MEDITERRANEAN MEANDERINGS

12TH NOVEMBER 2010

So, as of yesterday I marked the first anniversary of my life in my own corner of paradise – and what a year it has been. However, I will come back to that later. 

Physically I am much more on form at the moment. In fact I have had a very active week. On the other hand I am still a bit behind mentally. I have had some seriously dippy moments. My new contract was sent back to me because I had not initialled the bottom pages as well as signing the last page. I sent it back with a note apologising for being so dim, only to realise after I had sent it off that I still had not signed the bloody pages. I rang Bingo Sue the other day to ask her if she had a black wig that a friend could borrow for a fancy dress party and got myself so confused by Sues that when she said Steve (her partner) had one, I asked her Steve who?, as I somehow thought I was talking to Buddhist Sue, whose first husband was called Steve and I couldn’t work out how she would know that he had a black wig after all these years. Poor Sue must have thought I had really lost it. Then my piece de resistance was when I went to lock my front door. There are two identical switches next to the front door, one is the doorbell and one is the hall light. Now it is not particularly dippy that I pressed the doorbell instead of the light, what is supremely mental is that I looked round to see who was there! I know! I should be locked up.

As I say it has been a very active week this week. On Sunday I took part in the annual sponsored walk that is in aid of helping Cancer patients in Cyprus. We walked from Pernera to Kapparis. This was organised by another Sue (Liverpool Sue) and her husband Stan and was brilliant. Mary and Owen who run the O Zone where the walk ended, and indeed so many people, put in an awful lot of hard work. We had a great day with The Insanity playing and cheap beer and food that had all been donated. They managed to raise €1600 on the day before any sponsor money has been collected in. This does raise a huge dilemma for me. As I am sure you are all aware my politics lie slightly to the left of Karl Marx when he is at his most bolshie and in theory I completely disagree with the concept of charities as I think that the Government (of whatever country) should be putting money into helping people not into weapons or other such destructive elements. It should be a person’s right to have help if they have Cancer, or any other illness. However, this is certainly not the case in Cyprus and so if we all said that then in the meantime until the Government gets its act together (by which time I shall certainly have been dead and buried for a long while) what do we do? Do we just say: sorry, you have to be the ones who suffer and just stand back and watch? Personally I can’t do that and neither can all the wonderful people around here. So, sadly the Government gets away without having to do anything again. 

For example, a couple of months ago it was brought to the attention of the ladies at the coffee morning that for all the patients in the Paralimni area there was one oxygen machine to go round. That is just astounding. My dad was on an oxygen machine for the last few years of his life and it made a huge difference to his quality of life and probably prolonged it too, if only by a few months. So, anyhoo, without any fuss they organised themselves and raised enough to buy two more (which are by no means cheap), ship them out and do it with the best possible exchange rate so that they could give the hospital the best deal. Nobody took any wages for this, everybody mucked in and gave what they could and it was all done within a matter of weeks and now there are two more people whose lives are that much easier because of them. Oxfam and the RSPCA could take a note or two out of their books. It was the same on Sunday; no one made any profit out of the day. So well done everyone. 

I have also been doing an exercise class called Zumba which is a mixture of dance and aerobics. This is good fun, but it does knacker me. Those who know me personally will know that my co-ordination is not always very good, so it can be quite amusing, but I am getting there. I have been walking Scruffy as normal and I also met up with Jenny last Saturday and we did a lovely walk with her dogs. It was lovely to see Jenny actually, as she had been working herself into the ground over the season, so I had missed her over the summer. 

We had a bit of excitement here in Kapparis on Monday night. I had just crawled into bed at about 9.00, as it is the warmest and most comfortable place to read, when there was a huge bang, which shook my flat. I am terrible – I was so snug in the duvet that I didn’t know whether I could be bothered to get up and look. I thought, it being that time of year, that it might just be a HUGE firework, either that or we were being invaded. Eventually I dragged myself out to the balcony and as I couldn’t see any plumes of smoke, or any aircraft carriers in the bay I decided I wasn’t going to worry about it for one second longer. The next morning it was in the Famagusta Gazette that someone had planted an ‘explosive device’ outside the offices of Famagusta Developers, which is just at the bottom of my road to the left. They had obviously pissed someone off. I went along to have a nose but I couldn’t see anything much and according to the Gazette they had only done minor damage to the entrance lobby. Goodness knows what was in it to make such a loud explosion and do barely any damage. Still, no-one was hurt so that is all that matters. 

