Posts
Just very quickly.
Work has been hectic, the last few weeks. November is a busy month anyway, with the run-up to the Christmas programme, plus the exhausting World Travel Market. I promptly went and added to the demands on me by adding one of my own and signing up for NaNoWriMo. I didn't "win" it, but I'm 36,000 words into a new story, which I wouldn't have begun at all if I hadn't decided to try this. So that's not bad for someone who's been fairly run off her feet.
I've also done most of my Christmas shopping and seen some excellent ballet and dance and a very good (if sad) play, and completed a couple of small projects at work, as well as doing all the day-to-day sales things.
On Friday I finally reached my longed-for spell of annual leave, the one that was postponed from September. I really am very tired, and I went to pieces rather on Saturday; did virtually nothing except play with the kittens and go to the laundrette, and had a nap in the afternoon like a convalescent.
And so to today, and packing a suitcase, for tomorrow at silly o'clock I am off to Cyprus for a week. Holiday! It's warm and sunny out there and I have a bathing costume, a couple of fat novels and a couple of notebooks. Bliss. Have a good week!
Showing posts with label Cyprus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cyprus. Show all posts
Monday, 1 December 2014
Wednesday, 12 December 2012
December weather arrives, I swear, escape disaster, and sing in public
Paphos was warm. Not outright hot, except for the first day (my birthday - what bliss to swim in the sea, sunbathe with a good book and eat a large banana split in the sunshine, in early December!), but the kind of warmth where one can stroll and relax and sightsee wearing jeans and a tee-shirt and a pair of sandals. A couple of days were sunny, a couple were overcast, one was rainy (with a spectacular thunderstorm), and one was bright but very, very windy. Not bad for December.
But shortly after I got back to the UK, the winter weather arrived here, with a huge wallop of thick white frost and temperatures that have stayed below zero all day. Sigh. At least it didn't do that in Cyprus.
Coming home, last Saturday evening, I found a note stuck to my bedroom door saying "The washing machine flooded, some water went under your door, hope everything's okay". Not a good thing to return to. I unlocked and opened the door with a sinking heart, and saw a massive dried-out tide-mark about four feet into the room, and I stood there clutching the handle of my suitcase and swearing like a marine. A very angry marine with Tourettes.
I could see at once that the big canvas bag I had at the end of my bed, with all my spare bedding stored in it, had borne the brunt of it, but short of turning out I had no way of knowing how much further it had spread under the bed - & into all the stuff like paintings and electrical goods, and all the pictures for my 2013 calendar, that I have stored there. It was late and I was tired and cold and I just couldn't face it, so I went to bed and slept - surprisingly well, which shows I was tired - above who-knew-what.
But the gods were on my side. When I gritted my teeth next morning, and shifted the wet bag of sheets and towels to look behind it, I found one soaked shoebox containing my least-favourite pair of sandals (not the end of the world if they never recover), and a second damp shoebox containing photos (pics on old-fashioned photographic paper are pretty salvageable if separated quickly and air-dried). And everything else was fine. Basically, the linen bag had sopped all the water up and held it like a sponge. And since Sunday was a cold but dry day, with a good breeze, I was even able to get the sheets and towels dried off. They're now stacked in the corner, smelling a bit funny but otherwise okay, waiting to be washed and dried again properly over the next week or so.
Someone up there must like me. What's more, we didn't need a plumber - the leak happened because my flatmate had taken out the washing machine filter to clean it and put it back upside down.
What else? Since I got back, I've been practising for the carol service, chugging in to work through the freezing fog, and starting to type up "Gold Hawk" in the evenings.
The carol service was today. It went well and had a lovely atmosphere. I think I had got my head round "Rejoice and be merry!" and the lovely piece of Bach, and I survived the Irish carol (largely by piping right down and just relaxing into the very beautiful male voices that were booming away behind me like a granite wall of sound), but I never did get the hang of the horribly complicated arrangement of "There is a flower". And while I was away in Cyprus the others had learned parts for all the congregation carols; so I was left rumbling along in my usual way, just singing the melody an octave down, and feeling rather out-on-a-limb while everyone else harmonised around me. That kind-of sums up my singing career, come to think of it.
I do feel Christmas is coming, now, though. Nothing like a good dose of carols and readings to remind one of that.
