We got back to our house on Wednesday late afternoon, after spending two weeks sailing in Turkey.  It was so good to be back again and Marion had been there and prepared the house for us after our guests had departed in the morning.  I hope they had a lovely holiday too, which I believe they did.

We had stopped at the supermarket on the way and stocked up with some food and our first job was to get that put away before everything melted in the heat.  It was a nice surprise to find that our guests had left us some goodies!  Amongst other things, some Cadbury’s Chocolate Fingers!!!!!! Naughty indeed!  We always do that too.  I mean, leave unopened or in-date food in the fridge or cupboard for visitors.  I am always so disappointed when you rent a place and you open the kitchen cupboard to find it empty of even salt and pepper.  So, thank you to our visitors, again.

We went diving a few days ago with a friend, Mike, at a wreck site off Oris Beach which is literally just down the hill from us. He took us to DP Diving there, a very nice dive shop. We generally use the place on Escape Beach but I think we’ll definitely be returning to DP. Just 5 minutes off shore is the wreck of a Turkish coastguard vessel, deliberately sunk just over 18 months ago. Its not huge – 35m long – but very interesting with much to swim through and explore. She sits upright, with 36m to the bottom and the top in about 24m. Interesting rigging and masts. Although she’s only been down a short time there is already a lot of growth on her. A great dive.

I had a load of washing too after weeks without being able to do any, so got that underway.  Again, we always have washing detergent and fabric conditioner in the villa cupboards.  Most people dont want to spend their holiday washing clothes, but it’s all available if they need to.  Everything dries quickly in this climate.

I was just sorting that out when I got a message from some friends, Pamela and Eddie, saying they were going to dinner at the Punjab restaurant, did we want to join if we didn’t feel like cooking.  Well.… we didn’t much feel like cooking so it took about a second to respond yes to that.  The keyboard on my phone got hot, I typed so fast.   Some other friends, Deborah and David, are also here in Cyprus and they were going too, so we picked them up on our way.

The Punjab is a nice restaurant in Lapta, plenty of outside seating.  It’s Pakistani cuisine, rather than Indian, very nice meat dishes.  I had a delicious lamb stew, very spicy.  We didn’t know till we got there but on Wednesday nights the Punjab has entertainment.  On Wednesday, it was a singer called Katie B.  I was very unsure at first, but she was absolutely brilliant as soon as she started to sing.  It was very much a SuBo moment.  She gave two long sets of songs and people were dancing.  A great night out and we will look for her again.

Thursday we went down to Kyrenia to run some legal errands at the electricity board (Kibtek) and our lawyers.  Our lawyer is a useless lump who we will never use again but he holds our Cyprus wills and we wanted photocopies for our files.  True to form it was a waste of time as no one there could give us them.  “Come back tomorrow”.  You have to make wills here when you buy a property.

Came back home and spent some time in the pool. The water is a comfortable 29C now and just right.  I’d bought some new pool noodles and float rings for the season.  It’s always nice to have some starters even though guests generally buy their own more elaborate ones at the supermarket or Mr Pound.  You can get all sorts, even slices of pizza and watermelon!!  We also have a cupboard full of children’s water toys: armbands, swimvests, little rings and floats, water pistols, buckets and spades.  We get a lot of children visiting in the school holidays.

An early dinner and we were off to Ercan airport to pick up our dear friend, Joe.  His flight was bang on time and he was impressed with Turkish Airlines as we always are.  They manage to feed you a hot meal on both legs of the flight included in the ticket price, even on the very short hop down from Istanbul.  Far more than BA do on the way to Larnaca.  We got home and sat out on the terrace with drinks and chatted till half past one in the morning!!!!  So good to have him here.  It’s his first visit so we’ll no doubt be out and about over the next 8 days.  We are also planning a bbq next week to introduce him to friends who also go to Goa in the winter.