Thursday

I am rather excited that my Christmas present of a Hyacinth bulb in its own little vase is showing signs of life.  There is a ring of roots appearing at the base and a little green pokey outey bit on the top.  I love these flowers and am excited to see what colour I am going to get.  They have such a powerful smell they are a bit like marmite - you either love them or hate them but to me they are synonymous with Spring - I love them, Mum hates them!

I can remember that if you wanted to ensure you had one of these beauties flowering at Christmas you had to nurture it in an airing cupboard to bring it on in advance of its normal flowering period.

I shall keep you posted on Hyacinth's progress which may well depend upon whether or not said vase remains undisturbed by the cats when they have their mad five minutes after being fed, I put it down to 'E' numbers in the processed catfood - once fed Chivers goes completely doolally-tap and kicks the sh*t out of all the rugs in the conservatory as he pursues the others in and out of the bedrooms and in and around the curtains - it is carnage until they settle down!!!

The weather is decidedly wintry up here - the weather forecast for the next few days is stormy and they are right.  Today as we left to go down to Polis you could see storms sitting in the valleys and the Mountains over towards Lysos were obscured by heavy grey and threatening clouds.  We wanted to go down and get our driving licences sorted and had our passports and all the other paperwork in hand today.

As we traveled down to town we are surprised by how much building is going on at the edge of the village with two or three large houses springing up doubtless in a few months' time we will forget that they are new - one on the left-hand-side as you go towards Polis has an fabulous stone wall being built all around the plot and up the driveways to it and the neighbouring property - there is some money being spend on that one.

We had all the requisite paperwork today for our applications to be completed.  John's existing paper licence is about to fall to pieces and we have heard that if you have the plastic photo ID ones there are no issues when hiring a vehicle and both John and I will be returning to the UK this year and hiring a car and we don't want anything delaying that.

In Cyprus they have what we call Citizen's Advice Centres - there is one in Polis and in these offices they carry out a lot of official paperwork in a one-stop shop.  The staff are fabulous, so helpful and friendly and with a terrific command of several languages.  

Today we were dealt with by Despo from Argaka who was brilliant.  We had our photographs taken, forms filled in, temporary licences issued to cover us until the new ones arrive, full explanation to the procedure and then a nice chat about living in Droushia.  

These offices are fantastic, I doubt whether if you were a foreigner in the UK you could get such comprehensive help by such pleasant people because they never know what questions are going to be thrown at them and they deal with them all with a smile.

We had to call in to Polis Gardens to collect and pay for some DVDs which I had found for Mum and Dad to watch - they love a period drama and are currently coming to the end of The House of Elliott which they love so the complete series of Upstairs Downstairs should keep them out of mischief for a few weeks before I need to find something else!

Back home the weather was so changeable that we didn't feel like doing anything outside.  I am trying to be a bit more organised and less cluttered so am going through drawers and cupboards and trying to get rid of stuff that we really don't need or use.

I have taken down the Christmas Cards, and made a list of the senders for next year and Mum's charity shop will take the old ones and recycle them but not before I have taken anything I need.  I plan to make a few cards each month so that it isn't so rushed just before Christmas - we don't send many making a donation to charity instead but we received well over 30.

We had a quiet evening in watching a couple of films - T2 Trainspotting and something called Filth - both of a similar genre about life and drugs and complications!   I quite enjoyed them both even if IMDB said they were guaranteed to offend!