Sunday - and still it burns

Today was dominated by fire - the sight, the sound, and the smell.  This corner of the island has been ravaged by fires with scenes reminiscent of Australia.   In Theletra, a small village just across the valley from us residents were evacuated and this morning I can still hear the drone of the water helicopters going backwards and forwards.  The situation has not been helped by strong winds which kept fanning the flames.

Hopefully they will get this under control soon and that no more will break out today because this is now day three for some of the blazes.  There will be huge swathes of countryside that will bear the scars for months to come.  If these were started on purpose or through negligence it is madness.  Anyway a big THANK YOU to those who have been working round the clock to deal with the fires.

On a lighter note today being Sunday I had both sets of parents here for a meal - after our rather late night and full menu with Paul, Elaine and Hadeel the last thing we could think of as we woke this morning was the barbeque we had intended to do so it was thinking caps on as to what we could do with the pork neck we had bought for souvla.  A quick look in on the internet and I found an easy recipe for sticky Asian pork neck which was supposed to be made with a joint but as I only had chunks would have to do.  You can find the recipe here: Sticky Asian Pork Neck and all I can say is that there was not a morsel left even though we had honey and mustard chicken and lamb kleftiko to go with it!  Anyway we started the morning slowly, with a bit of a tidy - visitors means that my mediocre house-keeping skills have now been reduced to non-existent!  Yesterday when we were out John's Mum bought me a very pretty bed-spread which I had been looking at.  It is very lightweight quilted Indian cotton in muted shades with a bit of gold running through it and unusually for throws is massive and fully covers our king sized bed.  It will be lovely in the Autumn as the evenings get cooler but you don't yet need a duvet.  I put it on the bed not because we needed it, but because I thought she might like to see it.  Both Janet and Mum have now decided they want one - hope there are some left!

After dinner Dad was very keen to sit down and watch the last day of the World Athletics coming from Beijing.  We were all assembled for the final event of the competition, the men's 4x400 metre relay, and I had just taken my treacle tart out of the oven (again another triumph - recipe here: Easy Treacle Tart) when the power went off, the outage caused by the fire in Theletra.  Miffed Dad decided to have a snooze - we kicked ourselves because, had we been a little more on the ball, we could have got the Jenny into action sooner and probably caught the final few seconds of the race - as it was it was only until the Swansea Man Utd game was about to air that John suddenly thought about it and sprung into action - we have had the generator quite a while and as yet haven't needed it use it so it was kind of forgotten languishing in the shed.  John soon had it set up and operational providing power to one half of the house so that fridges and freezers were working and TV and Internet on - fabulous - even more fabulous that Manchester United were cuffed 2.0 by Swansea!!  How glad are we that we finally got round to getting a generator now?

Cribbage championships continued at ours this afternoon - with a change in the women's team - we are going to have to make a 'badge for Hadge' with CD on it as we have worked out that he is the Common Denominator as he is the only person - irrespective of partner who remains unbeaten - John thinks it should say SG as in Spawny Git - apparently when you lose there is no skill to cribbage but when you win it is all about skill and all-round knowledge of the game!

Parents back safely to their respective homes we settled to a quiet evening and I did a little watering in the garden as the pots were looking dry.  I can now see why the vine we grow for decoration rather than grapes is struggling - it has been ravaged by caterpillars of the Oleander Moth - I found three of the buggers chomping their way through the leaves.  I knew they had to be billy-bigguns by the size of their poo on the decking.  This one is the size of my index finger.  Ours are clearly very cosmopolitan caterpillars as they have shunned the common old oleander bush growing next to the vine in favour of a different diet!

I will leave you with a very hazy photograph of the Troodos mountains - normally sharp and clear the smoke from Theletra is hanging in the air for miles - I don't know if it is the reflection of the setting sun or the flames you can see in the golf ball on the top of the ridge.

Night Night