MEDITERRANEAN MEANDERINGS
9TH APRIL 2010

I am two days short of my fifth month in Kapparis and it is difficult to imagine living anywhere else at the moment. Every place in the world has its shortcomings and obviously Kapparis is no exception but it seems to be where I need to be right now. The sea, the sunshine and the peace are all exactly what the doctor ordered.

I have been pleased to notice that the cats are back this week. There are only a few of them, but they are making a comeback. In fact as I was walking Scruffy on Wednesday she dived into a bush along the coastal path and came out with a feral cat on her back! I mediated a la Kofi Annan and both escaped unharmed.

Whilst the cats are back in the ascendant, the frogs are on the decline. The barrage of croaking and chirruping no longer begins as soon as twilight descends. However, I had not noticed until late at night a few days ago, when a couple of very lonely frogs starting making a noise and I realised just how quiet it had been for the past few days.

The mosquitoes are definitely not on the decline! I, very stupidly (what me do something without thinking, never!), slipped into a reverie a couple of evenings ago and didn’t realise that I had left the balcony doors open until it was completely dark. So far, I have counted 23 separate bites on the parts of me that were exposed. It was only 17 when I started typing, but the itching has led me to discover other ones that I did not know I had. They take a couple of days to come out fully and you don’t feel a thing when the mosquito bites you and, besides, I was in a complete dream world anyway, so I wouldn’t have noticed.

The weather over Easter has been absolutely glorious - averaging about mid to late 20s in the shade. The last couple of days have been a bit cooler and I am back to the obligatory jeans – still at least they are too thick for the bloody mosquitoes to get through! The warmer weather also means that the earth is starting to crack again. People have been saying that it is the greenest they have seen Cyprus for years, for which I am obviously taking full credit, as I seem to have bought all the Dartmoor rain with me! However, the undergrowth is so vast on the wasteground that it is sucking all of the moisture out of the ground. This is unlikely to be replenished for the next 6 months or so, although we did have a brief ten minutes of rain yesterday, but hardly enough to make any difference. The upshot is that the earth is beginning to be sun-baked and dry again and the undergrowth is starting to recede, only slightly at the moment, but I will be interested to see just how quickly it disappears now the summer has begun.

On Tuesday I went to the bingo with some friends of mine and we (I say we, it was actually Jenny and Sue, but I like to take some of the glory!) won a line and a house. We go fairly regularly and about a couple of months ago we were on a winning streak, but it seemed to vanish. However, we were back with a vengeance this week and the four of us always split our winnings equally, whoever wins, so we left with €180 each. Brilliant! This was perfect timing as my computer was making like an ill thing and so the lovely G came to fix it yesterday and I was able to pay him. Hurrah! I was also able to buy some food and pay the phone bill, which is always a good thing!

Something I have been thinking about this week (and why suddenly now I don’t know) is that before I moved out here I did not know one person who smoked (apart from my Aunty Ellen and Uncle Frank). None of my friends or acquaintances ever went near it, or if they had they had given up years before. Since moving here I am the only person who does not smoke. Don’t worry I am not about to start. It is still an anathema to me. But it made me realise that until I moved here I genuinely thought it was something that people didn’t do anymore. I literally had no idea how many people still smoked. I think I must be very naive, but I have been racking my brains and I can’t think of any social occasion over the last 5 years where I have been somewhere and someone was smoking (apart from the odd person in a pub when you still could). So there is obviously some lesson I need to be learning about that then, but what it may be I have no idea.

The dust/sand cloud is still hanging over the island, which means that some days I get to see the hills and some days nothing at all. I think in part it is due to the amount of building work that is going on here. It is much less than it has been over the past few years due to the worldwide recession, but there is still enough for there to be a lot of dust in the air. This coupled with the sand that blows in from the Sahara makes the air quite thick sometimes. Wednesday night, at about 1am, there was a lot of lightning out at sea. I wondered if this was something to do with all the dust. Yet, there was no thunder, so I don’t know how that works at all. Unfortunately I don’t know enough science to understand how you get lightning without thunder, so I will stick with the obvious truth that Zeus just didn’t feel like it that day!

