Day 9...

A quick post tonight because Mum and Dad are having the neighbours round for drinkies and we have to be up early tomorrow to be at the house for 9.00 as the kitchen doors are being fitted so there wont be time to say much later.

Anybody know what these fruit are???  Well they are Mespila's (a type of Medlar) which Mum picked off her tree yesterday - they are like small sweet pears.  These are just one of the many different kinds of fruits and vegetables that we are going to have to get used to as we embrace the Mediterranean diet.

Today we said goodbye to the trusty Vitara which has done us and many visitors proud for a good number of years and was given to us as a present by Mum and Dad to see us through until we managed to find a car of our own.  As you know we found a CRV last week and were given a trade-in offer we couldnt refuse, particularly as one window gets stuck, the seatbelts at the back are on upside down and the slow running is anything but!!  We had to pick the CRV up this morning.  It was chaos in the car show rooms.  Mum and Dad were seated below the 'No Smoking' sign next to the salesman who constantly had a fag on!!!  We are not entirely sure where they took the CRV for its MOT as we subsequently found not one decent wiper blade on the car at all!  Still they were good enough to arrange to have new ones fitted as soon as we pointed this out.  As I look at the pictures above I wonder if Liam Gallagher realises that John has made off with his best hat - I have a feeling he will have to have it surgically removed.

We managed a little bit of admin as we went to the Tax office to try and register to pay our income tax here in Cyprus as it is much more favourable.  Lots more forms for us to fill in once we have registered as 'aliens'.  A quick trip to the supermarket and coffees all round before John and I dropped Mum and Dad home and took the CRV for a spin up to Droushia.  We spent the next hour or so in our local Co-Op bank opening up a savings account so that we can pay our bills there.  It is incredible to think that such a small village has a fully manned bank with Bank Manager which is open five days a week - albeit in the mornings only - and has a really nice woman called Mira at the counter who speaks excellent English and is, apparently, our neighbour as she lives at the back of the school which is near our house.  We cant get over how incredibly helpful and friendly people have been particularly as we struggle so badly with the language.

At the house we had time to tidy the kitchen ready for the kitchen fitters tomorrow and also managed to get a coat of paint on the bathroom walls.  It will be a day of painting for Mum and I tomorrow in the bedroom.

We packed up so that we could get back in time to get the windscreen wipers changed - the guy might not have been the most talkative in the world but he did the job and also put the engine onto a computer to check it out and bunged in some Redex type stuff into the bargain.

Now getting ready for Mum's neighbours to arrive...