We’ve spent the last few days just enjoying being here in lovely Cyprus…. the weather has been glorious….. blue, blue skies, hot sun and just lovely temperatures.

Bob has been doing a few light jobs around the house while we wait to get underway with our new fence along the bottom garden and renewing the watering system.

I made a batch of peach and loquat chutney. It all reduced to about 3 large storage jars but, boy, is it tasty particularly with cheese or cold meat. I have loaded the fridge with jam, marmalade, preserved lemons and now chutney with our produce for our guests to enjoy over the summer. Most of the fruit has come from the garden. If not, it’s all been local. Anyway, we hope our guests enjoy the preserves as much as I’ve enjoyed making them.

One of the nice things about our location is that hiking trails literally stretch out in all directions from our house to go east, west, north, south, up, over and across the mountain ridges. I went for a nice long walk whilst Bob was (snore) watching snooker. It was just lovely. So peaceful, just the sound of birdsong to keep me company. The trails are just lined with aromatic brush and wild herbs. Amazing smells…

Yesterday afternoon we took a break and went down to the Starlux Sinema in Karaoglanoglu to see Fall Guy starring Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt. The Starlux is such a lovely facility. Super modern, excellent screens and top audio facilities and with nice catering and plenty of parking. There are 5 screens and they all have luxury arm chairs and some have lounging couches. Anyway, we went to the 510pm show and we had the entire screen to ourselves… fantastic. The odd thing about the screenings is that all films have a one hour timing built in. At the 60 minute deadline, the film stops,the lights come on and a timer of 7 minutes comes on screen, giving you time to go for a fag, a wee, a kebab, a phone call…. or just fume….. Very much enjoyed the film Like most, shown in English with Turkish sub titles.

This morning we headed off to Kamiloglu Hospital in Kyrenia for our health checks. It cost us £116 each. This covers about 25 blood related tests, urine tests for kidney, bladder and blood functions, fecal tests, ultrasounds of the chest, abdomen and pelvic body spaces scanning kidneys, uterus, abdomen etc, chest x-ray, mammogram and cervical smear (for me), ECG… we go back in about 10 days to go through the results with various specialists.

We got home late lunchtime , really starving. Had been unable to eat or drink anything other than water since last evening. Had a lovely lunch by the pool. Bob then spent the afternoon catching up on the snooker (snore) and I spent it by the pool, reading. Also snore but in a different way. Just glorious weather and surroundings…. I went in the pool. Briefly. Bit fresh still….

Tonight we had a lovely bbq and ate it out beside the pool. We count our blessings in so many ways. That we have each other and our lovely girls. That we are all (currently) healthy and happy. And that we have this lovely, lovely place to come and spend time in.