one myself."
If it was translated into the more recent ex-pat speak there would be too many expletives for me to repeat.
One of the recurring themes in these notes is that of the Greek Orthodox church and I have to relate a subject which nearly knocked my eye out when I saw it in the main English language newspaper. Greece being the cradle of democracy the Greek Orthodox church is more democratic than most. At the moment there is an election being held for the position of Archbishop and there are bishop candidates from the different regions of the island. This election contest has turned bitter and the candidates have said some harsh words about each other. Something of a local storm in a teacup one would say. However the local Cyprus Mail ran a front page leader headline which summed it up: "BISHOP BASHING".
Definitively enough for today.
Jean-Baptiste Grenouille would love Cyprus. For those not familiar with the name he is the main character in Patrick Suskind's novel 'Perfume' and is a man with a superhuman sense of smell.The variety of smells in Cyprus is astounding. From the truly gut-wrenching stench of the bins behind the restaurants in the tourist areas to the heavenly delights in the medicinal herb gardens in the monasteries high in the mountains. Fortunately the majority are pleasant. When you walk through the village in the early evening there are the smells of the barbeques that the Cypriots love and the herbs like rosemary, basil and thyme that seem to grow wild on every patch of waste ground. On Thursday evenings there is the smell of 'kleftiko' around the large supermarkets. Kleftiko is lamb that is oven baked in a traditional half-round oven. Then we are able to pick rosemary for cooking our roast while walking back with the Sunday papers.
Talking of smells there was a bit of a stink at Otto's bar recently. (Sorry could not resist it.) His neighbour a lady who runs the coffee bar opposite complained about the smells coming from Ottos drainage system. You have to remember that most of the village drainage system is one step from a plastic bucket. Otto at least has a flushing toilet and tap. OK so the toilet runs into a septic tank in his back yard and the tap runs straight into the ground but his is quite high-tech. The tap drainage was thought to be the culprit because it was running directly onto the ground that was used as the urinal before the inside toilet was installed. I think his neighbour may have had a bit of case.
Cometh the hour cometh the man and up steps Jimmy to the rescue. Jimmy you will remember is Otto's resident scouser and Jimmy has warfarin bruised fingers in many pies. He stays with Stefan a builder so they volunteer to fix the problem. They duly arrive on Sunday morning Jimmy wearing his preferred headgear of black baseball cap and start to dig for the drainage system which no one can remember exactly where it is. At least Stefan digs and Jimmy supervises. After a short while he digs up a very large black spider. Now Stefan is not too keen on spiders but pushes the spider aside and he soldiers on. Soon afterwards the rest of the spider's family appears and Stefan is bit more jumpy. Jimmy chooses this moment to knock his own cap from his head and the cap falls and hits Stefan on the leg.
Stefan beat that cap to death three times over before he realised what it was.
In addition to these occasional notes I have been using a webcam to keep in contact with people at home. I think I should proffer the benefit of my experience of webcam use. The golden rule for using a webcam is that no matter how hot it may be in Cyprus when using a webcam you must always wear a t-shirt. People watching you will *always* assume that because you do not have a shirt you also do not have trousers.
I have mentioned that there are two coffee bars on the main street of Tremithousa, Otto's the one we frequent and the other selling only coffee, water, soft drinks and postage stamps which is run by the little old lady opposite. This lady does not speak a word of English and combined with our lack of Greek leads to very short conversations each morning when we fetch our newspaper and essentials. She is always pleasant and smiles to everyone in the village and is one of the local matriarchs treated with great respect. One local arrived on his motorized bicycle. To call to call it a motorcycle would be to offend others of the type. He duly stayed ordered his water and Cypriot metreo, or medium sweet coffee which to anyone else is sugar with a dash of coffee and slowly drank it and talked over the next 45 minutes. A single coffee the size of a thimble will take a minimum of 45 minutes. When he was done he walked to his cycle lifted the seat and removed his motorcycle helmet which he keeps there and removed a single lemon. You have to remember that Cypriots will never use a motorcycle helmet if they can avoid it and instead it decorates their elbows or is kept warm and safe under the seat lest it be damaged. Anyway he then took the single lemon with two hands and presented it to the lady in the coffee shop with such reverence and care it could have been mistaken for a Faberge egg. She accepted it with equal dignity. It is wonderful how such small gifts can appear so great.
Finally today I wanted to say a word about cars. We have settled our transport problem and far exceeded our budget with a old Nissan March 1000cc. After some initial teething problems it has performed OK but it has set me looking around at the locals and the ex-pats. It is quite simple really. The ex-pat drives a Honda. It has to be a Honda and best of all the CR-V. The Cyprus Retirement Vehicle as they are know locally. A 4 wheel drive CR-V is absolutely essential for negotiating the tough terrain of the recently tarmac ked car park at the UKCA Club (UK Citizens Association) after a heavy Sunday lunch.
The Cypriots are equally demanding. They want a truck. A Toyota HiLux or Mitsubishi L200. A big one. A huge 'dont-mess-me-with-me' one. Doesn't matter how old or what condition. In fact the older and worse the condition the better it is to intimidate the ex-pats in those head on situations. The Cypriots are best I have seen at engineering those head on situations. Yes the Italians, French and Spanish are mere amateurs when it comes the head on confrontation. The Cypriot is king of the brown flair, eyeball to eyeball car showdown.
The standard of Cypriot driving is a matter of great concern to the ex-pat community. So much so that it is the source of an unending thread of letters to the Cypriot English language newspaper. The Cypriots are totally unconcerned so much so that they have developed their own language form that they use while driving. It is an abbreviated form of Morse code performed with the car horn. An example would be as follows.
A Cypriot truck (T) overtakes a Cypriot construction digger (CD) on a pedestrian crossing outside a school at the start of the school day.
CD - "Beep beep"
T - "Beep beep"
CD - "Beep"
Translated into former empire ex-pat speak it would go as follows.
CD - "I say old chap that is an extremely dangerous maneuver there are children about."
T - "Sorry about that I hardly noticed them while I was chatting on my mobile phone. I will get them next time."
CD - "No problem. It could happen to anyone. I wish the little blighters would stand still. I nearly missed one myself."
If it was translated into the more recent ex-pat speak there would be too many expletives for me to repeat.
One of the recurring themes in these notes is that of the Greek Orthodox church and I have to relate a subject which nearly knocked my eye out when I saw it in the main English language newspaper. Greece being the cradle of democracy the Greek Orthodox church is more democratic than most. At the moment there is an election being held for the position of Archbishop and there are bishop candidates from the different regions of the island. This election contest has turned bitter and the candidates have said some harsh words about each other. Something of a local storm in a teacup one would say. However the local Cyprus Mail ran a front page leader headline which summed it up: "BISHOP BASHING".
Definitively enough for today.
posted by /s at 12:26 pm
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