Father's Day

Today is Father's Day and it is a sobering thought how many men, no longer with us, that we remember on this day.   I am not sure Cyprus has an official Father's Day like it does a Mother's Day.  We had decided to spend it quietly until later in the evening when we were being taken out by Lakis and Argy to their favourite restaurant Santa Barbara on the Argaka Coast.  This will be the first meal proper we will have gone out for together and they have been here since early April!

We decided to take a walk into the village and go to the Cemetery to visit Dad.  John had been yesterday to repair the step but I wanted to go today to see him.  On the walk down John had a scrump at the cherry plum tree (Mirabel) but the one he managed to grasp had a visitor or two inside and anyway they aren't ripe for a couple of weeks yet.

On the way down through the village we came across Bambos who was cutting back the vine at his taverna - he called us across for a coffee but we explained we needed to go to the cemetery first because it was Father's Day.

Everything was fine at the cemetery.  We watered the plants and gave the marble a good slooshing down as it was quite dusty but apart from that all good.  A couple of the graves in the row in front of Dad's have had their permanent surrounds put in and it looks tidier as a result.  Currently there is no-one directly in front of Dad and until that row is full they wont put in the proper path which will make it easier to negotiate you way round.

We did our normal round of checking on the people that we know who are there, David, Les and Elena - Elena's mum is here at the moment and she will no doubt pay her a visit.  If she does not do the weeding required then I will do it when I go up there next.  I will check with Bassam when we see him tomorrow morning.  He has replaced the mytle tree which died with a new one which looks to be surviving.  John has decided to donate the spare hose we have to the cemetery as it is on a reel and would be easier to move around.

We didn't go for a coffee at Bambos we actually went for a shandy because it had been hot thirsty work walking to the cemetery.  In this picture John and Bambos are discussing the history of some of the buildings in the village.  What used to be the weaving museum and which is being turned into a tourist attraction of local traditional crafts by Philippos was a butchers in fact it housed two different butchers one on either side of the room!  Stathmos has a key stone with the date of 1902 and was many years ago used as a sort of builders merchants so that for those people in the village who did not have transport they would order what they wanted and the Mukhtar would get it delivered to Stathmos for them to collect probably adding on a Cypriot pound or two for his trouble.  Bambos looks more like he is teaching John to dance!  Bambos is actually a very good Cypriot traditional dancer and we have witnessed his moves on many occasions!  We decided that we would take Dip there to eat on Thursday when he is coming for lunch because he likes to try somewhere different and traditional.

We called into the Cheese Factory on our way home.  Maria had fresh cherries for sale from her sister-in-laws trees.  We decided to treat ourself to a bag (€5) and they were out of this world, sweet and firm and no sign of any iggies or bugs or bad bits.  We had to restrain ourselves from eating them all as we wanted to have some left for lunch tomorrow when Mum is coming up.

We decided to have a rest before getting ready to go out - the walking in the sun and possibly the shandy had given me a bit of a headache.

We had a lovely evening at Santa Barbara.  We arrived just after 5pm and had the pick of the tables as Little George had reserved a selection awaiting our decision.  We chose one which afforded both sun and shade and which would be in prime position for the sunset providing that there was no cloud.

We had a selection of starters to begin which included saganaki, courgette and eggs, spicy cheese dip and pitta and giant beans.  I was almost full by the time we had consumed that but I had salmon, chips and salad to come!!!  My fish was lovely and a very generous portion of it too but nicely cooked and not dry which can sometimes be the case with salmon.  

We got a sunset and we had a bit of a sunset photograph competition and John involved some poor unsuspecting holidaymakers in his shot - they thought it was all very amusing and we sent them a copy of the photograph which they were happy with.  This was my entry!

We returned to 2b for a coffee and a nightcap having had a very nice evening indeed.  Thank you Lakis and Argy.