And O, fan-girl-happiness, my Dvd of "The Bourne Legacy" has arrived. Along with David Bintley's new "Cinderella" for BRB, which was a birthday present from my brother Stephen ("legacy" is my birthday present from me). So I have a couple of pleasant nights in to look forward to - one of ballet and one of lechery...
But shortly after I got back to the UK, the winter weather arrived here, with a huge wallop of thick white frost and temperatures that have stayed below zero all day. Sigh. At least it didn't do that in Cyprus.
Coming home, last Saturday evening, I found a note stuck to my bedroom door saying "The washing machine flooded, some water went under your door, hope everything's okay". Not a good thing to return to. I unlocked and opened the door with a sinking heart, and saw a massive dried-out tide-mark about four feet into the room, and I stood there clutching the handle of my suitcase and swearing like a marine. A very angry marine with Tourettes.
I could see at once that the big canvas bag I had at the end of my bed, with all my spare bedding stored in it, had borne the brunt of it, but short of turning out I had no way of knowing how much further it had spread under the bed - & into all the stuff like paintings and electrical goods, and all the pictures for my 2013 calendar, that I have stored there. It was late and I was tired and cold and I just couldn't face it, so I went to bed and slept - surprisingly well, which shows I was tired - above who-knew-what.
But the gods were on my side. When I gritted my teeth next morning, and shifted the wet bag of sheets and towels to look behind it, I found one soaked shoebox containing my least-favourite pair of sandals (not the end of the world if they never recover), and a second damp shoebox containing photos (pics on old-fashioned photographic paper are pretty salvageable if separated quickly and air-dried). And everything else was fine. Basically, the linen bag had sopped all the water up and held it like a sponge. And since Sunday was a cold but dry day, with a good breeze, I was even able to get the sheets and towels dried off. They're now stacked in the corner, smelling a bit funny but otherwise okay, waiting to be washed and dried again properly over the next week or so.
Someone up there must like me. What's more, we didn't need a plumber - the leak happened because my flatmate had taken out the washing machine filter to clean it and put it back upside down.
What else? Since I got back, I've been practising for the carol service, chugging in to work through the freezing fog, and starting to type up "Gold Hawk" in the evenings.
The carol service was today. It went well and had a lovely atmosphere. I think I had got my head round "Rejoice and be merry!" and the lovely piece of Bach, and I survived the Irish carol (largely by piping right down and just relaxing into the very beautiful male voices that were booming away behind me like a granite wall of sound), but I never did get the hang of the horribly complicated arrangement of "There is a flower". And while I was away in Cyprus the others had learned parts for all the congregation carols; so I was left rumbling along in my usual way, just singing the melody an octave down, and feeling rather out-on-a-limb while everyone else harmonised around me. That kind-of sums up my singing career, come to think of it.
I do feel Christmas is coming, now, though. Nothing like a good dose of carols and readings to remind one of that.
And O, fan-girl-happiness, my Dvd of "The Bourne Legacy" has arrived. Along with David Bintley's new "Cinderella" for BRB, which was a birthday present from my brother Stephen ("legacy" is my birthday present from me). So I have a couple of pleasant nights in to look forward to - one of ballet and one of lechery...
Friday, 30 November 2012
Science 2, opera nil
Last night; Natural History Museum Annual Science Lecture by
Professor Sir Martin Rees.
Wednesday night; Late night opening at the Science Museum.
Tuesday night; Calixto Bieto’s “Carmen” at the ENO.
Hmm.
It isn’t fair of me to say “Opera nil”, actually, as it was
a reasonably competent performance. But
it wasn’t much more than that (except when one particular singer was on
stage - more of that anon!).
Calixto Bieto has
this reputation as a shocker and a bit of a sex-orgy-man, but there was
relatively little shock and almost no simulated sexual behaviour to be seen; we
got one male nude, dancing about slightly feyly, and some fake fellatio,
tastefully obscured behind a parked car (it’s a modern dress production, in
case you’re thinking “Cars? - in nineteenth century Seville?”). But the real problem was that, all matters of taste aside,
it was basically rather an uninspired production, and way, way too bl**dy busy.
