Good grief! I have really let things go here! I have found that work is extremely demanding of one’s time here and that it is necessary to create time for oneself and the family, otherwise it’s all too easy to go a tour and do absolutely nothing!
So, by way of a recap on the past year then, we 'toughed out’ the winter; well OK, so it wasn’t cold by UK standards, but it did seem quite chilly to us! We survived that and then got into the summer routine of visiting beaches etc.
We had a good friend in the shape of Mr Lucien Simon the world renowned artist come and stay with us. Well, when I say ‘world renowned', I of course mean that we know him! He had a good time here I think and we certainly enjoyed having him.
Next, we had The departure of our dear friends the Walkers to contend with and that genuinely did hit quite hard at all areas of the family, we were very sad to see them leave indeed! We got through that stage and life went on.
The summer was a mixed bag; visiting friends at the other (for us nicer) side of the island, sight-seeing generally and during the hottest month, that of August we went to Slovakia to visit friends and relatives there. Elena and the children went first at the start of the month and I, gathering all the annual leave I could muster left mid August to join them there.
It was lovely to see people we had not seen for so long and meet new additions to the family that we had not yet seen, as well as to escape the full on heat of an August in Cyprus!
For the first time, we even managed to have a couple of days away in the Tatra mountain region and to catch up with our friends the Jones’ who had demobbed from the Army to settle there. Here Kyle and I got the opportunity to take to the air on tandem for the first time in Slovakia, thanks very much to Mark for that!
Of all the times we have been to Slovakia I am deeply disappointed that we have not really done much to explore the country as thoroughly as I would have liked. That is something that we are hoping to rectify this year, when we visit again!
The remainder of the year was taken up with touring here and there, we met up with another friend of mine from a previous employment, Richie and his lovely family. We stayed up in the Troodos area at a lovely guest house called Themis GH, and all visited Kykkos Monastery together. Elena, the kids and I went up to Kaledonia waterfalls, where Kyle and Lara enjoyed laying in the pools.
In September we went to Limassol for a night to visit the Wine Festival, which it must be said does tend to be more of a kebab and food fest than anything else, but then that is not such a terrible thing!
I was working over Christmas and New Year I was working, but we managed to eke out some pleasant afternoons out etc with friends. On Christmas morning we went to Famagusta beach with fiends, where we had a little swim, threw a frisbee and drank a glass of Champagne, something I suppose we would not have been doing in the UK, so all is not so bad really.
Since then, we have pretty much been waiting for the weather to turn warm and looking forward to more days on the beach and exploring the island a little more. We will also probably try to arrange a trip to Istanbul, somewhere none of us have been to before, so watch this space for more on that.
I really do have to make sure it is not so long before I update these pages again, please bear with me and I will try to make it so.
Thanks for reading, I hope to find more to write about soon, until then, happy times all, whatever you do!
