Saturday 13 January 2018

A million miles apart...


Welcome to January in Droushia, cold wet and windy and with a miserable rolling mist coming up the valley and wrapping itself around the estate.  We are living in a soup, at times hardly able to see our hands in front of our faces and then almost as soon as this soggy grey jumper arrives it is gone and replaced by a little sunshine but sadly this does not last long.  The wind keeps the clouds moving but there appears to be two weather fronts meeting right over the top of Droushia - like the gangs in West Side Story the Jets and the Sharks fight it out above our heads.


We set off for Emba right in the thick of the worst of it - you could be forgiven for thinking that you are in some English country lane shaking off November fog.  We cannot see anything much, certainly not the mountains nor the coastline down below - it is slightly depressing!


As we travel down to the Kritou Terra crossroads you should be able to see a partially built house almost in the centre of this photograph with the mountains in all their glory behind - yeah right - no chance this morning!  The rain water is pouring off of the fields and down the road like a river - right into the path of the partially built house which has been untouched for the seven years that we have been living here.  I wonder if having got so far the builders realised that the house was located at the foot of the path taken by any rainwater coming down the hill.  It is showing terrible signs of damp and although on a couple of occasions last summer we saw a car there nothing has been done to protect it or finish it.


We are about 30 kilometers away from Paphos but on a day like today it might as well be a million when it comes to the weather.  As we traveled down the Mesoghi Avenue the skies were blue with fluffy clouds and the sun was shining on the sea in front of us.  We saw people in T-shirts and shorts - nutters!

There were only four of us for pickleball when we eventually managed to get on the court.  There was a group of teenagers practicing their traditional dancing who seemed less than happy to have to vacate at 1.00pm - I reckon they chose the longest dance in history to perform at two minutes to one so that they were still doing it when we should have been playing and afterwards boy were they noisy sitting in the kitchen area.  We are so used to the place being empty that the conversation was really distracting.  They eventually moved on and normal service was resumed.

We called in to see Mum and Dad.  Mum's eye is slowly improving and she was able to drive to the hairdressers this morning but she is still having to sleep on the sofa to avoid disturbing the eye from which the cataract was removed.  I guess each operation is different and each patient recovers differently.  Dad had got new glasses - actually they looked really nice and suited him.

I delivered the boxed set of Upstairs Downstairs ready for them to start watching when they have finished House of Elliott - they like to have a good series and at least with a DVD all they have to do is put it in and play it rather than mess about with trying to find a stable stream to watch.

We are down with them for lunch on Sunday rather than an evening meal - I am quite pleased because at least it means if the weather is bad we are not driving back up into the hills in the dark.

It was pretty warm by the time we left Emba although the wind was gusty - great drying weather for washing!  We said our goodbyes and quickly called into Paps for some potatoes to go with our tea.  We thought we were going to be unlucky as the potatoes had all gone but they were just getting some fresh out of the oven.

Our big Friday night in was one made up of good food, good wine, a log fire and candlelight - bliss!

We ate the remains of the Italian Lemon Casserole from Christmas Eve with the potatoes from paps and some garden peas and then John had some of the honey and nut cake he had picked up.

I struggled to keep my eyes open sitting next to the fire - I fell asleep during the film I had picked but managed to stay awake long enough to watch the Christmas Edition of Michael McIntyre which was just about all I could manage - I am such a lightweight at the moment - I blame the fire - the house is so toasty warm.  We have a lie in scheduled for tomorrow as it is Saturday and it is Epiphany which is a bank holiday here in Cyprus.




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