MEDITERRANEAN MEANDERINGS
22ND MARCH 2010

Well, hello from the land of the body snatchers my friends! After the kidnapping of the ex-president’s body a couple of months ago, we have now had someone digging up Archbishops! What on earth can their fascination be with taking dead bodies out of their graves? Especially ones that have been dead for about 100 years. So, if you find any dead archbishops for sale on eBay please inform the Cypriot government! It brings a whole new level to the Monty Python sketch where the father walks in and states ‘dead bishop on the landing’ and the wife replies: ‘what another one’!

I have had a stinking cold this week. It arrived just after I posted last week’s blog and is still lingering. So I have been dividing my time between activity and slumping on the sofa coughing my lungs up – which is always attractive! Very interestingly I had a reiki session booked in on the Thursday morning and I thought I was going to have to cancel, but my cold disappeared for the whole time I was giving the treatment, although I was back to coughing like a bastard (I believe this is the technical term) within minutes of the end of the session. I didn’t manage to take Scruffy for a very long walk either as I just didn’t have the breath for it, so I am looking forward to my walk with her tomorrow to make up for it.

The weather is so beautiful at the moment. There is not a dust cloud in sight and the visibility is amazing. I was standing on my balcony early on Sunday morning thinking that I must be the luckiest person alive. It was so clear you could actually see into Famagusta itself from the balcony. When I did my brief search for somewhere to live abroad the only thought I held in my head was that I wanted a sea view and the universe has delivered spectacularly. I am getting to see many other people’s properties and although they all have fabulous places to live I have not yet seen anyone with a view to match mine – apart of course from my next door neighbour! Looking up as I type I can see the terracotta roofs ahead of me stretching down to the Mediterranean and a little fishing boat out at sea is an infinitesimal dot in the distance. How incredible is it that I am actually here.

I went to a beautiful meeting in Agia Napa on Saturday and we were lucky enough to have some people visiting from the UK who had been practising for 40 years. When they started practising there were only 60 members in the UK and there are now 10,000. It was a privilege to be able to talk to such wise people and I was having a conversation with one of them as to just how blessed I am. He said to me that he was told very early on in his practice that to appreciate the sheer immensity of our good fortune we should look at our gardens. There is more life in a small garden than there are human beings on the earth and yet even out of all those human beings we have been privileged enough to be born into a prosperous and fortunate part of humanity. It is a truly humbling thought.

Saturday evening saw me at the Barley Mow in Pernera. Steve was hosting a St. Patrick’s Do and we had a fabulous evening. Admittedly it became more of a second Burns night as most of the people there were Scottish rather than Irish, but that is irrelevant really, as all that counts was that everyone had a good time. Jimmy Spender provided the music as wonderfully as he always does and he has won me to his fan club forever as he sang ‘Stairway to Heaven’ to me. Later on in the evening he sneaked in some more rock to appease me and played ‘Paranoid’ by Black Sabbath. There are now some very dodgy photographs in existence of Steve and myself backing Jimmy on blow-up guitars. I just hope I never have to see them! My hair is getting back to the right length for moshing again and it is difficult to do that to Roy Orbison, so I was pleased to be given the opportunity for a good old headbang! We never fail to have a good night out in the Barley Mow, so if you find yourselves down in Pernera pop in and have a drink.

There was one incident from Saturday night that will have me smiling for a while. Please excuse my colloquial language whilst I retell it. One of the ladies went up to a friend of mine with a scandalized look on her face. ‘I’ve just come out of the toilet’ she whispered ‘and Steve was standing there with his dick in the sink’. After a few well-placed questions a light came on in Sue’s eyes and she said ‘no, love, that’s a urinal!’ ‘Thank goodness he was there then’ the lady replied, ‘I have just had some soup and I was going to take my teeth out and wash them in that sink.’ May 1000 blessings fall on her head for making us smile so much.

