Vets, Driving Licences and Frank Lampard...

This morning we had to take Minnie Mou down to the vets for the second part of her vaccination and the first part of her leukaemia jab.  She was a little darling in the car settling down in the basket rather than being vocal and desperately trying to get out of the cage like she was the last time.  She took the jabs and, even when Dr Inna shoved cotton buds right down her ear canals, she never murmured (unlike when I try and clean the mites out of her ears).  We thought she was about 4 months old but Dr Inna believes she is younger than that - its difficult to know for sure so it might be that Chivers intense interest in her is a parenting thing (let's hope!!).

As we were down in Paphos we decided we would try and get our driving licences transferred.  Both John's and my licence run out in January.  The Cyprus licence forms are only available in Greek so Dad suggested we go to one of the Fixit people to get them to fill in the forms and take them to the centre for us.  We went to find out how much it was going to cost and for the licence itself it is €60 and for the fixit service another €30!!!  I looked on tintyweb to find that although the form is only available in Greek they do provide a translated version so I decided I would fill the forms in myself and to be honest it wasn't really rocket science once I had the translated version to follow.  As with all official things there were a million and one bits of paper to photocopy to accompany the form plus a couple of photographs required (the tintyweb says one photograph but you need two).

We managed to find the Transport Centre and left Minnie Mou snuggled up in her basket and duly queued at the front desk along with a million others and several Fixit people with hundreds of applications in their hands. I said to John that I thought it looked like most were renewing their car tax so he managed to find someone who spoke English and he directed us down the corridor to room 8 where we had to ask for Mr Tassos.  This is a picture of room 8 which appeared to be next to the MOT testing centre and did have several guys in it when we arrived.  Mr Tassos is located in a small room behind where I was sitting.  We managed to arrive on a day when the main computer in Nicosia had gone down so no certificates could be issued and the men from room 8 had disappeared off to get coffees and newspapers to fill in the time.

Mr Tassos came out to explain (with a huge smile on his face) that it was not our day!!!  Still it wasn't his fault and he had no control over when or if the computer system was going to come back up.  I took the opportunity to ask him to check over the paperwork which he did - he then got John and I to read two random number plates which were out in the yard, asked us if we could make fists out of our hands which we did and then declared we were fit and healthy so if we returned when the computer system was back up it would be a mere formality and take him only 10 minutes to print out the licences.  We agreed to return on Thursday as we would be going down to play pickle-ball anyway.

So why the reference to Frank Lampard???  Well, John thought he recognised one of the guys in Room 8 and was sure that he was related to Marinos Tsaggaras from whom we bought our bike.  His name was Alex and when he returned from the tea and stickies run John asked him if he was indeed related to Marinos and he said that yes he was a third cousin - when we said that we thought he looked like him he puffed out his chest and said that many people had commented on how he had a greater resemblance to Frank Lampard and proceeded to show me photographs on his computer!  So is this Alex or Frank???

I drove home as John felt Minnie Mou had been cooped up too long and so he sat with her in the back of the car.  She seems non the worse for her trip to the vets just a bit quieter and sleepier than usual.  Chivers was beside himself when she came back and gave her a right old clean to welcome her back.

Both cats wanted to go outside and Minnie did a brief spell of sunbathing sat in the garden.  After a grey and cloudy start the sun had broken through and was very pleasant.  John was keeping an eye on Chivers as he did a spot of stalking over the fence and it was only a matter of time before Minnie went and joined him - she struggles a bit to get back into the garden but they go and they come back so it is less of a worry today than it was yesterday!

John had watched Chivers stalking some finches and suggested I try and capture them on camera using the big lens.  Well you can bet your bottom dollar that the birds must have known because I never saw a single one.  

Whilst waiting to see if the finches would put in an appearance I was stood next to some late flowering geraniums so I tried to capture one of the many bees hovering around.  

On the subject of geraniums those outside the bedroom door purchased for our anniversary are still flowering!