It’s hot. I have been awol for the past week through force of circumstance, and grandchildren. I pass my mornings in the swimming pool with my two grandchildren and another little girl who has adopted me because her own granddad is in the US. It’s interesting to see the differences in the three children’s attitudes. My surrogate granddaughter, Vivi, is a confident swimmer already, at five years old. My granddaughter, Tina, is a determined little devil. When I show her an exercise, she gets her game face on, a determined little grimace and gritted teeth, and really has a go at it. My grandson, George, is definitely not the physical type. Before this week, he was afraid to get water on his face, but patience – and peer pressure from the two girls, especially since he is the oldest of the three children – has brought him to the stage where he can now limbo under a foam floaty thingy on the surface of the pool and he is now almost there with the doggy paddle, only needing a hand under his belly where, at the start of the week, he was clinging on to my arms with the death grip of a drowning man.
Afternoons have been taken up with the visits of numerous friends and relations – and in Cyprus, numerous does really mean numerous, I have 50 or 60 nephews and nieces, (all by marriage, of course,) and a couple of dozen or so great-nephews and nieces, and cultural norms mandate that I have to go and visit them all. That, of course, means that I also have to eat at each house I visit, which wouldn’t be so bad except that Cypriot cuisine is very limited in scope, so the same dishes are served up each time – chunks of barbecued goat, keftedes (meatballs,) macaronia too foornoo ( a sort of sloppy cheese/milk/egg concoction with bits of hosepipe pasta, baked in the oven) and koobepkeeya, (dolmades – rice and meat wrapped in vine leaves – I quite like those.)
Evenings have also been taken up with the friends and relations, because there are so many of them, plus a couple of nights in the pub, renewing old acquaintances, so my time has been filled, hence my absence except for a couple of pops at that raving loony daffy on the other site 🙂
I am now encumbered with two grandchildren, so it’s off to the pool!
Boadicea's Chariot 
Bravo, if you’re in Kato Paphos sometime, say KALEMERA to Tirymos fish tavern for me – a favourite refuge more often than I dare recall!
Enjoy yourself, Bravo.
Children do not stay young for long – and it is the memories of joint fun that turn grandchildren into ‘friends’ when they are older. 🙂
Boa, how true! My eldest granddaughter is now 10! I’m so glad I have known her as a child, as you say, and hope she is too!
Btw, Bravo, I was introduced to Tirymos tavern by a friend who took me there to meet an old ‘resistance’ buddy of his – against British rule pre-1959. The tavern owner was also a ‘comrade’ in arms.
I don’t get out Paphos way much, Janus, all my friends and relations live in Linassol/Larnaca – I’ll keep the recommendation in mind, though.
Sounds great, Bravo especially watching those little characters emerge in the pool. If you promise to catch them at the end of the water-slide, just make sure you do!! 😀
Sounds a good break from Moscow but you’ll be ready to move on from that cuisine too, to your next contract!
Re the pool, a good way to get them to put their faces under water is to purchase some coveted object and put it on the bottom of the pool for them to retrieve. I had the reverse problem, ended up paying good money to have the little wretch taught to swim on the water when he was six because he would go to and fro underneath like a submarine just breathed when he got to the end of the pool!
Have a good holiday don’t envy you the heat!
Boa, 🙂 Janus, much like the French resistance, the number of ‘veterans’ of the ‘resistance’ is an order of magnitude greater than the number who actually went into the mountains. Jan, I make sure they now exactly what’s happening in each exercise and that they want to do it first 🙂 Tina, my granddaughter is the same!
CO, it’s 30 degrees C here today! Too warm and humid for me.
LOL Christina at your submarine son. My youngest was similar – no fear and a bloody danger to himself. Only calmed down after monumental belly flop from the top board at the swimming pool, aged about 7. He was having diving lessons at the time but it all went very wrong. Tears before bedtime that night.
Dunno what the temperature is in Glos but I’m just back from a ride and it was the hottest I’ve ever cycled in. Like riding through a warm hair-dryer. Brilliant.
Nice work when you can get it Bravo!
Sounds like great fun. I’ve only been to Cyprus once but enjoyed my stay. I enjoyed the food but then I didn’t have time to become bored. It wasn’t really a holiday but I did do some relaxing.
We were north of Pomos, not too far from the border. Beautiful; just where the Trudos Mountains almost meet the coast.
Oops I don’t think that is the correct spelling, Bravo. Is it Troodos?
Troodos is correct, Araminta. My house in Cyprus is up there in the mountains, in a small village called Zoopiggi – much nicer than living in town.