Well, Lucy and Leon’s last couple of days have been very stressful thanks entirely to Turkish Airlines. They continued their struggles with Turkish Airlines whilst juggling work and packing this morning. When they had decided to extend their stay 10 days ago , they’d rung Turkish Airlines who had agreed it was all fine and had converted their tickets to open tickets, good for 12 months. HAHAHAHAHA! As you’ll remember from yesterday’s blog, the only problem was, when the came to try and use their “open tickets” TA had somehow lost their value in the system and therefore couldn’t price them against a new ticket. This totally halted all efforts to book, despite the efforts of various of the Turkish Airlines customer service teams. This morning they resumed the long distance call wrestling match and Bob and I went out first thing and picked up their Pcr certificates from the clinic. Wow it was hot today.

Came back and got a bit of hellim brunch together before they headed off with Bob for Ercan Airport at 1120.Their tickets still unresolved, they were just praying the TA Office at the airport could sort something out. This has just reaffirmed my own determination to never again accept an open ticket offer or a certificate. Full and immediate refund it must be. Clearly airline computer systems must be in a total mess at the moment when they can’t give you a ticket price over the phone. In the end the office there also failed to be able to convert their open tickets and they had no choice but to buy 2 new tickets at 800 euro for 2. They will have to fight it out more when they get back to Dubai as clearly TA have a known issue with conversion of open tickets as its exactly what we experienced when we flew out. Absolutely disgraceful. How many more people have been affected by this glitch?

Bob had sat in the carpark for 90 minutes just in case, but he got back about 3 and we wallowed in the pool. Very hot today. Lucy and Leon boarded at 1615 for their 1645 takeoff and they taxied out….. then the pilot spotted some smoke from a field fire and went back to the terminal. No announcement. Then they sat on the plane for 2 hours. until at 715 they taxied out again…. none the wiser. And took off.

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Habibi came up at 530 and did a big hackback in the garden. He and Bob moved our weeping fig tree from the dining terrace to outside in its pot till the autumn. Then we will plant it down in the orchard. At the moment there are melon plants growing a mile a minute from it, growing from seeds in the washing up bowl water that I’ve used to water it. I think it’s too late this year for fruiting but you never know, and next year we can have them trailing across the floor of the orchard along with the gourds, several of which have germinated and plants are coming up. It’s better to be outside because it’s quite thirsty and Habibi can water it on the pool terrace whereas he can’t get on to the dining terrace when we’re not there.

So…. back on our own again for 10 days! We plan to have a good rest. Only a couple of very small jobs left to do now. We’ll have some days out as well before we have to pack. And some dinner dates coming up too. The pool is so warm now and it especially feels so lovely at night. Like a bath! We caught up on some telly, drank coffee and brandy and ate ice cream and Turkish delight.

Lucy and Leon had a mad dash through Istanbul airport but made their connection to Dubai where they will land at 2am local time. I don’t think they will ever fly Turkish Airlines again. I just hope they’ll want to come to Cyprus again!