Mediterranean Meanderings

4^th May 2010

I hope you all had a Happy Beltane and are feeling that summer has begun, as it certainly has here. With any luck you are all in tune with the season and feeling fertile in heart and mind (although not necessarily in body with the overpopulation problem in the world at the moment!); that you are all brimming with new projects and opportunities and that love is in the air in some way, shape or form for you (animal, vegetable or mineral – which category husbands fall into I will leave you to choose!). Those of you that have been dancing naked in the hills and having fun under the stars – I hope you didn’t get too soggy!

I am not sure if there is an equivalent Beltane-type festival in Cyprus, but we did have the May Day/Labour Day festival in Paralimni on Saturday. Bank Holidays here are not carried over to the next Monday as in the UK; they fall on the correct day. So Saturday was the bank holiday and everyone was back at work on Monday. Sue (it is getting difficult to know how to differentiate between Sues, but this is the Sue of the housewarming party) came over from Aradippou for the day and we headed into the Town Square to watch the dancing. There were stalls for the obligatory face-painting and henna tattoos that always accompany such festivals around the world and the smell of souvlaki (grilled/barbecued meat) and loukoumades (hot dough balls filled with honey) pervaded the air. Sue and I found a seat to the side of the stage and settled down in the sun. I don’t know if I am just getting sentimental in my old age, or whether I can just stick with the old ‘I had something in my eye’ excuse, but as hordes of small children did their best whilst their proud parents looked on there was definitely some eye watering going on. Irrational emotion is a strange thing. I have never wanted children and I know that if I found myself in a 2.4 children, 9-5 job, husband mowing the lawn etc. situation I would get claustrophobic and run, but I can’t be certain that the flow of tears weren’t partly for the fact that I would always be an outsider at these events – although some of them were certainly just because I cry when I feel proud of, or moved by something. I remember watching South Today when Ellen MacArthur sailed back into port after sailing single-handedly around the world and crying unashamedly because I was so moved by her achievement. Indeed, soppy sod that I am, I have tears streaming down my cheeks now as I write this – not because I am sad in any way, but because I am thinking of all the things that move me.

There were various dances ranging from the tap-dancing ladies, of whom my friend Jill was an admirable performer, to the traditional peasant dances of the Cypriots, which seem so simple, but are in fact incredibly difficult. The girls, who were performing the peasant womens’ dance with the amphorae, move only their legs – not their hips – this is actually very difficult to do with precision. The boys who were doing the dance with the glasses of water on their heads were also very good. By this time some grey clouds were heading over the proceedings and there was a slight drizzle – but we all stayed sitting out in it and barely noticed it. Slightly later there was a Cypriot singer warbling traditional songs, yet as a huge clap of thunder echoed overhead she had just begun Barbra Streisand’s ‘Don’t Rain on My Parade’ – however, it seemed as though only Sue and I got the irony of this! Someone must have been listening because the rain went away. I had a lovely day with Sue and we had a good chat putting to rights the many wrongs that there are in the world. It was also nice to have someone with whom to do my evening chanting. It always seems stronger when not alone. She treated me to a delicious meal in the evening and so I was thoroughly spoilt.

The tourists are certainly beginning to make themselves known here, although I am assured in far fewer numbers than in previous years. Even Protaras has developed a sort of charm now that it is open and has people wandering through it – although it is unlikely ever to appear on my top 10 places to spend a day out.

Gone are the days when I could sit in Agia Napa Harbour with nary a person wandering past, but at the moment it is still very pleasant there. Enough people around for things to be open, but not too many to make me want to run in the opposite direction. Indeed while my mother was here we went out on one of the first boat trips to be open this season – The Yellow Submarine. This goes from the Harbour at Agia Napa and it has portholes in the keel so that you can see all the fish as the boat goes along. The Med is so clear here and the seabed looked as though it had been carpeted in paisley. There were myriad rainbows which were in tiny fan shapes caused as the sun was refracted by the sea – thousands of these all together, all shimmering, all constantly shifting with the movement of the waves – combined to form this paisley-effect. The diver then went in and fed the fish next to the boat so that we were able to see the fish up close. If you so desired you could snorkel, but as I am not able to swim, and I am certainly not prepared to wear a swimming costume in public, I stayed on the sun deck taking in the heat and the scenery.

The temperatures are beginning to rise, although there is still a constant breeze at the moment. I have had to move Scruffy's walk to a late afternoon spot so that we don’t both dehydrate. It is still a nice temperature for pootling about, and even walking to the shops, but not for a two-hour hike.

Those Bodhisattvas of the Earth, Mick and June, may their names be forever blessed, drove my mother back to the airport last Wednesday. She managed to get home with only a two-hour delay, which, after some people had a ten-day delay, was not too bad. I had also sent her home with gastro enteritis – sorry mum! Hopefully she is now resting and recovering out of the heat. I hadn’t thought it was very warm, but she really felt the heat, so it was a good job she didn’t decide to come in July or August.

