New writing course with OU

I am completely taken up with and enjoying the new course. Happily I finally seem to have a tutor who engages. Time will tell.
My current obsession with my mother is once again spilling out into my writing, but I am not fighting it as I think that I need to indulge it to clear it. Until I do, it will continue to impinge on me like a scab that I keep going back to scratch.

Last night

Tuesday, 05 October 2010


Gosh did I feel an idiot last night. Monday nights are Costas’ boring Rotary nights and I usually don’t go. But he rang me mid-morning and said ‘it’s the German Ambassador tonight.’ So I said ‘okay I’ll come because he will speak in English.’

Thought nothing more, got tidied in the evening – nothing flash just smart-casual and went off to pick him up from the hospital. As we were driving something he said made me twig this was not Rotary we were heading to. No, it wasn’t – it was only a celebration cocktail party at the German Ambassador’s home to celebrate 20 years of German re-unification. We arrived and all the women were in their best party frocks, jewellery and carefully done hair – there was I looking like a country bumpkin. Men in white, long-limbed, blonde and dashing from the German Navy playing in a little orchestra, all the ambassadors, the Cyprus president and his cabinet and there am I with wayward hair, black trousers and a jaunty striped T-shirt and flat shoes and no sparkle. Costas told me I looked like someone from the navy myself. So we ate, drank and chatted before leaving pretty quickly. Costas is lucky he is still alive this morning.

I have booked for us to go to England for four days at the end of October (it’s another long holiday weekend here) to see the kids and for Costas to have a deserved break. I have booked us seats at the opera (yuk but he likes it). La Boheme by Puccini at the ENO. We are flying EasyJet - that should be interesting!

Where did the summer go?

I stopped posting because A215 assignments and life took over my world. But it is time to return. Summer has been busy, difficult, challenging and fun.
The good stuff - my daughter Sophie got married in July in what was probably the most perfect wedding ever - and she organised almost all of it. Now we have the  happy news she is pregnant. What a weird and unexpected feeling the the knowledge you are to be a grand parent brings. I thought I was ambivilent aout it - didn't mind either way. But the morning she told me a quiet nugget of joy crept into my heart and lodges there still.
We had two lots of visitors - family and friends and it was just lovely to share our tiny corner of paradise with people we love.
I acquired two puppies - one was planned, the second found abandoned 10 days after I got the first. Georgie my first is tan with touches of black and white and has kohl-rimmed Cleopatra eyes and very short piano legs and is named so because I got him on St George's Day. My Cypriot husband calls him Kokkos, which is a Cypriot nick-name for Geoge. Tina our second mutt was found on St Constantine's day - hence Constantina - Tina. She is long-legged (for a small dog) with charcoal grey curly fur and peeps out with dark olive bewildered eyes at you and at the slightest admonishment rolls over in submission. She is dumb but sweet. The good thing is they make me walk twice a day which helps the battle with the bulges no end.

Costas had a heart procedure in London which was challenging for a week or so but touch wood, fingers crossed and three spits to the wind the results so far are good.

I have just returned from three weeks in New Zealand where I spent happy hours with my father and sisters and every day was astounded by the sheer beauty of my homeland and its people.

Now I am about to start my next Open University module - a level 3 Creative Writing course and can't wait to get stuck in.

New Zealand Clouds

Nelson sunset

Why are the skies in New Zealand so magnificent?

Clouds are my thing. They fascinate, inspire and delight. Both here in Cyprus and especially in New Zealand. In NZ the skies are bigger, higher, wider - unattainable, limitless. I feel as if I am under a celestial dome. I have masses of cloud pictures so be prepared to be bored.

CromwellAbout to be beamed up because frederique and I are bad...smoking!