the accidental girl

Argh. I'm so bloody bored today.. I had the worst night's sleep ever yesterday. One of those nights where you're exhausted but you count the hours that you've not been asleep until you realise with dismay that they outweigh the hours you might sleep. Handily, the flat here has an old wall clock which chimes out your restlessness every quarter hour.

Anyway. Today I am brain dead. I tried doing another topographical thingummy and caught myself staring with open mouthed glazedness at the screen of numbers. I must have been frozen like that for a good few minutes. Quite the unanimated sloth today.. I keep writing shite on here and being overly affected by M's uncharacteristically sarcastic comments to my opinions on things on his blog. I comment on his things about once a fortnight- he doesn't know about this blog because I cherish my relative anonymity so that real people don't know I'm crazy until they see me during a full moon- anyway, the poor soul seems to think that it's quite dedicated commenting. What he doesn't know is that I write about 8094.52% more shite on here than on his, and that I'm a furtively serial commenter on the NYtimes blogs. Anything to take up the time between my warp speed completion of projects.
So, problem - his blogs are actually insightful and a hell of a lot better written than mine so I read them to a)make sure he's not dead and b)provide a little correspondence so it doesn't feel like he's writing into the ether. But now that he's mentioned that it's nice I "comment so much" (i.e. about 3 times) I feel disinclined to comment again especially after he was particularly savage about a valid point I made on westernisation.
ah well. He's a knob sometimes.

I was excited about the prospect of being back in Edinburgh in 2 weeks time but now it seems that V is expecting a reassessment of our non-relationship. I'm still no closer to fancying the pants off him, although I have garnered a lot of respect for him.. but now I'm scared that I have to be brutal. It goes against my kind gentle side.

Ok, enough procrastination.. greek lesson time!

Sainte-Moi

Ne penses-pas a mes bleus,
mes couleurs..
mes joies.
Ne penses-pas a ma malheur.
Du moment que c'est toi.

The Future is a bra

This weekend saw Daddy Monkeypie and myself drive off to Kyrenia for the weekend. After an uncharacteristic energetic decision to go for an early morning jog, we went to the Hurricane coffee shop for a turkish cypriot coffee and a 'croissant'. Now, when you or I hear croissant, we immediately think of continental breakfasts and the buttery, flaky crescents traditionally served in france. Here, a croissant is an altogether more interesting cake.. flaky and buttery yes, but like a bent sausage roll and filled with a walnut, almond and rose water paste and absolute heaven.

Then it was time to cross over. Since they opened up the buffer zone, it's far easier to cross than it used to be. Before the days of universal crossing, we'd have to ask the cheif of police for special dispensation to see friends on the turkish side. Now, it's easy- you hand your passport, they record your date of entry, you get some car insurance and off you pop, under the surveillance of UN snipers in bulletholed houses and through a minefield, leftover in case the Turks decide to re-invade when they're bored of the ceasefire.

30 minutes later, we reached our house. Now, I love this house, it's been one of my only constants in a life that involved quite a bit of moving. Built by my grandad back in the late 60s, it feels like home. The neighbours have known us since the beginning so it wasn't unexpected to be delayed on our way to the beach. Packing up the car with our swimsuits and compulsory backgammon, we could hear the sounds of lunch from our neighbours house. Out pops a head from the kitchen window "Oh!! MonkeyPies! You have come! Welcome! Please join us. Dolma, you like dolma?"
And before we can refuse, we're sat in the kitchen with two small boys gravely eating their beans and yoghurt, my friend Fatma telling me about why she left Turkey after only one year of study (it's the sudden headcovering clamour which chased her out) and her parents beaming with pleasure as they heap dolma and yoghurt onto our plates.
- For those of you who haven't experienced the delight of ottaman cuisine- dolma is a stuffed vegetable, usually vinegar soaked vine leaves but sometimes marrow flowers, stuffed with rice, onion and lamb. It is delicious and when made properly, one of my favourite dishes. IT goes well with yoghurt but then it's the custom in greece/turkey to eat nearly everything with an accompaniment of yoghurt.

We leave a little while later, waddling towards the car which I fancy groans a little more than usual when we sit down. My plans of looking like an underwear model on the beach today have been scuppered by the generosity of friends! Nevermind, I'll look less alessandra ambrosio and more arnie in drag.

Highlight of the beach- absoluting thrashing MonkeyPie Snr at backgammon. Two doubles and then two single points later, I emerge 6-1 victorious! Hurrah! I haven't lost my touch!
SEcond highlight of the beach- our waiter, Sam, who seemed to think it was appropriate to linger too long at our table and ask, forthright, if I was Snr's daughter. Upon confirming the fact, all the staff seemed to suddenly get into a flurry activity. Possibly money exchanging hands at the slight disppointment that he wasn't a pimp with his youthful lover. Sam then asks Snr if he'd like to go to a restaurant with him that evening (possibly now because Snr looks young free and single as I'm not his concubine). My father turns down his interesting offer but Sam is not to be thwarted.
"When are you leaving?" He asks.
"Oh, tonight I'm afraid"
"Well, you have time for some drinks, yes?"
"No, I'm afraid not, next time though, that would be fun"
"Ah! Next time? No, you come tonight, I show you Lemon Tree restaurant. We eat fish, meat, sandwhich, whatever you like"
"No, no really, we'll be leaving straight after the beach"
"Where you stay?"
"Kyrenia"
"It is near, you have time for some drinks"

...and on it goes. A bizarre battle of invites where we never really established why he was so taken with us. My father was convinced it was because Sam wanted me (it must be the dolma belly) I was convinced that he was unnaturally over-interested in him. Perhaps he was looking for a sugar daddy and the speedoes nailed the deal.

