Mediterranean Meanderings

3^rd June 2010

Well, I have to say I am getting incredibly cross with this dust cloud that seems to have enveloped us for about a month now. There have been some days that were clearer than others, but the air is thick. From my balcony today I can just about see into Varosha (the enclosed area of Famagusta) but certainly no hills are even remotely visible. According to the newspapers there is no geological reason for it at the moment and it seems to be coming from places other than the Sahara and the Atlas Mountains. The rain that I was talking about in last week’s blog did not last very long, but it left everything covered in brown sediment – there was more dust in the rain than there was water.

Cyprus is also on alert as the Pope arrives in Pafos tomorrow. I have resisted the urge to go and see him. I have a feeling there are a few things we don’t agree on, so I thought it would be politic to stay as far away as I can. I hope he gets time to go paragliding or something; it would be a shame to come all this way and not enjoy himself a bit.

I am completely borassic this week, so it is a quiet week for me, but probably just as well. The universe is normally very good – it always makes me run out of money when I need to stop. So I have been actually just resting most of this week, although I am not sure that this does not sometimes make me more tired. It is as though my body says ‘ah ha, she is allowing me some proper rest, so I will give up entirely and make the most of it!’ Still, this always gives me time to catch up with reading – there is never enough time to read as much as I want to. Something that amuses me greatly is how many people say to me: ‘I don’t know how you have so much time to read’. Apart from when I have a few days like this when reading is my lifebuoy, I only ever spend on average 2-3 hours a day reading. How many people can say that they don’t have the television on, or that they aren’t on Facebook/Twitter/the X-box (delete as appropriate), for a similar amount of time? I just use my time differently that’s all. As we are on the subject of time, something that I have been thinking about a lot since I have been in Cyprus, and considering the difference between the British attitude and the Cypriot attitude, is the old adage; ‘time is our servant, we are not servants of time.’ Maybe if we remembered this more often we would not get ourselves so stressed out by trying to do everything right now this second!

Something I read yesterday and I just wanted to share because it made me laugh was the origin of the term ‘berk’; as in ‘what a complete berk’. Such mild-mannered people use this term thinking that it is just a minor term of offense, but I wonder how many of them would continue to use it knowing that it comes from the rhyming slang ‘Berkshire Hunt’. I will leave you to rhyme away until you get the correct term it is replacing and realise it is the last word that most of these people would want to use. Made me smile anyway!

On Sunday we had a meeting in Nicosia and Buddhist Sue had a great idea – why didn’t we leave the car where we had parked it and walk over the border to the North for the afternoon. I have spent very little time in Nicosia, apart from at the meetings, and so had not seen the beautiful Old Town. Ghislaine guided us past the archaeological dig and through the weaving streets which are full of Neo-classical buildings in warm sandstone. It is easy to forget that a modern western city lies only seconds away. It is how I imagined an Eastern Mediterranean town to be. In the middle of a street a checkpoint is set up and you fill out your form, show your passport and walk across. We found a little cafe under some trees and sat and had a cold beer in the sunshine, whilst the old men played backgammon and the younger ones chatted to girls or sat on their mopeds. Cyprus is now so westernised it is lovely to find these small vignettes of Mediterranean life every so often. I truly hope they don’t disappear forever.

We didn’t leave Nicosia until late and so Sue dropped me off at the Barley Mow on the way back. She came in to meet everyone and as she and Bingo Sue were chatting together I found myself wondering what the collective noun is for a gathering of Sues. The best I could come up with was a susurration of Sues, or perhaps more appropriately, a Full House of Sues.