Just before my mum left I asked her what she had enjoyed the most (obviously not the gastro enteritis). Was it perchance the beauty of the Mediterranean; or mayhap the juxtaposition of cultures; perhaps it was the majesty of the mountains; or the journey to Northern Cyprus – the options were many. However, the answer I got was: ‘the man walking his dog’! We had gone out to Protaras with some lovely friends of mine to a bar called Rockafellas where the Blues Brothers tribute act was playing. One of the tracks was ‘Walking My Dog’ and the singer took his radio mike out on to the Strip pretending to walk his dog much to the consternation of the passers- by. I am very pleased she enjoyed it, but where my cultural standards were inherited from I do not know!

I too have been resting and recovering this week. No matter how lovely the guest, just the fact of constant company drains me and it takes me a while to find my equilibrium again. I am now beginning to get back into the swing of my solitary life and I have to say life is much nicer living on your own – despite the difficulties I have in getting places, although I can’t deny how much simpler things were – and how much quicker – while my mother was here with the car. Going for water was a five minute job – as opposed to the palaver I make of it! Popping up to the 2 Euro shop in Dherynia, or to Poplife up the hill, are a matter of half an hour whenever you feel like it, rather than having to be at the whim of a very helpful (and much appreciated) friend. Still, it is my choice and I am not complaining, I continue to feel incredibly fortunate.

Speaking of which, I got talking with some tourists while my mother was here and each one of them who heard that I live here said to me ‘aren’t you lucky’. Yes I am, don’t think for a minute I am denying it – but I made my luck. I made the choices and decisions that brought me here despite the seeming impossibility of it, including the choice that I would live on barely any money. I have just enough to pay the bills and anything after that is a bonus, but I am happy with the decision I made. The quality of my life here is far beyond that which I had in the UK and my health is so much better than it has been my whole life. In comparison to money that is priceless.

What makes me smile is that they too could be this ‘lucky’ if they so wished, but I am convinced that the reality of living somewhere like this is very far from what most of them think it will be and that they would not actually enjoy it for long. Yes, I think this is a piece of paradise with the sun and the sea, but you still have to live and survive here. It is not like coming out for a fortnight’s holiday where you can abdicate all responsibility to someone else for a bit while just soaking in the beauty. Some things here are considerably harder than in the UK – incredibly little public transport for a start! The daily choice that even the poorest have in the UK is vast compared with Cyprus (although we have more than enough of everything to choose from). Here you have electricity or you don’t – you can’t pick and choose on ethical, ecological or even purely economic factors. It is a different culture as well, which is something very few people take into account. They think they can come over here and just be British (and many people do) but life is ‘sigar sigar’ here – everything is done slowly and at their own pace. (Having lived in beautiful and laidback Totnes for three years before I came here I don’t find this nearly as difficult as a lot of Brits.) There is not the focus on Health and Safety, or even basic standards here that everyone moans about in the UK – ‘political correctness gone mad’; ‘the nanny state’ – yet without these guidelines in place everyone is moaning here about cowboys and shoddy work. Make up your mind which you want and stick with it for Goodness Sake! In other areas the Cypriots are far more respectful and conscientious, for example the respect shown to the family and to their religion. If you move out here you need to be prepared to take on and accept all of these things – which some people are just not willing to do. If it is lucky that I am suited to this lifestyle then yes, I am the luckiest person alive and I will be the first to admit it.

Mind you I think I need to take on some of the Cypriot laidbackness (if there is such a word) as I still find myself getting more and more wound up with bigotry and the blatant judgementalism of people as a whole. I seem to have more and more conversations every week where I end up angry at myself for even getting involved, but as always we experience what we write about and because I have been writing about being 'Beyond Reason' in my Tao Te Ching Blog I obviously need to experience it in the everyday world as well. The quote I used there this week is one I should pay more attention to in my life. It is from the amazing Gandhi and he says: 'never try to reason with a bigot. His views were not reasoned into him and they will not be reasoned out of him.' It is about time I started listening to my own advice I think!

However, this week I am going to end with a quote from Oscar Wilde. Merely because in the pub the other day I was having a conversation, which somehow came round to Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. I was saying about having been to visit Oscar Wilde’s grave and how people had covered his tomb in lipstick kisses. The comment I received in return was – ‘but he was gay!’ My immediate reaction was that Isaac Newton was gay but that doesn’t mean that we can discard gravity, but then I realised that she meant that why would women be kissing his tomb when he was gay, so I explained that it was mainly men who left the lipstick kisses. I told her that I would give a limb to be able to write just one line in my life that would even begin to emulate the intellect and beauty of the soul of Oscar Wilde. This conversation reminded me just how much I love to read Wilde and so I am very grateful to have had it. Something he said which makes me smile in an ironic fashion is: ‘Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.’ Today, however, I am going to be self-indulgent and give you another quote just because I love him so much. This quote is dedicated to the beauty of Cyprus and to my good fortune at living within it. 'Beauty is a form of genius - is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts in the world like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark water of that silver shell we call the moon.' Gawd bless you Oscar and all who sailed in you.