Easter Sunday in the UK

Easter Sunday in the UK - the day started beautifully with lovely sunshine and the garden was looking a picture - the miniature wild Gladioli that are in my garden and which are called locally Lazarus Lilies were up - they are a sign of Easter which for the Cypriots is next week.

It was to be a different Sunday for us because we were not seeing Mum - we are going down tomorrow for her to have her second check-up and to have lunch with her.  I know she would not have been relishing having had so much time to herself but it was only to be whilst she was recovering from the initial week after her cataract operation.  Anyway as it happens her friend Lilian (who is now back from the UK) invited her to have lunch with her so that all worked out well.

I said that the day started well but the weather was odd and by lunchtime we could see that the skies were becoming heavy with sand.  There is a final coptic storm due at the end of April but it appears it may have been coming early.  By the end of the day we had gale force winds, leadened skies and sultry temperatures.  If this is not the coptic come early then it certainly wasn't forecast to be like this today.

We had no plans for today until George and Pam asked us if we could show them the ropes at the Farmyard Carvery on a Sunday.  I asked if they had booked because it is always very popular, they hadn't and so I was very grateful that Rachel managed to squeeze us in on the terrace which turned out to be very pleasant and warmer than being inside.

George and Pam loved it.  George is truly a remarkable man having overcome five different lots of cancer and two bouts of Covid.  He is looking fit and healthy and can eat well for a man in his 80s.  He managed all four courses accompanied by a beer and finished off with a traditional Cypriot Coffee.  Being back at his villa after an absence of four and a half years, spending the first 10 days with family and now relaxing a little and soaking up some sunshine has made him look so much better!  We were also grateful that I had not had to cook and could enjoy which I think is the best Sunday Roast for miles around.  We were not disappointed except for the fact that the Red Velvet Cake had all been scoffed by the time we got to pudding so we had to make do with about 10 other choices!

On our return we had to batten down the hatches and made the decision to remove the gazebo roof because we could see that it could end up shredded if we did not.  It was a weird atmosphere as the wind was very warm but it was so strong that it started to make the woodburner stack pipe shudder.  This year really has thrown some bizarre weather conditions at us.

We settled down for what we thought was to be a nice quiet night in but the wind put paid to that and it spooked the cats who started behaving like weirdos running around after imaginary things.

We had the opportunity to watch some TV and decided to try a new series accompanied by a rather pleasant G&T with one of the bottles of Tanqueray we had recently been given.

Our viewing for this evening was Vikings Valhalla which follows on from the previous Vikings series which we had really enjoyed but was set 100 years later so you didn't really need to know anything about the original series.  The new series is very good - the only sad thing is that Trarvis Fimmel who played Ragnar Lothbrook is not in it and he was rather easy on the eye in a strange rape and pillage kind of way!!

We managed to fit in three episodes which is a bit of a record for us at the moment but it obviously captured our attention sufficiently and we are looking forward to a bit more of the same tomorrow evening.