On The Island

Lena’s cat Bubbles was waiting for us when we arrived home the previous night and again as soon as we opened the door in the morning, she was there again. I think she was making the most of her second home before Rosie came back.

We went to collect Rosie from Lena’s and of course she was pleased to see us but I think she treats the kennels as her second home, she is so well looked after over there. (www.willenco.com –highly recommended). As she always does she ran up the drive, ran to the terrace and tipped her water bowl upside down.

Later I went to Starlings to buy some food. Mal wanted salad as Cyprus is the only place he likes it because it all tastes. Cucumber 1tl a kilo and tomatoes 1tl a kilo and the most delicious rocket.  Yes, they still had some cherries although I think they are now at the end of the season. Grapes and figs are now in season as well. We had a lovely salad for our lunch.

In the afternoon Lena invited us over for coffee and had made an apple cake especially for us to welcome us home. That was so nice.   It is nice to be back with such nice neighbours, weather and fresh food. And of course to be back with Rosie.

Mal and I were up and packed again and headed off to Stansted. Our luggage together was 49.6kilos, so just the right weight. We had taken several books out of our hand luggage and stuffed them in Mal’s pockets but this time they didn’t weigh our hand luggage.

We think we were on CTA’s new plane and the air hostesses had a new uniform and were very pleasant. The new crew got on the plane at Istanbul in the old uniforms and miserable faces, so we are presuming the first crew had been borrowed from another airline.   The plane left 15 minutes late but the pilot made up the time and we arrived 15 minutes early and bless him, our neighbour David was waiting there for us at Ercan.

We arrived home and jumped in the pool.

Mal and I were up early and went to our local Comet to return my new camera. They agreed there was something seriously wrong with it and refunded our money, so I will have to continue using Mals as I wasn’t going to buy one in a hurry.

We packed up and drove to Biggleswade to see the twins. It started raining in the afternoon and carried on all night. The twins are lovely and so good but Scarlet didn’t like Mal to start with and her bottom lip kept going every time she looked at him but she was fine by the time we left.   We had a take away in the evening and stayed at Torin’s the night as it is close to Stansted.

A second day sorting out the caravan. It was so hot in there.  In the evening we went to Toby Carvery with Shirley and Steve. When we had finished we drove into Broadstairs. The following week was Broadstairs Folk week but we went into the Tartar Frigate where they had folk on and then watched the firework display on the beach. It was such a lovely evening, we could have been in Cyprus! People were having barbecues on the beach. Broadstairs has a connection with Charles Dickens as he visited it regularly and there is a Dickens Museum there.

I used my new camera during the evening and some of the pictures were awful and when we returned to the caravan discovered that it was making an awful grinding noise. Obviously a serious fault. It will have to go back.

We had given ourselves two days to clean the caravan. Mal is always working when he stays here and I am rarely here so it really needed a good clean. I started by taking all the net curtains down and washing them. We dumped loads of rubbish. As I was cleaning of course I was dusting and was then shocked when I looked again and even more dirt was on the surfaces than when I first started. We then realised that the combine harvester was gathering in the wheat in the field opposite and everything was covered with all the dust. The one day we decide to clean and the air was full of dust. In fact it was getting in our eyes and everywhere so we had to shut the doors and windows and it was so hot.

I also went to Tesco to buy some blueberries and cream as we have never seen them in Cyprus.

We watched ‘No Place Like Home’ on ITV in which Marion and Alan Stuart chose whether to stay in North Cyprus (in our village) or to go back to the UK. At the end of the programme, which was recorded about a year ago, because of Alan’s health, they voted to leave and return to the UK but they are still in Malatya!  Our Muhtar would be very surprised to know that he starred in the programme.

In the evening we listened to the bingo being called out in the club house….no we didn’t join them.

We left Marion and Bryan’s and called into Lakeside on the way back. We went to Ikea to see if they still had some wind breaks for us to take back to Cyprus but sadly they had sold out.  We then went to Comet to buy a new Pentax camera as my last camera broke and I had been borrowing Mal’s. The nice salesman explained to us why buying products on the internet was cheaper – apparently it’s because they are foreign imports not meant for UK use. Mal managed to get a £5 reduction and when we unpacked the box on the way back home we discovered the instruction manual was only in Japanese.

I gave Mal back his broken camera and he immediately fixed it!

A quiet night in the caravan.

Sunday 2nd August   It was the boys last morning so we had a big fry up and packed their cases ready for them to spend two weeks with their mother. Poor River didn’t want to leave us, so they said they would put on sad faces for the photo.

Sad faces before they left.  Mal and I cleared up the caravan after the boys had gone… we will miss them too.

We then drove over to see Marion and Bryan. Val and Bob had been there for the weekend. As soon as we arrived the men disappeared to the pub. When they returned we all had dinner together.