MEDITERRANEAN MEANDERINGS

17TH APRIL 2010

So, here I am sitting on Macronissos Beach, the sun warming my shoulders and the water softly plashing against the rocks. My mother, who arrived on Wednesday, is sitting next to me. She flew in the day before the volcanic ash called a halt to flights across Europe, which was very lucky. My sister and her family are currently stuck on a beach in Tenerife sipping Sangria, because they can’t get back to the UK, which is also very lucky!

As I look up I can see paragliders across the bay at Agia Napa and I can hear the distant rumble of the jet skis. We are alone on the beach apart from one family as it is slightly off the tourist track. You walk past the main beach at Macronissos, past the tombs and there is a delightful cove next to an ancient harbour (or ‘sanctuary’ according to the signs).

Mum has only been here a few days and so thinks that it is hot, whereas I am only convinced of warm. It is surprising how quickly you can become acclimatized.

The lovely Mick and June kindly drove me to Larnaca Airport to collect my mum. The airport confused me thoroughly. I had told my mum that she didn’t need to worry as Larnaca Airport was only about the same size as Shoreham Airport. What I didn’t realize was that someone had gone and built a whole new airport in the 5 months since I had been out here. It is still by no means the size of Gatwick or Manchester, but it is now recognisable as an airport.

It seems quite bizarre to me that although I now live 2000 miles away it doesn’t take much more time for my mum to get here than it did for her to drive to me in Totnes.

Now, having spent last week talking about writer’s integrity, I realised I lied to you! The frogs have not gone away at all. They must just have decided to have a couple of nights off. They are now back at full strength much to the chagrin of my mother!

In my latest wildlife report I have to announce that I saw my first snake this week. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for me, it was dead. It was fairly small (only about two feet) and was dark brown in colour with white triangular markings. I believe these are the poisonous ones as I have been told that the larger black ones are not venomous. It looked like a large bird had been pecking away at it and it certainly wasn’t about to slither off anywhere.

Yet another person I know named Sue, although this one lives in the UK, tried to get me killed this week. I have mentioned fairly regularly that I live on a contentious border in a country at war with Turkey and that the people here are not too keen on the Turks, having lost their land to them. So it was with great consternation that I opened my PO Box last week to find a postcard from Istanbul! As I turned it over and read it I saw that Sue was telling me what a lovely, friendly place Turkey was. My PO Box did not appear to be booby-trapped and I managed to walk home down the hill without being lynched, but I have been looking over my shoulder ever since!

Following on from my raving about the Paul Jones’ album a couple of blogs ago my friend Chris recommended an album by Howard Jones. (I am not sure how far I am going to take the premise of only listening to music by people called Jones. I think I will draw the line at Jesus Jones!) It is called ‘Revolution of the Heart’. I am not normally drawn towards music on the electronic spectrum, after all, my penchant for men with long hair and guitars is pretty well known. Yet I have to say that this album is fantastic and much more layered musically than just ‘electronica’. It is especially beautiful lyrically. Howard Jones is a man who has a deep understanding of the transience of existence and he doesn’t succumb to trite love songs at any point - so I now have Jones and Jones on an alternate loop on my playlist and I can’t recommend either highly enough.

Yesterday my mum and I drove to the village of Pyla. It is smack in the middle of the UN Buffer zone and so there were white UN vehicles pootling about all over the place ruining the scenery! It is a very pretty little village and one of the few places in the south of the island where ‘Turk’ and ‘Greek’ (although as far as I can tell they are all Cypriots) still live side by side. From the top of the Venetian Tower you can see the border post with the Turkish Flag in prominence but in the village itself it is peaceful. Old men sit outside their shops drinking thick black coffee (although as usual the women are strangely absent). I truly hope that all of Cyprus will be able to return to this harmony very soon.

On the way back we called into the Army Base at Dhekelia for fish and chips. We sat looking out at the Med, eating delicious chips, with a cool breeze blowing in from the sea. It was a sublime juxtaposition of cultures: British chips and Mediterranean view – perfect! Saying that, my views on forces being in countries where they don't belong have not changed. I just hope that when the British finally withdraw their forces from Cyprus they leave the 'Chippy' behind (although the food is cooked by Cypriots, so I think we should be safe!).