Anyway, this was all over the tea we'd been served. MonkeyPie Snr is tahrribly british and must have his tea at 4pm. Metal tea pots are the worst invention. Especially when the tea bag is served outwith the teapot forcing you to deposit the teabag into the pot yourself, this of course, when the lid of the teapot is approximately the temperature of molten lava.

WE finally rolled home, browned and dozy from the sun. A spur of the moment decision to pop into Metin's house to say hello (our other neighbour- a biblically proportioned butcher with hands like the average sized breezeblock and a swollen belly which wouldn't look out of place in a maternity ward for quadruplets.) leads to him insisting on providing dinner. Out pops his hardworking wife, a miniature woman who probably weighs the same as one of his forearms, laden with salads, houmous, olives and pilaf. Metin is an old-school cypriot- he speaks turkish (evidently), english and greek with a smattering of pakistani and arabic shoudl the need arise. His wife and daugthers don't speak english though so the evening is made up of english and my bare bones turkish which goes far enough to make them laugh and to receive my thanks for a delicious meal.

Word got out that I read palms.. I'd read another neighbour's palm some two years ago and apparently some things have been true to form so the after dinner entertainment was me reading each palm in turn in the poorly lit garden.. I don't usually like reading in front of people- mostly because one palm will be better than others and people will feel hard done by. This time was no exception. I first read Aisha's, hers was a good palm- full of happiness, reward for hard work and love. Then her surlier sister sat down and thrust her palm forward. her's was less fortunate, tinged with the saturnian qualities of the depressed and with only girls on the horizon (bear in mind in islamic countries, a boy is considered above a girl in long term value. Not that a girl is any less loved but a son is always coveted). Anyway, the public nature made it all a little embarrassing so I jsut left out the bad stuff, I'd rather look like the charlatan I am when it comes to these things than be proved right and upset people too soon.

We finally rolled home after one raki too many. I fell into a deep sleep only to wake with a start at around 1am thinking world war III had broken out or that turkey was invading. All I could hear was the reverberating crash and boom of (in my sleep addled mind) atomic bombs and the chatter of machine guns. I was so convinced that I refused to go to the window to check, thinking it was safer to be behind half metre thick stone walls. A voice in my mind told me it was fireworks.. but what business did they have making such loud fireworks last for so long? Needless to say, i survived the deadly fireworks otherwise I wouldn't be here writing.

So all in all a good weekend.. back at work with a headache (probably from imaginary shrapnel lodged in my brain) and the thought that Mummy MonkeyPie will descend upon cyprus in 2 days. I am very happy about this. She lists in my top ten top people ever. Possibly at number 1. She's amazing, were she not my mum, she'd be my bezzie mate coz she's kool and the gang. True story.

Where heaven is found in the Shia mountains

Daddy MonkeyPie and I set out to replenish our culture metre which has been sinking a little low lately. Cyprus hardly ever has live music let alone classical music of any reasonable repute. It does, however, have very good bouzouki and classical guitar which I personally love as it reminds me of being little and listening to my grandfather play spanish pieces in the cypriot sunsets over long honey coloured summers.

Schubert and Neilson open air concert in ancient Olive grove! Promised the ad in the paper. Picturing a cellist up a gnarled old tree with a violinist squawking away in a neighbouring branch, i had to go. If anything, to dispell the image but also to prove that perhaps Cyprus does have a little musical culture. Even though the only famed musicians currently include George Michael and Peter Andre so all a little suspect really. The directions we were given by the woman in charge of distributing the tickets (a sort of New Age type, looking distractedly at your aura while you try to hand over the money). "It's very simple, it's the 11th exit off the motorway and you turn right until you see lots of cars."
We duly headed out for the 11th exit with my Greek teacher and her children in tow looking for lots of cars.
No olive trees in sight..

10 minutes later. Still no olive trees.

We stop at a house in the foothills to ask for directions to Caro's house (this is how addresses are done- there's no street names or house numbers, it's just Caro's house, in the olive grove, right after the motorway junction). The inhabitants turn out to be German but they still know exactly where his house is which surprises me as German's tend to require precise timekeeping and accurate, consistent labels. Maybe they've lived in Cyprus too long.

5 minutes later, lots of cars.

Hurrah! And, sure enough, olive trees (shia is pine country, it's surprising to see olive trees).. lots of well heeled cypriots milling about and the setting couldn't have been more misleading.
Yes, olive trees but this garden is a landscape architect's wetdream. Echoes of Mies van de Rohe in the rectangular and very linear small house and in the shallow quadrilateral pools of water and channels running throughout the plot. Delineating garden 'zones' with a beautiful candle lit island in the middle of the largest pool piled high with squishy cushions and accessed by smooth flat stepping stones. The olive grove after the house falls away sharply and the architect made the most of the drop to build an eternity pool at the edge so you feel like your bathing in the view of the mountains commanding the sight of the valleys below.

The octet were placed on a podium before the pool, with the uplighting creating a soft and dreamlike glow. The setting was beautiful but completely wrong for nielson and then the schubert over long and not as exquisite as it can be. A response to beethoven's 7th, the piece had 6 movents and where the 2nd movement let the violins be melancholy and in part, achingly beautiful, the other movements weren't successful. Fortunately they ended on a rondo, waking up the dozy audience and preparing them for their cheese and wine reward.

The best bit of the night was definitely seeing the house and gleaning ideas for what I'd do if I were to move to Cyprus later on. The music was disappointing but then being brought up on concerts and chamber orchestras in london, vienna and paris, moving in musical circles where you listen to the musician's musician inevitably makes you a snob as it conditions you to appreciate the very best and be devastatingly critical of the so-so.

Perhaps Cyprus isn't the place to go for musical education but the olive groves are beautiful.