What a week

Begins with beating the Mackums - watched the drubbing of the great unwashed with Geordie Tait - a Mackum from Shiney Row, called Geordie cos nobody in the army can tell the difference in accents - and are dead original in their nicknames - anybody from North of Hull is called Geordie, he's embarassed to be called Geordie _ I won't call him it !!!! Well not to his face anyway.
Ends drinking cider with Drum - (Capn Drummond) see told you the military are good at nicknames.
In between times, I plant out cukes, some toms and peppers - suspend two of my staff for gross misconduct and deriliction of duty, acquit two others of similar charges but take minor disciplinary action against them (neither of which was a unilateral decision I must add), take part in a tennis tournament, don't win but do OK, thrash Drum at tennis twice (how did he get to the final ???)and tomorrow man the bar for the Dive Club while they run "try dives" for the new batallion.
Drum has been posted - he goes (probably) to Milan in August - one of the things I've found living with the military is that you make friends, and then they go - the soldiers are used to it, it's kind of how they live, but to a civilian it's strange.

Still no rain - although some is forecast tomorrow - I'm not holding my breathe though and so far using grey water has kept most things in the garden alive. As an aside - if you eat beetroot soup, be prepared for the colour it leaves your toilet !!!!!

Blimey - doesn't time fly

It can't be March 2nd since I last posted, somebody must have nicked them !!!

Let's think, what's happened since the beginning of March ??? Right I've harvested some aubergines, they are sitting pretty in the fridge while I decide what exactly to do with them, I've harvested some beetroot which is sitting pretty in apn having been boiled and pureed and turned into soup. Borsch it's called apparently, but I can't bring myself to eat cold soup so warmed up borsch with coriander it'll be. Delia reckons you either love it or hate. Whatever it tastes like it's a fantastic colour.
The water situation is getting out of hand really - there's no more rain coming - the Republic has started cutting water to only 8 hours in every 48, but by the time they get round to turning it back on it's about 5 hours in every 48, well apart from Paphos and Aya Napa councils who are busy sticking their fingers up at the rest of the Republic and saying we aren't doing it. On the base we aren't at the situation yet - but it could happen. I've built a gravity fed watering system involving a dustbin, a hosepipe, all the grey water I can collect and the laws of physics - hopefully I'll be able to keep the garden from completely frazzling with that. I'm just wondering how long it'll be before the hosepipe police come around and see what I've been doing.

I managed to get out diving with Jeff hopefully here's a couple of photo's to prove it

Mad dogs and Englishmen

In this case don't go out in the midday sun, but head off down to the beach to collect bagfulls of seaweed. Me (the Englishman) and Charlie (the mad dog) went down to the bit of rocky beach just near to the office and collected a jeep full of seaweed. No I haven't invented a way to make Zivania from it, it's is now proudly sat atop my beds as a thickly laid mulch, well most of my beds anyway. I read somewhere that it was a good soil conditioner and made a good mulch, and seeing as how they don't do stuff like that in bags here and it's free I thought I'll give that a go !!! Apparently they use in Jersey to cover their Jersey Royal potatoes - so Impy tells me anyway.
Spring has been springing, the fields are mainly yellow with bits of purple and red in them so look quite pretty and down on the beach today there were lovely tiny purple flowers growing in the sand.
All my chilli's are coming along quite nicely thankyou very much and are soon to be pricked out, I've planted some toms outside and they are flowering, it still gets quite chilly at night, but they seem to be happy enough and an aubergine I've had outside all winter is starting to flower.
It was warm enough outside today to be working in just shorts, summer must be coming.

Oh and Happy Mother's Day Mam, hope you've enjoyed it XXX

I'm rubbish at this !!!!

Once again I forgot to blog !!!

Not that I've had anything particularly startling to say, life is just kinda plodding on as it does. It's definitely winter here - windy and rainy at the minute and relatively cold. Not cold enought to stop the tatties I planted a while back from poking their leaves through the soil or stopping the lettuces, radishes and peas I sowed outside coming through. I've sowed a boatload (well propagator full) of chilli's - about a dozen varieties - so am hoping to have a chilli plantation this year. Last years still have chilli's on the plants - no leaves mind, I'm leaving them in to see what happens.
Haven't done any diving for a while, partly cos it's cold but mainly because my "dive buddy" Jeff is in the UK and won't be back for at least another week (his wife has been really quite poorly).