You will be pleased to hear that I am a lot less Eeyorish this week, although today is probably the first day that I have felt the prison doors of the gloom open. One of the main reasons for this being that my birthday is over and done with for the year. I don’t know what it is about my birthday but it has succeeded in sending me into a spiral of grumpiness every year for as long as I can remember. My family normally know better than to be anywhere near me on my birthday and my mum’s spirit nearly failed her when she realised that having booked to come the week after Easter she would be with me on ‘that date’. So, as normal, when in company on my birthday, I had to spend the day apologising for being a miserable old bitch!

For some reason my birthday seems to be a magnet for disaster. If you Google 15th April the catalogue of woes begins with the sinking of the Titanic; Hillsborough; the US bombing Libya; Tommy Cooper dying and (this is the big one) Jeffrey Archer being born! Last year I managed to decide to split up with the person that I thought was the man of my dreams the day before my birthday and so was a supremely miserable bitch that day! (However, it was my choice and so he cannot be blamed for that.) This year I thought nothing could possibly go wrong, but I had not factored in the nightmare that is Cypriot plumbing!

Just after we got back from the airport on Wednesday evening a neighbour kindly pointed out to me that my overflow pipe was leaking and in fact beginning to flood. Nothing could be done at this time of evening and so I just had to turn the water off until the next day. The water tanks are on the roof, which is kept locked. I found out that the lady on the complex who normally has the keys had had them taken away by the maintenance company 3 weeks ago and so I had to ring them. They denied all knowledge of any keys and suggested I rang the builders. They too said that they did not have any keys, but would try and find out and ring back. All this time my water meter was spinning round and so we had to turn the water off again at the mains, otherwise the tank was constantly refilling and spewing it out again. In the midst of all this Mick, my Sports Correspondent and Knight in Shining Armour, had come to collect us to take my mum to pick up her hire car. So my birthday was spent being extremely grumpy, moaning at people on the phone and not being able to flush the toilet!

It was all sorted out on the Friday (you notice the birthday curse had finished by then!). A wonderful man called Dave came and climbed onto the roof from my balcony and fixed the valve on the tank. Although he thoroughly confused me when he disappeared over the edge of the parapet only to ring my doorbell minutes later! Someone had come in between us all running about and trying the doors the day before and unlocked it surreptitiously. Yet when the builders finally rang me back to say they had located some keys Friday afternoon and I told them it was too late, they appeared to know nothing about this.

I did have a nice time on the evening of my birthday. I forced myself to fight through the gloom and my mum and I went out for a meal, and then ended up in the Corner Pin. I was able to introduce my mum to all the lovely people I know there and then Sue (Bingo Sue, as opposed to Istanbul Sue, or Buddhist Sue!) came out with a surprise chocolate cake for me – may 1000 blessings fall on her wonderful head! Next year nothing, I repeat NOTHING, will go tits up on my birthday!

I will miss being 33. It is a magical age and I enjoyed it. Lots happened, both good and bad, but all was progressive. In many cultures your 33rd birthday is more important that your 18th or 21st. In mathematics it is said that it is the largest positive integer that cannot be expressed as a sum of different triangular numbers and thus numerology celebrates it as the last of the master numbers. The Christian tradition states that it is the age that Christ died, whilst the Islamic tradition states that the dwellers of heaven will always be at age 33. Even JRR Tolkein has the Hobbits coming of age at 33. It is also a very significant number in Freemasonry and Paganism. It brought me out to live in the sunshine and it is the year in which my road to recovery and hence to freedom began. However, it is all behind me and now I am the grand old age of 34 does this mean I have to grow up? I sincerely hope not! Although the truth is that I would not be under 30 again for any amount of money.

I am going to stop rabbiting now. My mum has wandered off to dangle her feet in the Mediterranean and a few more people have joined us on the beach – there are 9 of us now, and its getting a tad crowded for me! So I will leave you with some words of Jonathan Swift’s which I truly wish for all of you: ‘May you live all the days of your life.’ and I really mean that, I hope you live them all and don’t ever just exist in them, whether that living consists of dark or light, both are better than grey nothingness.