Armistice Day

Yesterday was Armistice Day and ironically on a day when the world celebrates the end of the Great War and the freedom of people we were awaiting an announcement which was to bring about further restrictions on the Island.

A lockdown was imposed on the areas of Paphos and Limassol - not as rigid as earlier in the year but for those of us affected the curfew will be from 8pm until 5am.   All restaurants and bars will close save for takeaway.  Shops of a certain size will be closed unless they sell food or 'essentials'.  

We can exercise outdoors but only two people at a time but we will not be able to play pickleball indoors until the restrictions are lifted which are due to be at the end of November. We cannot leave the Paphos 'district' and people from outside cannot enter the Paphos 'district'.  There are a host of other measures but they don't really affect us.  We assume that as Mum is in Emba and we are in Droushia and we are, therefore, both in the Paphos 'district' that she will be able to come to us on Sunday.

We can happily manage without eateries open although we had planned to go to Fitos next week with Rob and Di and the curfew doesn't bother us in the least.  We are quite happy to be home and settled with the cats watching TV by 8pm and not a second later.

We had earmarked time at home this week anyway - the weather forecast had shown a couple of nice days and so we had things we needed to get done in the garden before everything got wet again.  We had promised to go and have a coffee up with Bassam this morning which is what we did.  He is doing all sorts of renovations to the 'Droushia Castle' (aka Orexi HQ) and we sat out on the verandah which is a fairly recent addition and surveyed the 'garden'.  It is a vast area now made more visible by the fact that Bassam has given the trees a severe haircut.  The whole area needs a major tidy but Bassam has neither the time or inclination and he is a hoarder of stuff which he thinks might prove useful.  He was on good form though and we had a pleasant hour or so with him.

Back home we tackled the Do-Jo - John wanted to restain the wood (a) so that it would better match the wood of the wall behind and the new gas-store gate and (b) to protect it from the ravages of the winter weather.  He also has a plan for bringing electric and internet access from the lounge so that we can better watch TV there in the summer (which now seems like a lifetime ago!!).

The plan involves putting extra paneling along the path side of the Do-Jo and turning around and moving the day bed there so that the TV will be in front of the lounge wall.  I didn't mind where it was going to be and was quite happy to do the staining whilst John nipped to the woodyard to get the extra wood - we weren't sure if this was a business that would have to shut but apparently not so if John has any other projects in mind we can still get supplies.

We managed to get all the wood sorted and the furniture moved and have earmarked the cabling job for the next day or so providing the weather stays dry as John doesn't want to be fiddling around with electrics in the rain.

On a roll, I decided to turn my attention to the Wisteria which is beginning to lose its leaves and make a mess - I usually let it get on with it and then clear them all up by which time they are sodden and rotting so this year decided to cut all the leaves off now and get rid of them whilst they were dry - I have no idea if this is good for the plant or not but it is too late now!

It all looked rather bare when I had finished but I did leave a couple of areas of green which I see the Cypriots do - I guess these might still feed the plant until they too drop off.

We had a reminder that it was four years ago now that our fabulous friends Sally and Tommy came to visit just for a long weekend.  We shared some photographs with them today to jog their memories and were delighted when they video called us in return.

We have everything crossed that the world returns to some sort of normality next year because, that being the case, there is every chance that they will return to visit and bring Freddy and Molly with them.  That would be ACE.