Monday 15th April...

All around the village of Droushia (and many of the other villages and towns in Cyprus) the apertures in the walls have been filled with mosaics.  I have put a number of photographs on the blog of the ones which appear on the walls around the cemetary.  I found out that the mosaics come ready done on a sheet and are simply put into place and then grouted - simples!!  I also found out that Orexi Elena's husband knew about the company that manufactures them.  Apparently they can take a photograph and make a mosaic out of it.  We have a wall outside that we want to do something with so we were considering the possibility of a mural or a mosaic or something.  Bassam lent us the catalogue for the mosaics and we had a look through.  About the only one which John and I agreed on was one of the sun and the moon but we reckoned it would need to be pretty large to have an impact and pretty large probably equalled pretty expensive!  Bassam had suggested we tried doing something ourselves and we are thinking that maybe we will but that maybe it wont be a mosaic.  I shall have to ask Jeannette what sort of cost would be involved in getting sufficient tiles to create something like this.  She should know as she is just about to embark on a mammoth project herself. 

In art Sheila is busy working on her picture of a boat.  She is reproducing a photograph of a wooden boat which is currently out of the water in Latchi and which is called Rosemary.  It is a lovely old fashioned looking vessel which has interesting paintwork.  

It is quite a painstaking project as Sheila likes to remain quite faithful to the original rather than produce a painting which is just representative of the subject matter - she says this is not helped by the fact that she doesn't know what some of the bits of the boat are for so she can't take a guess as to where it should start and finish if the photograph doesn't make it clear!

Sheila, Klaus and friends went to Alkisti's for a meal yesterday and Sheila said that they had a really really good meal, in fact Klaus went as far as to say that he had the best souvla he has ever had in Cyprus so that it praise indeed.  John and I are keen to go and soon, the only trouble is that it is difficult to catch Alkisti in even though I have her phone number sometimes you just want to be able to go more spontaneously!

I have now finished my poinsettia picture at long last.  I had the smudgy background to finish which took much longer than I had anticipated and then I had to do some work to make the picture look less 'flat'.  I will now need to take this one and the lily one to Fitos for framing and, horror of horror, find a new subject for next week.  I sort of know what I am looking for but so far no joy but I will keep looking or I will go out and take a photograph myself!

I went down to Polis and picked John up from Badders and we went off to Paps together to do the week's shopping.  We have been watching a building going up in the centre of Polis for months - it is an attractive building which has been finished off beautifully and we have wondered what it was going to be - shops or apartments?  The mystery was solved today as we drove by to see a big fat sign go up on the outside which said BANK OF CYPRUS - we were gobsmacked.  We are assuming that the bank is moving from around the corner where it is currently located but with the current economic climate can you believe it?  Still the build started long before the current crisis.

When we got home we got the best opportunity we have had to take a photograph of one of the Greater Spotted Cuckoos as a small one was sitting on a piece of wood that was on top of the wood store.  John managed to look through one of the little windows and capture it.  I don't know whether this is a baby as it is considerably smaller than the ones that we have seen previously.

I nipped up the road to feed the cats.  I had received an emergency phonecall from Running Susan to ask if I could go and do their turn as their friends Jo and Jeff had been involved in a head-on car accident in Polis this morning which involved some German tourists who were on the wrong side of the road.  Poor Jeff has only just been discharged from hospital in Limassol.  From what I could tell he had been taken to Polis hospital and Jo had been taken to Paphos.  Hopefully neither of them are badly hurt.

John had decided to do tea tonight.  He was honing his barbeque skills but indoors!  He used the special griddle plate that Mum had bought him from Lidl and we had a mega-burger-big-mac type meal with some fantastic back bacon which was on offer in Paps, some quarter pounders (probably with horse) and cheese and it was lush!  

We then had a Britain's got Talent, The Voice and The Syndicate-fest as we wanted to watch something that would just wash over us rather than something that required any sort of concentration.

I have some questions though - what is the point of Danny Whateverhisnameis on The Voice?  Why can't he sit properly in his chair?  Why does he ask what the person looks like in the blind auditions when the whole point is that the auditions are BLIND! Weren't the shadow dancers from Hungary on BGT fabulous????? Am I the only one who doesn't want to see the pole/lap dancer again and finally what has Simon Cowell done to his face as it looks all puffy and stretched?

 

The weather deteriorated tonight.  The weather station had been showing rain and it was right.  We started with thunder and lightning, rolling mists and then torrential rain and horrendous hail.

The electric kept going on and off and something kept tripping the lights and it was in for the night.  Fortunately all John's flood defences work pretty well so we don't worry too much now when it rains hard.

The weather managed to keep me awake for quite some time - the sound of the hail hammering against the metal shutters sounded like someone was throwing ball bearings directly at them.  I wonder what state the garden will be in come the morning?