Busy-ness on stage is becoming a bit of a bugbear of mine, I
have to admit. There was so much charging around, waving of arms
and brandishing of stuff and rushing hither and thither; it was confusing and
irritating. I don’t want the music to be
drowned by forty extras running about and stamping arrhythmically in army
boots. I don’t want to have masses of
distracting background activity. I don’t
want bizarre things happening on stage, at least not if they are pointless things
that mean nothing. If they have a point,
I’ll give them fair consideration on their merits. But if they are completely extraneous and
incoherent, they just piss me off.
Why, for example, in this production, do the gypsy smugglers
put their child to bed on the bonnet of their car, and not on one of the
seats as anyone sane would do? And why do they push their car everywhere? There’s already been a car driven across the
stage by that point, and plenty of raucous noise, at times covering the music
entirely. So it can’t be because the
engine doesn’t work, since it clearly does, and it can’t be because the engine
will drown the music, since clearly no-one in the production team cares. So why? It doesn’t clarify or illuminate the action,
or create a startling visual metaphor, or anything;
it just looks stupid.
There is one
great moment; just at the point when I was beginning to give up hope of a
single fresh idea, the huge bull silhouette of the iconic Osborne’s Sherry
hoarding that had dominated the set for Act 3 was suddenly thrown down and
dismembered by a team of cheerful workmen during the introduction to Act
4. As a metaphor both for the coming
bullfight and the coming destruction of Carmen herself, this was a fabulously
effective bit of staging; simple, dramatic, clear, striking – everything the
rest of the production, frankly, had not been.
On the plus side, the orchestra played their socks off; one
would never have thought this was some of the most clichéd music on the planet,
it sounded so fresh and potent. On the
singing side, things were patchier. Ruxandra
Donose sounded good (I like a Carmen with a nice deep growl), but isn’t much of
an actress, and wasn’t helped by a production that saw Carmen as completely
two-dimensional. The Don José shouted a
lot, and I’m afraid the Escamillo wasn’t terribly exciting either.
Anyway, I can’t really complain, since the only real reason
I had gone was to hear Elizabeth Llewellyn in action again, and she at least
did not disappoint. Oh boy, did she not
disappoint!
The more I hear of her, the more convinced I am that she is
on her way to being one of the great singers of our time. A lot of Micaëlas go all out for the “unworldly-innocent-girl”
thing, and end up acting dumb and sounding bland. Miss Llewellyn’s singing has enough heft and
plangency to make Micaëla sound like a real, three-dimensional, thinking
person, yet also has the unerring sweetness that is so vital for the character. There’s no discernible break in her voice,
she soars into the top notes as if they were the easiest thing in the world,
she is both lyrical and dramatic, and the timbre of her voice makes the hairs
on the back of my neck prickle up. And she’s beautiful, and she can act. The perfect package.
But the production overall just didn’t have anything much to
offer me. It wasn’t shocking, except for
being shockingly unexciting. Each time
Miss Llewellyn came on, the whole thing went through the roof – she has the
same kind of absolutely committed engagement on stage as Simon Keenlyside or
Sarah Connolly, so that one is simply riveted to her from the moment she
appears. But Micaëla isn’t around very
much, and the rest of the time I’m afraid it was all basically rather dull.
Which the science events were not.
Wednesday, I went along to the Science Museum Late largely
to support the Dipgeek, who was one of the semi-finalists in a kind of
public-speaking rally for wannabe science communicators. To my indignation, she was only the runner-up,
despite being easily the best speaker. I
don’t say that just because I’m prejudiced in favour of my friends, by the way
(although obviously I am!). The winner
was a scarily bubbly lass who gave a terribly jokey talk that was clearly aimed
at kids – to an adult audience. I guess
I don’t like being talked down to, even when the talk is about something I know
b*gger-all about (stem cell research, in this case). Anyway, as far as I can understand it this
means the Dipgeek may yet make it to the final, which is in April and clashes
with a concert featuring Nikolai Lugansky playing Tchaikovsky 1 at the Festival
Hall. Aargh! Support friend, or support Lugansky? Friend or pianohunk? For that matter, friend, or Tchaikovsky at
his most passionate and dramatic?
Aargh...
The rest of Wednesday evening I mooched in the Science
Museum, enjoying the late-night party atmosphere; had a glass of shiraz, amused
myself playing with all the push-the-button, watch-it-explode hands-on stuff
one normally can’t get near for screaming kids, and went on the Apollo Launch
simulator thingy, which turned out to be at one and the same time both slightly
cheesy and one of the most
exhilarating things I’ve done in ages.