Just a brief aside at this point – thank you to the people who sent me emails saying that the freckle was named after St. Arnold Von Freckle, who apparently was the first man to have freckles. I know that I sent out that question on April Fool’s day, and that I am gullible, but not quite that gullible! To be completely fair, although I wasn’t sure how any one person could be the first to have freckles, as it is a trait that goes back to Neanderthal man, from whom we get the gene which allocates red hair and freckles, I did check the list of Roman Catholic Saints, but sadly there is no trace of him. Maybe I am missing out on something and he is a Saint from another religion and I am sure the Church would want to claim that they invented freckles, but I am not sure that this is the truth. Although I thank you all for a good laugh.

G, the computer guy, was telling me that he had a shock last Thursday night. He lives right next to the border at Derinia. It was the middle of the night and they were awoken by a huge bang. He is part Cypriot and his first thought was ‘shit, the Turks are invading’! Apparently, however, it was just someone who had had a bit to drink the night before the six days of bank holidays and who decided to try out his celebratory Easter explosions a bit early. I, too, nearly had to change my trousers on Monday. I was walking across the fields and revelling in the smell of the souvlaki, as all the Cypriots were having big family barbecues, when suddenly there was a sound like a mortar explosion. There was a family who had their table set up on the edge of the fields and they had decided to throw some sort of explosive into the wasteground for a bit of fun! These aren’t fireworks as there is nothing more than smoke, and a bit of a hole where it lands, but I have no idea what it actually is. If there had been a ceiling I would have had to peel myself off it! There were also fireworks, which started at midnight as Easter Saturday became Easter Sunday. However, my balcony was facing the wrong way and so I could only hear the bangs and see a vestige of the light reflected on the sea. I realised it was only fireworks, and I wasn’t worried in the least, but it did give me some sort of understanding of how terrified some of the people must be. Those who had their homes invaded once before will probably never be completely sure that it will not happen again. Although I do not in anyway advocate bitterness and vengeance, because that is no way to forge peace.

I have also been getting frustrated by manmade borders myself again this week. Every day (except when the dust is really thick) I look along the coast from my balcony, along the panhandle. I can and have walked for miles towards the west, looking at the beauty, but because of religious and political differences I cannot take more than a ten minute walk towards the east. How dare someone say that we can walk here, but not there? Land belongs to everyone, not just the people with the biggest guns. Isn’t it about time after 5000 years of being ruled by other people that the Cypriots were allowed to be autonomous? They are not children, and yet that is how they are treated by all the people, including Kissinger in the 1970s, who masterminded this separation of a nation. I am talking about all Cypriots mind you, not just the ones who believe in whatever their particular government tells them, but all the people who have been born on this beautiful island and should be able to share it peacefully.

Something else that I have noticed as I write this is that, although I can use hyperbole for comic effect and although I can prettify things with words, I cannot lie when I write. This is something that writers have discussed for generations – the inner integrity – and I have never thought much about. Yet, I realise that although I can go out into the world with my smile plastered on my face, and only those who know me the best realise that something is wrong, I cannot write with a smile. I realise that the tone of this blog is more resigned than normal and I cannot pretend in writing as I can in the real world. I wonder if this is because it is more like lying to yourself when you write and that is something you cannot do if you wish to retain any sort of integrity at all. I have been struggling with St. Augustine’s dark night of the soul again this week although I am learning to embrace it as a friend rather than an enemy. Saturday saw me fall down a fairly long way and I have been struggling to keep my head above water since. It was my father’s birthday on Saturday and he died 15 years ago. I have long since thought I was fine about his death, but, as is always the case, the middle of the night was my downfall and I was hit by utter desolation at about 3am when I realised that, despite the fact that I understand that we have lived together many times before and will do so many times in the future, I will never be hugged again by my dad in this lifetime. Once more my heart broke. I have lost other people I have loved in my life. This is not an isolated occurrence, but the fact remains that my soul has a huge Dave-Smith shaped hole in it which has been polyfilla-ed over many times, but which has never been repaired. This was then the trigger for many other issues that still haunt me to come and shout in my face. I know that if I had been stuck in the UK, in the damp and the grey I would have sunk, but here the sun helped me revive and the sea helped me to calm and my chanting helped me to endure.

So, I give immense gratitude for living here and for my integrity, which may not provide a comfortable read, but will always provide an honest one. I am in an Eeyore mood this week, so I will leave you with an Eeyore quote: "It's snowing still," said Eeyore gloomily. "So it is." "And freezing." "Is it?" "Yes," said Eeyore. "However," he said, brightening up a little, "we haven't had an earthquake lately." Next week I will endeavour to be in a more Tigger mood. I hope you all have a wonderful week and that your inner Eeyores don’t come out and bite you on the bum!