Wednesday

Just check you have read yesterday's post - I was late publishing it SORRY

With the temperature at the moment and the fact that we have visitors it feels much more like summer than autumn just now!  Today was Ladies Lunch and Aunty Joyce was joining Mum and I and the September 16th Club of Dad, John and Uncle David (all born on the same day but different years) were going down to Latchi as Fitos was still out of service.

Charlie is now returning to be a home-bird and stays around the house nearly all day.  He finds some very strange places and positions to sleep and likes to have his head up.  Today he had it poked through the back of the dining room chair with his chin on the rung - it didn't look overly comfortable to me but he was sound asleep so guess he must have been comfy!

Sadly I had a call this morning that Sheila was feeling unwell and too unwell to come to the lunch which she had organised at Finikas in the village.  It was billed to be chicken chips and salad with a few extras but clearly Philippos and Marina had missed the brief as we ended up with just about a full on Meze!

There were 13 of us who eventually assembled.  So good to see Marianna pay a flying visit in her lunch hour to join us and to see Kelly who now works at the Anassa so doesn't have so much free time to come however as the Anassa closes for the winter she will be able to have a nice long time over Christmas to do the things she wants to do - like come to the craft days that we have which are organised by the Cyprus Handicraft Association.  The first year Sheila, Kelly and I did the gourd carving and then last year Diana, Janice, Kelly and I did the basket weaving and this year we have opted for the mosaic although we really wanted the rug making and could have done it but we were warned that the teacher spoke no English and that it would be for three whole days but no-one knew when.  Kelly said she would happily translate as she has done before so we are going to reapply next year.

I haven't eaten in Finikas during the day outside in the courtyard for some time - I never realised just how many cats Marina and Philippos feed and there were three super cute kittens there today, two ginger and white and one white and tortoiseshell.  We were spied on from all angles whilst we were eating.  Nice to see that our leftovers were given to the cats who devoured it with relish.  Can't blame them the food was excellent as always - the 'green eggs' (courgette and scrambled egg mix) there is the best I have tasted and the souvla was caramelized on the outside and soft and moist on the inside which apparently wasn't to everyone's taste but for €10 who could complain at being served bread, salad, dips, halloumi, green eggs, ravioli, fabulously freshly cooked hand-cut chips, pork souvla and chicken souvla then fresh sweet melon?

The 16/09 club ventured down to Yialos in Latchi and had a good meal too, Uncle David was very impressed not having been there before - again what's not to like?  good food reasonably priced served at a very nice taverna which is in toe dipping distance from the sea?

The afternoon was spectacular and when we had said goodbye to the Emba contingency we decided to see out the remainder of the day up on the roof terrace.

It is this time of the year that this outside space comes into its own because it can be too hot up there in the Summer even with a brolly but now that the sun is lower it is lovely up there.

Boris had beaten us too it and had made himself comfy in one of the chairs.  Soon we will have to bring all the cushions in to protect them from the condensation which will start to form in earnest now at night.

It was an opportunity for us to use the coffee tray that we were given for our anniversary - it was its first outing and we are pleased to report that it holds a bottle of our favourite wine and a couple of glasses very comfortably indeed!!!

We spent a lovely couple of hours sitting up there in the last of the sunshine admiring the view and reminding ourselves how lucky we are to be able to be doing exactly that - as we kept saying to one another there are worse places to be even though we only have small pensions to live on and even though we have no idea who we are going to be affected by Brexit and even though there is an irritating dog that barks incessantly somewhere down below us and even though the local youths like to do super noisy wheelies around the layby just in front of us!!

I will finish with a photograph of what I think is one of the beautiful song-birds that perilously passes through Cyprus not once but twice during its migration.  These were the subject of a BBC News report last night because sadly they are illegally trapped or shot here.

We watched this one enjoying the same setting sun as we were and we wished it a safe journey and hope that it gets back to wherever it is headed without encountering gunshot or a net or worse a sticky pole that entraps it.

We settled down for some trash TV and marveled at the fact that it was still only 8.30pm.  Up early tomorrow for gym having changed the day from Friday and not having been yesterday.