Despite the late night Saturday I was up early Sunday morning as some very kind friends of mine were taking me to the Mind, Body and Spirit exhibition in Limassol. They were exhibiting there and said I could come along for the ride. It is a beautiful journey along the south coast of the island. I was surprised not to see Cliff Richard as after all he did promise that he was ‘going where the sun is shining’ and ‘going where the sea is blue’. Luckily no Red London Buses with teenagers singing for no apparent reason turned up at any time. I started off the day by attending a very beautiful twin hearts meditation, which set me up for the rest of the day. There was a great guy there who was known as ‘the Passion Man’. He was a life coach and his message was about how you needed to do everything in your life with passion and enthusiasm. He was wearing a purple shirt, a purple kilt and no shoes. It is not often I find anyone who speaks with more exclamation marks than I do, or who uses more adjectives than me, but I met my match here. It started off with him asking me how my day was and I told him: ’Fabulous!’ and after that we had a conversation consisting of nothing more than words such as: ‘Amazing!’, ‘Brilliant!’, ‘Marvellous’ etc. For the rest of that day I seemed to bump into him wherever I turned and we would just look at each other and exclaim: ‘BRILLIANT!’ Sounds completely barking, and indeed it was, but also very uplifting. You cannot be sad or ill with that amount of joy being thrown your way.

I took myself out of the way at lunch time and sat on the beach for an hour scribbling away in my notebook. Limassol is the main harbour of the Island and it was great being there as the sea was full of ships waiting to go into port. I have talked before about how much I love to see shipping out at sea. Maybe I was Aristotle Onassis in a previous life – who knows! Cyprus is not a place of sandy beaches. The coastline is generally rocky, but personally I like that. I am not a big fan of stretches of sand with slowly roasting bodies ruining your view of the sea. What I love about Cypriot women is that they take their children to the beach, but make no concession themselves to beachwear. Consequently I was sitting there with the most immaculately dressed women around me. They were wearing pencil skirts and high heels and were all flawlessly made up. This did not stop them striding on the beach, children in tow, buckets and spades clasped in their manicured hands. No wonder Cypriot men think British women are scruffy and sloppy. Personally I was happy in my flip-flops!

I attended a fantastic writing workshop in the afternoon and this led to us all ending up on the beach again as the sun was setting. The huge bulks of the container ships did nothing to detract from the beauty of the rosy twilight and we all left the beach in the encroaching darkness buoyant and alive. So many thanks again to Cheryl, Ruth and Ken for driving me there and back and giving me the opportunity to participate in a very joyous day, while they worked their socks off.

Yesterday I wandered up to check my PO Box in Paralimni. I don’t go very often as I don’t expect post that regularly. However, there was a very pleasant surprise waiting for me when I opened it up. A friend of mine from Totnes had taken the time to send me a postcard just because she felt like it. I had forgotten how much pleasure you get from receiving a hand written message. In this day of electronic communication I doubt any of us write actual letters to people and yet this lady had made the effort. Just receiving this missive lifted me for the rest of the day. So I send my thanks and love to her across the ether.

Last night was the last pool match of the season and the Barley Mow went out on a bang! They beat one of the top teams, who once again had thought that they were going to get an easy victory. I have been so lucky to have been invited along to join in as a groupie as each week we have had a laugh and a fun evening in the quiet of the winter season. The summer season is now on the verge of beginning (indeed going through Protaras on the bus on Saturday there were already many more establishments open than last week) so everyone will now be working flat out until October/November with little time for socialising. I was so fortunate that I came out when I did as it gave me the time to get to know all the people who live here, rather than just those who will be passing through. Yet another thing to add to my gratitude list!

Anyway, I am getting quite chilly writing this as it is always cool inside, so I am going to stop now. It is about 22° outside, so I am going out to warm up. Besides, what on earth do I want to be inside for when it is like this? I will need to retreat indoors when the temperature hits 40°, so I will make the most of it now.

I will leave you with a thought from Goethe, of which the Passion Man reminded me: ‘Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though t'were his own.’ If we truly care for the happiness of those around us, our lives become so much fuller and happier and I truly hope that all of you have a joyous and happy week.