January 6th

Today was Epiphany here in Cyprus so a Bank Holiday.  Cypriot children now seem to benefit from celebrating Christmas Day on 25th December and Epiphany on 6th January.  Lucky them that's what I say!  We had shrugged off all the last vestiges of our festive season celebrations earlier in the week so for us today was actually just a nice quiet day to be spent at home.  We had invited Richard to come round and have a curry with us because he had had family staying over Christmas so that was what we were concentrating on today.

No resolutions for us this year, in fact we never make any, instead just some aspirations to improve our way of life both mentally and physically.  I want my life to be less cluttered for sure and I just want to be happy and healthy and kind.  Actually I do always try to be kind and John is one of the kindest people I know until you let him down and then there is no going back.

Yesterday had been grey but today the sun was back out and it was lovely.  My new washing machine aka "The Beast" was pressed into action and all John's sports kit was given a freshen up.  I cannot believe how quick and quiet it is and how lovely the washing smells - that was a problem with the old machine and no amount of cleaning or white wine vinegar seemed to make a difference.  

This past December was so mild, in fact it was officially the warmest here on the island for over 100 years!  As a result the garden doesn't quite know what to do - we may still have some cold weather to come, eight years ago today the roads around Droushia were closed due to snow!  Anyway I have been trying to grow veggies from what can only be described as "off-cuts" so sprouting ends of carrots, potatoes, garlic and in this case the end of a cabbage which has put on some new growth (middle top of photo).  As I don't use any slug pellets I am probably just providing an amazing smorgasbord for them to sample but I like the challenge!

John and I set about making the curry supper together and, because Ellen had kindly given us a bottle of Baileys that she wasn't going to drink, and, because Mum used to make a wonderful Baileys Bread and Butter pudding, we made two of those, one to give to Ellen (and I guess Richard will get to sample a bit) and one to have on Sunday with Mum.  She is coming up, it will be one of the last times she drives up to us.  When I spoke to her today I wanted to make sure she was happy with her decision and she was so that is one less thing for me to have to worry about.

Between us John and I made an Indian salad, onion bhajis with a mint dip, chicken chasni curry, bombay potatoes and rice.  To this we added some mango chutney and lemon pickle, poppadums and naan bread.  We hoped that we had made sufficient to have it again tomorrow night, only bloody match day as John would say, his team are playing early evening.  What more could he wish for than a Mighty Blades win followed by a curry supper?

Actually if it is nice tomorrow we plan to do a walk - we plan to walk to Fitos and, if it is open have a spot of lunch and then walk back.  I think it is about 15kilometers in total and I really do need to get back into the swing of walking.  I can't wait for Derek to come back - he likes walking so I am going to drag him out with me!

We got the house toasty warm and all ready for our curry night.  Richard came around at 6.30pm and we had a lovely evening.  He is such a laugh and gets on so well with John.  He says he needs to get fitter and shed some excess weight so we asked him if he wanted to walk with us tomorrow.

I don't know what it is about Richard but Miss Minnie absolutely adores him.  Usually she is running around on her knees because there is a stranger in the house but she actually makes a bee-line for him and snuggles up with him!