Wet wet wet...

I just wanted to show you the little rose that is in a shot glass on the book shelf - John picked it as a bud on Christmas Day and wore it in his jacket lapel along with a small helicopter pin.  The rose was in memory of his step-father, Hadge and the pin in memory of my father.

The little rosebud was put in a shot glass next to the photographs Hadge and Dad and has opened and bloomed through out the whole of the festive season.  The plant from which this was taken has weathered the ravages of our wet winter and has been flowering throughout as it has ever since we bought it.

For two pins I would have stayed at home today but we were supposed to be getting the wiring job at Mum's completed and we needed to relay the lines for the pickleball court.  To say it was grim was a complete understatement.  The photograph above taken hastily out of the car is of Banana Bay just before the SeaYou beach bar and was taken in colour unbelievably!

The sea was rough and the waves were and coming up and over the road.  I pity the poor tourists who have been sold Cyprus as a Winter Sun destination because there has been very little of that for the past six weeks or so.  The rain and high winds are wreaking havoc everywhere and the driving conditions today were dodgy to say the least.

Mum's front garden resembles a boating lake - this is normal when we have heavy rain.  As it happens the storms meant that the electrician didn't come - apparently he was stuck up a telegraph pole to begin with and then had to wait in a field for the Electricity Board to come.  John was not impressed as this is the third time he has let us down and with John three strikes and you are out.  It is so annoying that the job wasn't completed satisfactorily in the first place.

We had a few little jobs that Mum wanted us to sort out.  Thankfully she has her central heating back and working although the guy that came was somewhat perturbed about the age and condition of some of the pipework in the boiler room and rightly so looking at it.

Fred was returned home yesterday after his extended stay at the vets - not because he was poorly but because that is where Mum took him for safekeeping whilst she was at ours.  It probably was a bit too long for poor Fred although he has returned looking rather svelte and as he had to lose some weight the vet will be pleased.  He is taking a while to settle back down which is only to be expected.  We have said that we will look at when Christmas/New Year falls this year to see if we can organise things a little better for him.

Whilst we were outside looking at the boiler room we began to see a little sunshine and the temperatures warmed dramatically and for a while it was very pleasant indeed.  What a difference a bit of sun can make.

I had hoped that Mum's Paps might have had some pig's liver for Mr Boo and Miss Minnie but they didn't so they will just have to make do with chicken's livers until I can get some.

Once we realised that Mr Electrician wasn't going to pitch up any time soon we said our goodbyes to Mum (we will see her again on Sunday when we are going out for lunch) and dealt with the pickleball court.

It didn't actually take us very long to get the lines back down in readiness for the games to start next Tuesday because although we had left it all seemingly clean and tidy before Christmas we could see sticky marks where the tape had been.  We also noticed that the dodgy set of lights that sometimes work and sometimes do not were in the 'do not' mode and there was a selection of towels at the bottom of the stairs soaking up water.  It would appear that repairs to the roof hadn't staved off all of the wet weather.

We went back home up the Mesoghi Avenue with the intention of getting a cooked chicken from Paps.  We stopped for me to pick up a few bits in Cycleband aka Ikoagora and I was super excited to find that they had a stock of Branston Brown Sauce which is the creme de la creme of brown sauces as far as I am concerned and which hasn't been available this end of the island for months and months.  I stocked up with several bottles and shared my good fortune with Mark Kirby who is a fellow Branston Sauce and Branston Sauce only brown sauce consumer.

I was pipped at the post for the last remaining cooked chicken and there were no others going to be available any time soon so I came away empty handed.  At Paps the weather was dry and clear but within about 500 yards going up the hill towards Tsada you could barely see your hand in front of your face - it was like two different worlds - one minute we were all Hotel Tropicana and the next it was more like Gorillas in the Mist - we took it steadily back home where it didn't look like it had stopped raining all day.  One bit of good news is that some of the missing parcels and post from Christmas has started to filter through - not my parcel from Laura and Mark sadly but a few items from Amazon that should have been with us already.

Melanie and Simon are up in the village with the girls Jasmine and Frances and they contacted us to see if we wanted to catch up before they return to Tala tomorrow.  They had not seen the newly refurbished Droushia Heights so we suggested meeting there for a drink before returning to their house for a drink and nibbles.  I suggested that I could bring some cheese as we hadn't eaten much over Christmas and it would be nice to share it with them.  Our walk down through the village to drop off the cheese and then on to the Hotel was a soggy one!

It was very busy in the Hotel but we managed to squeeze onto the bench seat by the bar and Melanie and I caught up whilst John and Simon had a good look around the changes and the girls occupied themselves with one of their Christmas puzzle books.

We did not stay too long as the promise of pate on toast and cheese and biscuits sat in front of Simon's wood burner proved too big a draw and thankfully it was no longer raining when John, Simon and I made our way back up the hill although the thought of the wood burner spurred us on and we didn't hang around taking in the ambiance!

We pulled Simon's leg that he was offloading his 'vintage' wine collection on us.  Generally Cypriot wines are only good for about two years possibly three max so a 2010 bottle of Agios Onoufrios is normally consigned to a stifado although on this occasion I thought it tasted ok - I could hear Dad's voice ringing in my ears with the immortal words "I have had worse"  we didn't try his really old bottle because the external state of it didn't really fill us with much confidence that internal contents would be palatable although I have subsequently looked it up on the tintyweb and it would appear that this could be a bit of a winner!