Yesterday, we dressed in our oldest clothes and drove to Pamela’s house high in the hills above Lapta to help pick her olive crop. There was our foursome, Pamela, Susan and Jacqui. Olive picking is hot, dusty – nay filthy – sweaty work. Hence the clothing. We dragged great cloths under each tree and then set about picking into buckets. The lower branches could be picked by hand, the middle ones are picked by using rakes to pull through the branches and detach the olives into a shower which falls down onto the cloth. The upper branches are picked using the rake method with someone on a ladder.

Pamela had about 8 trees to pick, all very large, some about 100 years old. We set to it about 1030, had a coffee break and a lovely long lunch break and finished at about 330. You pick olives for oil when they are green because that is when they are juiciest, once they turn black they are drying out. We filled crates and great sacks – a large haul. Lunch was delicious, supplied by Pamela and Jacqui who had made some fabulously cheesy mini quiches.

Once we felt we’d picked as much as possible we loaded all the containers into the cars and headed up to the Karsyaka Olive Oil Factory. Everyone in the area takes their olives there. They do each batch individually so that you know the oil you get is from your olives. It generally means a bit of a wait but…. Soon enough it was our turn. You load the olives into a big hopper and they are taken up a conveyor belt in small groups to a washing hopper that gets rid of stones and debris. Thereafter they are pressed and squeezed and eventually your oil comes pouring out at the other end of the line and is decanted into large containers. These have to stand for some months to allow the oil to clear. We got about 18 litres of oil from our haul. Well worth having, especially at this year’s olive oil prices.

THE DISASTER

When we got home all hot and sweaty and dirty I jumped in the shower and Bob stripped off to have his. That’s when in one of the most sickening moments he noticed that his coin which he wears on a chain wasn’t there. The bayle was — broken – but no coin. We were totally devastated. Bob’s coin is the one that started our family tradition and I bought it for him for Xmas 1990. It is a Piece of Eight silver coin from the Atocha treasure ship that was wrecked in the Caribbean in 1622 and found and salvaged by Mel Fisher from Key West in 1985. I had contacted him in 1989 and he picked me a coin and made a lovely gold mount with a dolphin on it. It was irreplaceable in every way you can imagine. We went into the museum shop in Key West when we were there in early 2022 and they offered Bob a lot of money to sell back the coin to them. But over and above that, it has huge sentimental importance to us.

It was getting dark by then so we decided to put off searching till the next morning. Our fear was it had fallen into the hopper…..

Last night we went to eat at The Meyhane in Zehtinlik, another olive village near us. We love this restaurant particularly on a Friday or Saturday night when they have local musicians playing traditional music on folk instruments. On these nights it is absolutely packed with local people enjoying themselves, big family groups and groups of friends, and you really feel you are in Cyprus. We tried hard to put The Disaster behind us but it was an effort. Stuart drove the car because Bob was too upset to concentrate really.

You can eat one or two courses at the Meyhane but the main deal is one of the various meze options they offer. We went for the Chef’s Selection. You get about 13 cold meze, 5 hot meze and then a parade of grilled meats and Cypriot specialities, finally a massive fruit platter, bananas on a cream with nuts and honey, and baklava, then coffee. This time of the year you eat in their lovely garden under the trees with lanterns. It’s a lovely sight.

We like this meze because unlike some, you don’t get faced with it all at once. It comes in stages with gaps in between so you don’t feel quite so overwhelmed by the volume which is the effect if it comes too close together. The food was all delicious and we washed it down with some slightly sparkling dry rose wine, Bob had a raki, Stuart a beer. The price of the feast was £25 each which seemed a great deal.

Got home and turned in, restless night.