Today marks 49 years since the British handed Cyprus back to the rule of the local population. Several of the major roads in town are closed to traffic for parades, speeches and marshal band music being played over loudspeakers.
It’s quite a military affair, as Joel and I found when we set out on foot to visit the Mall of Cyprus (expensive coffee and free internet being the lure). We ran into a crowd of scores of soldiers on a main road that we had to cross, negotiation our way through barricades and past army trucks. Bunting and barbed wire have been rolled out along the road in equal measure.
The dignitaries had not arrived and speeches not begun as we walked past, so it may be unfair to judge; but it seems to us that there are far more people in the Mall than there were waiting at the focal point of the ceremony. As several Cypriots have told us, shopping is the national sport here. On the other hand, politics seems to be an equal obsession, so we may find big crowds when we try to walk home shortly.
Independence Day 1 October, 2009
Holiday round-up 22 August, 2008
You’d think that being on holiday would give you more time to keep up to date with the blog, but it doesn’t work out that way.
Part of the problem was that, after leaving Geneva for Dorset (SW of the UK) it was overcast most of the time and rained a lot of the time, so we were more occupied in keeping the kids busy than we might otherwise have been. There is just so much weather in Britain! Thank goodness for the British library system, which is one of the things we’ve missed most in Africa – apart from our couple of years in South Africa, where they Randburg Public Library in Johannesburg was our regular Saturday morning walk.
Some of our time, including Nigel’s birthday surprise meal, was spent at the Monks Yard near Ilminster in Somerset. This beautiful conversion of historic farm buildings into a conference centre, coffee bar, restaurant and office hot-desking complex is managed by Jane’s brother’s wife Becky and the boy himself, Dean, and is the business venture of Becky’s family. It’s brand new and a very exciting, if exhausting, venture for all of them.
We also spent time looking at the buy-to-let market in the south west, and met some really interesting and helpful people, including the delightful Christian couple who own Girlings, the retirement rental specialists. Christian businesses seem to come in two extremes; the ones that are so poorly-run that you wish they wouldn’t advertise their credentials, and the ones that enable their owners and staff to live out their faith in a way that gives you a new view of the kingdom of God. It was encouraging to meet a couple who genuinely seem to live in that spirit of faith-based humanitarian entrepreneurism.
On the more recreational side we watched a giant octopus playing with a Rubik’s Cube in the Weymouth Sea Life Centre, took friends for a walk on the Iron Age hill fort behind Jane’s parents’ house, and re-directed a small river on the local beach.
Most exciting for Jane and I, we became GNAS accredited archery instructors. But that’s worth a blog of its own, so I’ll tell you more about that tomorrow.
Holiday in Switzerland (3): Water 26 July, 2008
Our elemental holiday in Geneva continues on day three with a focus on water. Specifically, the Aquapark at Le Bouveret, on the mouth of the Rhone at the southern end of Lake Geneva.
It’s a high-tech experience going in; everyone gets a little Swiss watch that is actually a magnetic gate opener and controller for the locker, and which may have money charged to it to buy food inside. (Some of the most expensive burgers-and-chips you can buy, at a guess.)
Once inside, it’s all wave pools, water chutes, children’s play areas with giant buckets of water tipping over them from time to time. There’s a spiral chute that empties out into a flattish dish-shaped area on which participants whoosh round three or four times before tumbling into the hole in the middle – an experience more like being flushed down the toilet than anything else.
Needless to say, everyone has a good time for many hours. Joel manages to lose his ‘watch’, but Dad smuggles him out with a two-in-one trick at the exit barrier.