Last night I met Jane for a pre-birthday treat of a crêpe
and a lecture on cosmology. Professor
Sir Martin Rees looks like an elderly sparrowhawk and is a terrific speaker who
can make the most mind-boggling stuff sound comprehensible, even to a total
layperson like me. He’s the Astronomer
Royal (I didn’t know we still had one!) and as science communicators go I don’t
think they get better than this. I
haven’t a hope of summing up his talk, but it was witty, fascinating and
thought-provoking, and illustrated with some excellent slides - images from the
Hubble Space Telescope, computer simulations of galaxies crashing into one
another and so on.
Today I had a fairly busy day at work, and this evening I am doing
my packing, eating one of those slightly-odd “use everything up” suppers, and
trying to get a couple of hours’ sleep before getting up in the wee small hours
to take a night bus to Victoria Station, and a night train to Gatwick Airport,
and my flight to Paphos and the joys of brandy sours and good Cypriot food,
fresh sea air, and hopefully some sunshine on my birthday...
Friday, 16 November 2012
Busy happy bee...
It's all go. I love it when it's all go; at least until I fall apart with tiredness. Haven't reached that stage yet, though.
Finished writing "Gold Hawk", first draft, and have begun on revisions. Went to a terrific Royal Ballet triple bill and a terrific play. Went to the first rehearsal for the Kew Christmas choir. Had a blood sample taken (actually that wasn't much fun, but then it never is; c'est la vie). Booked a week in Cyprus for my birthday. Discovered that the delicious vegetarian dish called Civilised Swede is better if you don't put it through the blender. Had a cool idea at work and got the go-ahead to work on it (to start with it involves compiling a large spreadsheet, which is boring boring boring, but I hope it will be worthwhile in the end).
And I've got on fine so far with the "500 calories a day, 2 days per week" diet. I'm finding it's surprisingly easy to make it work and it doesn't lead to horrible feelings of deprivation. I was very happy to see this post on Helena Halme's blog, outlining exactly the same eating system and giving some useful tips to make it work. Clearly I have a way to go, but unlike every other diet I've ever tried I am not already thinking "wtf am I doing, life is too short for this misery..." So am hopeful, for now.
The ballet was a mixed bill of new + fairly-new pieces by wunderkinds Liam Scarlett, Wayne McGregor and Christopher Wheeldon. Three fantastic young choreographers, all at the top of their game. Three fantastic modern-but-deeply-rooted ballets; each one abstract but with a core of emotional sincerity; each with a fine pas de deux, or a series of them, as the central image. The middle item in particular, a revival of McGregor's best piece "Infra", absolutely knocked my socks off. And a host of my favourite dancers were in action the night I went. Good to see the RB get off to a fine start this season, then!
The play was the revival of "Constellations", transferring from the Royal Court to the dinky little Duke of York's Theatre in St Martin's Lane. Wow. A really fascinating, thought-provoking play, both funny and deeply moving - but moving without being simply press-your-buttons-emotive. I'm still toying with it in my mind and taking delight in remembering the skilful and touching performances of Rafe Spall and Sally Hawkins. It's a gift for the actors, though I'm sure it would be horribly tricky to learn! Have a dream US cast in mind, of course! >sigh<
Choir practice went well, and it looks as though I'll spend the carol service in my usual state of nervous tension, wondering if I can keep to my own vocal line and not digress up into the soprano line (which does sound v odd in an alto) or down to join the tenors (which seems to take them aback badly).
And feeling really rather happy and excited about making steady headway on the latest magnum opus. I'd like to finish revisions before I go to Paphos if possible, so that I can relax and do s*d all for a week; just walk and swim and look at archeological sites, and drink brandy sours!
Finished writing "Gold Hawk", first draft, and have begun on revisions. Went to a terrific Royal Ballet triple bill and a terrific play. Went to the first rehearsal for the Kew Christmas choir. Had a blood sample taken (actually that wasn't much fun, but then it never is; c'est la vie). Booked a week in Cyprus for my birthday. Discovered that the delicious vegetarian dish called Civilised Swede is better if you don't put it through the blender. Had a cool idea at work and got the go-ahead to work on it (to start with it involves compiling a large spreadsheet, which is boring boring boring, but I hope it will be worthwhile in the end).
