A new week begins...

I love Mondays and my morning of Art with Sheila followed by my lunch with her and Klaus and I love it even more when I am enjoying the picture I am creating.  I continue to work on my picture of the Australian beach huts and although it doesn't look like there is much left to do the blending and shading of the structures takes forever!  I have my next picture sorted which will be for Kim and is of a flower and then I might get round to tackling something a bit different which will be a bit of a challenge for me.

We had a quiet afternoon - it really is quite hot here at the moment and we are about to embark on a few weeks of frenetic fun with friends and family and I know John is mega-excited and has morphed into Yiannis the Holiday Tour Guide as he jots down all the things he thinks should be covered whilst people are here.  Understandably he wants to spend as much time with them as possible and we still have our regular lives to lead with Mum and our regular friends that we want to spend our time with - we could do with a few more hours in the day and a few more days in the week.

In a few days the Bobster will be celebrating a milestone birthday and John and I want to find him something special to celebrate that fact.  After a lot of thought and discussion we have decided upon something and now hope and pray that the delivery service will not let us down but at least we agreed on a gift which was a miracle in itself!

This evening the village was holding its first ever Halloumi Festival.  All the villages in the area hold a festival at this time, some celebrating wine others rezi or trachana or something traditional.  Over the last few years for one reason or another we have not always had one held here and I know that there has been some debate about this new 'halloumi' festival not least because we have heard that not all the producers in the village had been invited which was deemed to be 'political'.  We really don't want to get involved in village politics so treat everyone the same and decided to attend because all too often we hear complaints that nothing goes on in the village and then when there is something no-one attends.  We had arranged to meet Di and Rob outside Luscious Linda's and they were coming with their neighbour Norman and Judi from down the end of their road.  As we walked down to our meeting place the sun was going down like a ball of fire but there was the unmistakable feel of condensation in the air - we have yet to attend a function at the School which didn't turn out to be very damp!

To be honest we hadn't expected much of the festival and thought we would pitch up have a wander and then be finished within about an hour.  We arrived on time as Brits tend to do but on-time in Cyprus means early to the locals so they were still setting things up in the school when we arrived.  To be fair there was no entrance fee so we had nothing to lose by going in and we were gobsmacked to see they were setting up tables and chairs to seat the entire population of a small town.  We wondered where the hell they expected all the people to come from.

We sat ourselves down on the end of a row - nearest the bar and decided we would have a drink and then we could go home.  They adopted a ticket system so you went and purchased tickets for the value of your food (we didn't eat) and the drink you wanted - we were a bit worried at the beginning when we could only see a choice of whisky, zivania or beer!

As it happened we need not have worried as our mate Soteris was manning the bar and produced bottles of our favourite red Agios Onoufrios at a very reasonable price of €8 a bottle!!  The girlies were sorted!!

After that we got settled and were joined by others we knew from the village like Sheila and Klaus and Kelly and her family and then there was a stream of locals who came in and greeted us.  We even got presented with an invitation to the wedding of Tassos the taxi-man's daughter which is next month in Limassol.

Before we knew it the evening was racing away - it was traditionally damp and cool but we were having a great time and we had been joined by Argy and Lakis who had found us and added to our mountain of loukamades (sticky honey balls) which was on our table.  Then we were found by Steve and Mary from Australia - his parents have the funny little traditional house up the road and Steve's Dad insists on sitting in the outside dunny with the door open to take advantage of the fabulous view whilst doing his business!!!  They want to meet up before they go back to Australia - they both seem really nice and unbelievably have three children all shoehorned into that little house!

The entertainment was provided by Michalis Hadjimichael who is apparently quite famous for those in the know - it was traditional but reasonably melodic and there were traditional dancers as well.

We were absolutely amazed by the sheer volume of people who pitched up - maybe because it was free or maybe it was a case of 'build it and they will come' who knows but it clearly was a success and I am pleased for Marianna who was obviously worried it.

We enjoyed ourselves on our big night out in Droushia!