So, to go back to my theme of having been here a year, I still can’t quite believe it. I am so different from the person I was when I got off that plane last year. For a start my head is no longer so far up my arse that I can lick my tonsils. I was an inveterate snob. If you hadn’t read the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam in the original Persian, or were not able to quote Shakespeare verbatim (incidentally neither of which I can do) then I looked down my nose and merely humoured you. Ok, so a bit of hyperbole there and not a very pleasant thing to admit about myself, but at its root it is true. Not only that but I was a working class snob who espoused middle class socialism. My politics have not changed in their essence and I still think The Daily Mail should be closed down as a den of iniquity, evil and propaganda, but I have changed in my attitude towards people who do not share my views. Even if they are obviously wrong! Only joking! What I have noticed is that so many of the people who spout such liberalism and tolerance so rarely practise it in real life. If they were put in a situation where someone really needs help in the flesh, right now, who may be smelly and dirty and completely down on their luck, they would cross the street and call someone else to deal with it. Of course this is also a generalization and is certainly not true of everyone and I do know some people personally of whom this is definitely not true, but they are an exception to the Middle Class rule. The people I am talking about are the ones who will tell everyone they read the Guardian or the Independent and let everyone know just how tolerant they are and yet do sod all to help a real person. On the contrary what I have learnt here is that, whilst I still disagree with so much of what is said out loud – i.e.: Enoch Powell was right; and I have to take myself out of the conversation very quickly before I cause a big argument; when it comes down to brass tacks there is no one that the same people would not actually help if they were in front of them and they needed something. 

The past year has also been the healthiest that I can remember in my whole life. Yes there have been ups and downs, but that is to be expected. The fact is, however, that I have not had infection after infection, I have not spent half of it in bed and I have not spent the majority of it crying. The sunshine is the most healing substance in the world. As I often say healing and curing are not the same thing. I am not cured. I still have in essence the same illnesses, but I am healing nicely thank you. That and living so that I can see the sea every single day without having to go anywhere is just amazing. 

I have had to accept that money will be hard to come by here for me, but my life in general is pleasant enough that going without for a few days at the end of every month is hardly a hardship. I have found such lovely and genuine people here, who have helped me to see that life is not as black and white as I like to think it is. I have also found people such as Buddhist Sue, Chris and Jenny with whom I can have more serious conversations as well as having great fun. Then there are people like Lynn (who brought me some of her beautiful homemade soup this week – delicious!) and Jonathan who look after me; of course Sandra and Pat who to some degree have adopted me and are kindness personified; Larry and Margaret who loan me their dog whenever I want to walk her; and all the people in the Pin and at the coffee morning and in the area generally who make my life nicer just by being in it. 

One more thing that Cyprus has taught me in the past year is how to appreciate what I have left behind in the UK. Especially Totnes, I possibly would never have known how much Totnes meant to me without leaving it behind. The ease of getting books, good books, at any time for a reasonable price - that is something that I did not appreciate fully. The welfare state and the NHS; the immense choice that is available to even the poorest in the UK and the knowledge that treating animals well is the norm and not something you have to fight for – these are all things I took for granted. I would say it made me appreciate my family more too, but that would be a lie, as I could not appreciate them (and my beautiful Parkin) any more than I already do.  (By the way Happy Birthday to my Mum for Monday - have a lovely day!)

So, where will the next 12 months take me? I truly have no idea. Will I still be writing this from Kapparis a year hence? We will have to wait and see and as Goethe says: ‘This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.’ All I can do is keep conquering and see where I end up.