And I've got on fine so far with the "500 calories a day, 2 days per week" diet. I'm finding it's surprisingly easy to make it work and it doesn't lead to horrible feelings of deprivation. I was very happy to see this post on Helena Halme's blog, outlining exactly the same eating system and giving some useful tips to make it work. Clearly I have a way to go, but unlike every other diet I've ever tried I am not already thinking "wtf am I doing, life is too short for this misery..." So am hopeful, for now.
The ballet was a mixed bill of new + fairly-new pieces by wunderkinds Liam Scarlett, Wayne McGregor and Christopher Wheeldon. Three fantastic young choreographers, all at the top of their game. Three fantastic modern-but-deeply-rooted ballets; each one abstract but with a core of emotional sincerity; each with a fine pas de deux, or a series of them, as the central image. The middle item in particular, a revival of McGregor's best piece "Infra", absolutely knocked my socks off. And a host of my favourite dancers were in action the night I went. Good to see the RB get off to a fine start this season, then!
The play was the revival of "Constellations", transferring from the Royal Court to the dinky little Duke of York's Theatre in St Martin's Lane. Wow. A really fascinating, thought-provoking play, both funny and deeply moving - but moving without being simply press-your-buttons-emotive. I'm still toying with it in my mind and taking delight in remembering the skilful and touching performances of Rafe Spall and Sally Hawkins. It's a gift for the actors, though I'm sure it would be horribly tricky to learn! Have a dream US cast in mind, of course! >sigh<
Choir practice went well, and it looks as though I'll spend the carol service in my usual state of nervous tension, wondering if I can keep to my own vocal line and not digress up into the soprano line (which does sound v odd in an alto) or down to join the tenors (which seems to take them aback badly).
And feeling really rather happy and excited about making steady headway on the latest magnum opus. I'd like to finish revisions before I go to Paphos if possible, so that I can relax and do s*d all for a week; just walk and swim and look at archeological sites, and drink brandy sours!
Monday, 15 November 2010
Yawn...
Holiday now over, sigh.
Cyprus was very hot and sunny. Far from doing lots of day trips and cultural things, we spent most of our week on the beach. Not that I'm knocking a beach holiday with Mum! - hot, hot sun, sitting under palm trees, swimming in the sea, eating tahini and garlic dips, salads toppped with olives and grilled halloumi, ice cream sundaes and bags of nuts, and drinking ice-cold beers at lunch and Brandy Sours at sunset. It was gorgeous. But based on the weather forecast I'd packed light-weight trousers, cardigans and cotton shirts, and only threw in some shorts and a couple of bathing costumes for the hotel indoor pool at the last minute. I spent most of the week either in the sea in one or the other of my swimsuits, or in the shade with a cold drink, wearing the shorts and my lightest tops.
So although not quite the planned holiday, it was a lot of fun, and perfect Girl Time with my Mum. I think the completely relaxing break did her the world of good, too. It's just such a pity one has to come back to Britain in the middle of the night to a thick fog and a hard frost; a temperature drop of about 25 degrees celsius, brrr...
Cyprus was very hot and sunny. Far from doing lots of day trips and cultural things, we spent most of our week on the beach. Not that I'm knocking a beach holiday with Mum! - hot, hot sun, sitting under palm trees, swimming in the sea, eating tahini and garlic dips, salads toppped with olives and grilled halloumi, ice cream sundaes and bags of nuts, and drinking ice-cold beers at lunch and Brandy Sours at sunset. It was gorgeous. But based on the weather forecast I'd packed light-weight trousers, cardigans and cotton shirts, and only threw in some shorts and a couple of bathing costumes for the hotel indoor pool at the last minute. I spent most of the week either in the sea in one or the other of my swimsuits, or in the shade with a cold drink, wearing the shorts and my lightest tops.
So although not quite the planned holiday, it was a lot of fun, and perfect Girl Time with my Mum. I think the completely relaxing break did her the world of good, too. It's just such a pity one has to come back to Britain in the middle of the night to a thick fog and a hard frost; a temperature drop of about 25 degrees celsius, brrr...
Friday, 5 November 2010
Holiday...
The end of another busy week, and now I'm away on holiday till the fifteenth. Yay!
