A day of maintenance!  We drove into Kyrenia first thing for Bob’s health check.  It really is a good deal here, well worth doing.  For about £70, he gets examined by a doctor, a chest x-ray, an abdominal ultrasound, Electrocardiogram, Blood sugar test, BUN (kidney) test, Creatinine (kidney) test, Uric Acid test, Sodium test, Potassium test, AST and ALT tests (liver function), T Cholesterol, HDL Cholesterol, LDL Cholesterol, Triglyceride, Cholesterol Risk Factor test, Complete blood count, sedimentation test, Stool Occult Blood Search (bowel cancer), Urine test, TSH, T.PSA (prostate cancer).  He goes back in 3 days to sit down with the consultants to go through the results of all these tests and he gets the results in an excellent document which can be translated into English to go back to the UK if necessary.  Even without translation, it’s easy to understand as for each test, they print the normal range, then give your result and then you get a green, orange or red mark highlighting where you stand on the scale.  Very easy to understand.  We think it’s well worth doing every year or so.  The women’s version which I had last year contains even more tests including a blood test for uterine cancer.  I have put the brochures on our information table in the hallway.  You just ring up to book and they have two lovely English ladies who escort you around the various testing departments.

After that we stopped for breakfast at a little bakery café near us in Alsancak called Betty Moon.  Very cute.  I had a Turkish Breakfast and Bob had a cheese toastie.  Spotless place.

Then Bob dropped me at the hairdressers at Amore in Lapta for 1130.  I was having a haircut and colour with highlights.  Wow.  Talk about a precision job.  I thought I would be there for maybe 2 hours so told Bob to come back for me at 130 – he went off to the Turkish barbers for a haircut and pampering (see….  told you it was that sort of day).  Well….. this lovely hairdresser took ages over my hair, painting on the colours and then treatments….  I rang Bob at 2 and told him not to come till 230 but even that was too soon,  Once the colour was finished, he then started cutting and that must have taken an hour such was the precision of the scissor work.  It reminded me of what a hair cut used to be like at a good salon back in the 80s…. our hairdressers seem to work much faster now.  I suppose they have to in order to keep enough bums on seats and keep prices affordable.  Anyway, I finally emerged at 315, 4 hours after I went in.  Have to say, I am very pleased with it indeed.  It was looking terrible this morning.  Poor guy had his work cut out!!!!!

I needed a rest after all that.  So, came back and lay down in the cool.  Very hot today.  Still about 30 during the day and scarcely less in the evening.

Tonight we went to another Royal British Legion charity event: this one was a Taste of the Mediterranean dinner at a restaurant on the Lapta seafront called The Blue Song.  The RBL had taken the whole restaurant and there was excellent live music, a buffet dinner and very good chat and company.  We sat on long tables with our friends Pamela and Eddie, David and Deborah and Mike and Linda.  All of whom have been to Goa and hopefully will come again one year.  The food was pretty good for somewhere around a fiver per head and we had a great night.  There was a raffle at the end and Bob won a bottle of Tia Maria and I won a bottle of gin.  Very unexpected – we never win anything normally.

We really enjoy these charity events, they are always good fun and your contribution makes a bit of difference.  There are all sorts throughout the year from dinners, concerts, black tie balls, garden parties, picnics, walks.  All in a good cause.  I must get a list and put them on the FB page so that guests can choose to buy tickets if they want.