See told you not much startling has happened - but at least I remembered and I will try to post a bit more often from now on !!!!

Already

It's 2008 - I'm 40 this year - how has that happened then ????!!!!!

So ignoring my impending middle age, what's going on here ??

Christmas came and went, got some nice stuff - thanks everybody - specially like the knife I strap to my leg, very James Bond - somebody else said Lara Croft but I really haven't got the figure for that. Santa was good to the boys - managed to bring them a couple of bikes - I've just spent the afternoon finding and fixing 3 punctures in Sam's tyre..

There's been no more rain since the last post, they tell me more will come, but I reckon it's just wishful thinking on the Cypriot's behalf. So taking advantage of the sun, the holiday break and a quantity of seed potatoes which George thought were being smuggled but weren't and then conveniently split open outside the office I have nicked some more land and dug a new potato bed. No idea what the tatties are but I've stuck them in anyway.

I've set up what was Sam's room until he decided he did really want to share with Mattie as an office and got my books, drawing boards etc etc out. That's as far as I've got so far but it is a start. Plant Portfolio part 2 here we go. It means I can plan my football coaching sessions better too.
Diving wise, I've done the Zenobia (or the Zen as us Advanced divers like to call it !!!) a couple of times since my last post and another dive with Jeff - the drysuit Drum lent me has been a Godsend - it's heaps warmer in it. I mean it's cold diving here and the water is 18 degress Celsius - I dread to think what it's like of Whitley Bay. My big computer has broke and eaten all the pictures I've taken - and the plant stuff for my course and I haven't got round to trying to get it off yet so no pics again today, but maybe I'll have a go at rescuing them tomorrow.

And again....

This wasn't in the brochure - sun sun and more sun they said !!!! It's been lashing down at times today. Cyprus is a funny place, they complain that they don't get enough rain then when it does all they have are storm drains to channel the water into the sea - none of the houses on base have gutters and drainpipes so water butts are out of the question - such a waste. Anyway at least my potatoes - which I hope to harvest for Christmas dinner have had a good water today.
My citrus tree with the teeny tiny fruit on has loads on it - they are quite tasty the only trouble is they have loads of pips - one I had the other day had 26 pips in it - now bearing in mind the fruit is the size of a penka (a big marble) 26 is a bit excessive.
I'm part way through my Advanced Open Water Diving course, you have to do 5 dives - Deep and navigation are compulsary and you choose 3 others. I've done a drysuit dive, in a suit borrowed from one of the soldiers - very strange being underwater and being dry, and the navigation dive today. Didn't enjoy the navigation one - the wind and rain had stirred the bottom up - so there was literally zero visibility - but managed just using a compass to dive a square starting and finishing in the same point, the same for a straight line and to navigate us back to the beach to get out. I do feel a sense of achievement though, the instructor reckoned if I can do it in that I can do it in anything. I was supposed to be doing the photography dive today - if I'd wanted pictures of sand close up it'd have been fine, but good for nothing else, that can wait for another day. We were supposed to finish tomorrow, but the wind has blown up more so it'll be Friday at the earliest before I get back in the water.
And I've found somebody to coach - woohooo - been coaching at soccer club (yes I know it's called football but I didn't name the club !!!) after school on a Tuesday and I think I'll be starting at the Youth Club come January, so hopefully I'll get the assessment done spring next year and be qualified.
No pics today cos I've not taken any !!

It rained.........

On Friday night and then again last night, not heaps mind you, but enough to wet the soil and maybe mean I don't have to water the radishes, onions and garlic or a couple of days. Hopefully it'll continue through the night as the reservoirs are very very empty here. It's still strange for me to have plants starting off and growing away in November, I reckon I'll just about have the hang of by the time we leave.

Obviously it was Rememberance Sunday today, so it was up to Church in best dress uniform (minus the jacket which has been hanging up ready in Akrotiri for the last 3 months, well apart from the gold braid for the sleeves, which they've run out of). Anyway it was interesting to see the old guys of the Cyprus core who all joined up in 1943.

Diving is going well, I've got an underwater camera housing, so can take pics now - and as to prove it here's a couple. One of fish and the other the underneath of the pier here.

I'm starting some coaching at the school next week, hopefully that'll kick start me on to get the FA badge, we'll see how it goes.