My regular pattern of having the week of my birthday off as annual leave has had to be discarded this year as I was planning to go away for some Serious Girls' Time with my mum and then she got landed with a hospital appointment in the middle of that week. As it's one of her eye injections and the window of opportunity for these is fairly small - they can be moved by a couple of days but no more - we had to change our plans. So last weekend I booked a trip back to Cyprus, flying out at 9am on Sunday morning. The forecast at the moment says sun, sun, sun...
I must just share the results of my latest tangle with spell-checker, though. It picked up the extra "s" I'd managed to stick on the end of "business", which was good, but then it got its teeth into some botanical names:
Pinus nigra = pin-up n*****
Heliconia rostrata = Helicon prostrate (bit tough on the Nine Muses, who are supposed to live on Helicon)
Thuja standishii = Thug sandshoe (surreal picture)
Zelkova serrata = Slovakian serrated (perhaps a kind of dragon?)
and my favourite, the beautiful Sacred Lotus, is
Nelumbo nucifera = Encumber Lucifer.
My regular pattern of having the week of my birthday off as annual leave has had to be discarded this year as I was planning to go away for some Serious Girls' Time with my mum and then she got landed with a hospital appointment in the middle of that week. As it's one of her eye injections and the window of opportunity for these is fairly small - they can be moved by a couple of days but no more - we had to change our plans. So last weekend I booked a trip back to Cyprus, flying out at 9am on Sunday morning. The forecast at the moment says sun, sun, sun...
I must just share the results of my latest tangle with spell-checker, though. It picked up the extra "s" I'd managed to stick on the end of "business", which was good, but then it got its teeth into some botanical names:
Pinus nigra = pin-up n*****
Heliconia rostrata = Helicon prostrate (bit tough on the Nine Muses, who are supposed to live on Helicon)
Thuja standishii = Thug sandshoe (surreal picture)
Zelkova serrata = Slovakian serrated (perhaps a kind of dragon?)
and my favourite, the beautiful Sacred Lotus, is
Nelumbo nucifera = Encumber Lucifer.
Monday, 7 December 2009
Home is the sailor, home from sea...
Well, I got back rather late last night and didn't get to bed till nearly one am, and my system is still on Cyprus time, so I woke up at 5.00 – ugh. But I’m back to cold, wet, British reality now. A day's work on only four hours' sleep is 'orrible, but I should sleep okay tonight...
Paphos in the off-season was peaceful and comfortable, with enough of the tourist infrastructure still operating to make a visit very pleasant. Until the last couple of days it was outright hot, with clear skies and scorching sun all day, and crisp, brisk evenings. I spent my birthday lounging on the beach with a fat novel and a picnic lunch of bread and cheese, fresh fruit, sesame pastelli and beer; I swam in the sea and lay under a palm tree coating my shoulders with factor fifteen. Swimming in the sea in December, and in Europe, too; bliss. Later I walked into the town to have a chocolate ice-cream sundae and watch the sun set over the harbour, then finished off with a thoroughly indulgent meal out at the improbably-named Viva Cyprus Steakhouse Restaurant – which in fact did some very nice traditional Cypriot vegetarian food (and steak) including decent melitzanosalata, lemony tahini dip, grilled halloumi and fried kolokithia with garlic, and a good house white…
The last couple of days the weather went off; first windy and stormy at sea, which was dramatic but put paid to the swimming, and then abruptly and spectacularly wet, with wild thunderstorms, torrential rain and all the sloping streets turning into small rivers. At least all the rain made it easier to come home. Now I have to think about Christmas cards, packing and sending parcels, getting a tree and getting it set up and decorated… and getting in some basic groceries, of course, and washing all those summery clothes that will look so incongruous on the line now.
It was a good holiday.
Paphos in the off-season was peaceful and comfortable, with enough of the tourist infrastructure still operating to make a visit very pleasant. Until the last couple of days it was outright hot, with clear skies and scorching sun all day, and crisp, brisk evenings. I spent my birthday lounging on the beach with a fat novel and a picnic lunch of bread and cheese, fresh fruit, sesame pastelli and beer; I swam in the sea and lay under a palm tree coating my shoulders with factor fifteen. Swimming in the sea in December, and in Europe, too; bliss. Later I walked into the town to have a chocolate ice-cream sundae and watch the sun set over the harbour, then finished off with a thoroughly indulgent meal out at the improbably-named Viva Cyprus Steakhouse Restaurant – which in fact did some very nice traditional Cypriot vegetarian food (and steak) including decent melitzanosalata, lemony tahini dip, grilled halloumi and fried kolokithia with garlic, and a good house white…
The last couple of days the weather went off; first windy and stormy at sea, which was dramatic but put paid to the swimming, and then abruptly and spectacularly wet, with wild thunderstorms, torrential rain and all the sloping streets turning into small rivers. At least all the rain made it easier to come home. Now I have to think about Christmas cards, packing and sending parcels, getting a tree and getting it set up and decorated… and getting in some basic groceries, of course, and washing all those summery clothes that will look so incongruous on the line now.