Scruffy, or Scruffadopoulous as I seem to keep calling her (I think I have been living in Cyprus too long!) and I have had to cut down our walk to about an hour now. We don’t go until late afternoon, but even so it is too hot for trekking about. I haven’t been to the shops in days as early mornings are my absolute worst time and so by the time I get myself together it is too hot to go traipsing off and then carry stuff home again. If I could only find somewhere local that I could do my shopping at about 2am that would be perfect. This is my best time of day and when I am feeling most energetic – which is probably yet another reason why I live alone! I am not sure that Orfanides are going to become a 24 hour supermarket, and I would probably be up in arms at even the suggestion of it, so I will just have to get my act together. I hope there is nothing wildly exciting sitting in my PO Box as the chances of me walking up that hill to Paralimni and back at the moment are nil. Saying that, when I am sitting around in the flat I am still not that warm, even though when I go to pick something up it is hot to the touch and so I know it must be quite warm. I wish I could sort my thermostat out as it is most inconvenient. If I have been sitting around for a bit my body doesn’t care if it is 50°, I am still chilly unless I am in a direct source of heat. Conversely I only have to make the slightest exertion even at -10° and the effort and the pain turn me into a disgusting sweating mass. All I can say is that when I made the decision to come back and learn whatever it is that I am learning in this life I must have been very, very drunk and, not to put too fine a point on it, a complete berk!

When I was walking with Scruffy this week I noticed that the constant chirruping of the cicadas sounds very much like a time bomb. This obviously set me to wondering whether anyone who had ever been left to hear a time bomb ticking down had suddenly stopped and said: ‘why, how beautiful, don’t you think it sounds just like the chirruping of cicadas on a hot summer’s day’. It is unlikely we will ever know as the chances are they wouldn’t be around to tell us the story.

On Saturday I did something that I have not done for years – I listened to the Eurovision Song Contest. I have to say I will probably not do this again for many more years, but it was mildly amusing. The Greek entry, ‘Opa’, made me laugh because it reminded me of Shaggy, the taxi driver. When you are in his car he flashes the lights on and off as though you are in a disco and shouts ‘Opa’ and ‘Bomba’ a lot. Maybe next year Cyprus should just put Shaggy in as our entry instead of a Welsh lad. It would be a bit more authentic anyway – whatever you may think of the song itself it did not seem to represent Cyprus and surely that should be the point of it rather than everyone singing in English. Still that is an old argument so I will leave it there.

Another programme I listened to on the radio this week was ‘The John Bonham Story’ on Radio 6. It was a real treat for me, as obviously all the background tracks were Zeppelin. What I find so amazing though is that although I have heard all these tracks thousands of times, whenever I hear the first note of say ‘Babe I’m Gonna Leave You’ or ‘Kashmir’ to name two at random, the surge of emotion that wells in my solar plexus is vast. I monitored myself and found that without fail a smile came to my lips as I knew what was going to follow and how visceral it would make me feel. As it was about John Bonham they obviously focused on the rhythm and bass aspect of the music and so my all time favourite ‘Dazed and Confused’ came in for scrutiny. The low, deep thrum of John Paul Jones’ bass line that opens that song (I just mis-typed that as snog – Freudian or what!) actually makes your stomach ache with the pain and the passion, then the high note of Mr. Page’s guitar whines over the top in striking contrast, just waiting for the plaintive wail of Percy Plant to join in, followed by Bonham’s shamanic drumming which pounds at the core of your being. Heaven, sheer, absolute and utter heaven. Then, you know me, I sobbed my eyes out as his son and the other band members discussed how they had been affected by his death 30 years ago. I am pathetic!

So, to end today I am going to talk about the futility of grudges. I have never seen the point of them. All that energy wasted when there is so much else to use it on. However, since I have moved out here I have noticed that the air is thick, not just with dust, but with bitterness and resentment. People are just not prepared to let go. Is this just a Mediterranean mindset? I don’t think it can be as I see just as many of the Ex-pats stewing away in their own juices. Get angry by all means – anger is a necessity – but why then hold on to it and take it out to polish day after day. The people we hold in our hearts with nothing but bitterness have no idea at all that we are doing this. They are unharmed by it, but we are eaten away constantly with the cancer of resentment gnawing at our guts. There is absolutely no need to have that person in your life if you don’t like them, but all the time you are holding them in bitterness they will never leave your life and they win, again and again. Let us throw out vendettas and jihad; acrimony and animosity and instead put all that energy into something worthwhile. As Malachy McCourt so wisely says: ‘Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.’ So, all you lovely people who have taken the time to read these meanderings and musings, try taking the antidote to that poison today, just for a short time and see how much relief you feel.