It was a good holiday.
Friday, 27 November 2009
Holida-ay
I'm off at the crack of dawn on Sunday for a week in Cyprus; nothing fancy, a tourist hotel in Paphos; but the temperature there at the moment is about 22-23 degrees Celsius - that's the low seventies Fahrenheit, for those like me who still shamefacedly convert temperatures to "old money" in their head.
The sun is shining over there at the moment and the humidity is low. I aim to spend my week eating tahini and grilled fish and baklava, swimming in the hotel pool, drinking cold beer, walking, birdwatching and sketching.
Have a good week, everyone!
Friday, 6 November 2009
Only tangentially relevant...
I am just finishing a lunch of something wonderful: bread, with
Delphi Fresh Aubergine Dip.
To see that picture, you have to scroll to the furthest right of the selection at the bottom of the page; this is the next to last one. Not that seeing a picture is helpful - it's pale brown goo. I just like the fact I have now learned how to do hyperlinks.
It's melitzanosalata. Quite a smooth one, and not too smokey - obviously mass-produced, so not perfect - but a pretty good substitute, for a raving philhellene stuck in damp, chilly London in November. The first bite filled me with memories of holdays in Greece. Sigh...
I bought it by accident - I thought I was getting two pots of hummous but I didn't check the labels properly and the second one was this. Now I'll be looking out for it.
Eating melitzanosalata is tangentially relevant to writing about the creative life, honestly. I won't go on about Proustian moments (this wan't quite of that order!) but anything that makes me think of Greece gives me an emotional boost, and an emotional boost always helps to keep the creative fires stoked. I think I must have been a Greek in a past life. Several past lives, even. Or maybe I just love the place anyway.
And it has reminded me with a little thrill of anticipation that I am off on holiday to Cyprus in just over three weeks time. I'll need to get out some lighter-weight clothes, and check I have some sun lotion to protect my now autumnally-pale skin. At the moment, the BBC website's weather page gives the conditions out there as being sunny, with temperatures in the mid-twenties C and low humidity. Good food and wine, sunshine and hopefully some birdwatching, wildflowers and a few ruins. And the hotel has an indoor swimming pool, so I'll get to go swimming even if the sea is cold (which it well may be). Heavenly.
Delphi Fresh Aubergine Dip.
To see that picture, you have to scroll to the furthest right of the selection at the bottom of the page; this is the next to last one. Not that seeing a picture is helpful - it's pale brown goo. I just like the fact I have now learned how to do hyperlinks.
It's melitzanosalata. Quite a smooth one, and not too smokey - obviously mass-produced, so not perfect - but a pretty good substitute, for a raving philhellene stuck in damp, chilly London in November. The first bite filled me with memories of holdays in Greece. Sigh...
I bought it by accident - I thought I was getting two pots of hummous but I didn't check the labels properly and the second one was this. Now I'll be looking out for it.
Eating melitzanosalata is tangentially relevant to writing about the creative life, honestly. I won't go on about Proustian moments (this wan't quite of that order!) but anything that makes me think of Greece gives me an emotional boost, and an emotional boost always helps to keep the creative fires stoked. I think I must have been a Greek in a past life. Several past lives, even. Or maybe I just love the place anyway.
And it has reminded me with a little thrill of anticipation that I am off on holiday to Cyprus in just over three weeks time. I'll need to get out some lighter-weight clothes, and check I have some sun lotion to protect my now autumnally-pale skin. At the moment, the BBC website's weather page gives the conditions out there as being sunny, with temperatures in the mid-twenties C and low humidity. Good food and wine, sunshine and hopefully some birdwatching, wildflowers and a few ruins. And the hotel has an indoor swimming pool, so I'll get to go swimming even if the sea is cold (which it well may be). Heavenly.
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