4^th September

Well this week was as bad as I thought it was going to be, it’s just been a lot of hard work that has gone on and on day after day, it didn’t help that I kept finding things to add to the list of things to do, so as fast as I was crossing things off I was also adding them on, I did re paint the bathroom, and then I noticed that where we had pulled the carpet up in the front room last year to expose the wood floor it had pulled off a bit of paint on the skirting boards so I had to repaint those, by Friday I had done all the painting that needed doing around the house among lots of other jobs, and my last job Friday morning was to touch up some of the hole marks that Nick had filled in on the living room walls from where the pictures used to be, only Nick said he would do it, I had a feeling it was a bad idea as he is not a good painter, anyway at some point I went to check to see how it looked and he had done splotches of paint all over most of the walls, not just the little nail holes that needed a tiny dab of paint, I think he enjoyed having the paintbrush in his hand and just went a little bit mad…and the whole thing, all these splotches of paint all dried a different colour, I think it must have been because the paint on the walls has been on for two years so it gets a bit darker… so I had to spend most of Friday painting walls in the living room that hadn’t needed painting, anyway somehow I found the funny side of it but it was another tiring day, anyway the jobs have just seemed to go on day after day, and I went to bed exhausted every night., I am happy to say that I did eventually get to the end of my very long list, I have done all the cleaning that could possibly be done and all of the painting, Nick has kept busy doing bits and pieces and moving furniture, going to the tip and collecting the cones that we need to block the space off outside the house for the removal truck, he has been running things to the charity shop, so he has kept as busy as I have and we muddled along quite well which I think was a miracle to be honest.

13^th September

We did the Southampton trip on Thursday to take the car to the docks, it was such a tiring day, we left here at just after 8am and didn’t get back to the Isle of Wight until two o clock, so it took us six hours in all, it was weird knowing we weren’t going to see the car again until we were in Cyprus, it was hard coming back to have to do more jobs and also walk Maggie, I really wouldn’t want to do this last couple of weeks again for anything.

Christian our next door neighbour had said he wanted the cooker, only yesterday afternoon Nick bumped into him and said what time was good for him to bring it over and fit it for him, and he said he had changed his mind…..it was one of those oh no moments lol, as we didn’t want to be stuck with a cooker at the last minute and have to call the council to collect it, I wish he could have told us a week ago and I would have put it up for sale, anyway we remembered that we have someone coming this morning to collect the fridge freezer so we gave him the cooker for free just to get rid of it, I hated the thought it was going to have to go to the tip as its in good working order and I spent hours cleaning it to make it sparkle, anyway the worst is over now and all the hard jobs are done, we spent yesterday packing our cases which was easy enough as it was just shorts and t shirts mainly, one pair of jeans and a couple of sweaters in case it was chilly, I think it’s the easiest packing I have ever done, but what is in the suitcases has to last us around six weeks so I hope we have it right

17^th September

At lunchtime today (Monday) the shippers came, two young guys who really knew what they were doing, and all I had to do was keep them in cups of tea, they worked hard all day and that night slept in the moving truck, apparently they have beds at the back of the cab and even a TV. I have to admit I did find this part hard as we were trying not to get in their way but there was nothing for us to do apart from make them tea, there was nowhere to sit, every chair had been packed and with the guys being busy there was nowhere to really even stand in the house so it was uncomfortable and a bit stressful, we ended up going out for the afternoon just to get out of the house and that night we had the usual fish and chips that is mandatory on moving day and we slept on mattresses on the floor, so not the best night’s sleep and the following day when the guys came back into the house to finish packing everything, the weather had changed and it was windy and cold, it poured down with rain all day, so even escaping into the garden was out of the question, I think we were both glad when everything was packed and we were glad to get to Nicola’s my daughters house in the end and so was Maggie as she was starting to pace, I think the move upset her.

18^th September  –  8 Days Until We Fly

It was lovely arriving at our daughters house and knowing that we had finished all of the jobs and the furniture had gone and so had the car, although I don’t think life has been as relaxed as I would have liked this week, it just feels like it has been really busy, we found out today that our car that we took to the docks has now been delayed, but they wouldn’t tell us why, just a few apologies, so it seems instead of getting the car two or three days after we arrive in Cyprus, we now have to wait two weeks for it after we get there, so that has sort of thrown things out of whack a bit, so now we will have to hire a car when we get over there, it is annoying as we spent ages trying to get the dates right but I guess life never goes to plan does it.

22^nd September  –   4 Days Until We Fly

This week at my daughters house we also finally got my sister Cath’s shed sorted out, her old shed was falling to bits and wouldn’t have been any good to hibernate her tortoises so she bought a new shed last week, so we had to go and pull her old shed down and put the new one up, she was good though and as Nick was pulling the old one down she really worked hard with me dragging the wood to the other side of the garden, so it was a combined effort with all three of us, and then Nick built the new shed, but it all took time and was a bigger job than I thought it would be, and really tiring, all he has left to do is to put the door on but with this rain we have had today we have put it off until it stops, I think they said rain all day tomorrow and hopefully Monday will be a better day, and its good she can keep the tortoises now as she does love them.

25^rd September – The Day Before We Fly

This morning we are off to the vets, as Maggie has to have her fitness to fly stamped on her passport, she already had her rabies a while ago, she also has to have two more treatments this morning as they have to be given within 48 hours of her going into Cyprus which are going to knock her around a bit, I looked them up and one of them I think is going to make her feel a bit unwell, I hate that she has to go through all of this and I am not looking forward to putting her into her cage at the airport, I have had so many sleepless nights about it, whether she will even survive the flight….I don’t feel good about it at all, but we couldn’t put off leaving for another few years as neither of us wanted to feel we were waiting for her to die, we actually want her to live forever lol., anyway hopefully all will be well and our vet said she would be fine and hopefully this vet will say the same this morning, but I will be really nervous tomorrow when the plane takes off worrying if she is ok, and I will probably cry all over her when she gets off the plane and I see she is ok lol.

We have booked an extra-large taxi for tomorrow morning to take us to Gatwick so Maggie will have plenty of room, we thought catching the train and it being a busy time of morning would add to her stress so hopefully this will help a little bit, plus it will help us as well as we have three suitcases, one of them is Maggie’s as it will have her bed in, with her dishes and food etc. its funny that she has her own passport and her own suitcase lol.

I am glad we are going to Cyprus at this time of year as apparently it is cooling down a bit from last month, they are mainly in the high twenties now with the odd day at thirty degrees but thankfully they are out of the middle to high thirties so I think I will like the weather at this time of the year, here in the UK I continually feel like I have two blocks of ice at the ends of my arms, for some reason my hands are always really ice cold so I think that is the part I am looking forward to, just being nice and warm again.

Well it is now afternoon, the vet visit went well, Maggie did well with her examination, the only thing at the time that was a bit worrying was that it wasn’t injections she had to have but lots of pills, I did tell the vet that when she gets stressed she won’t eat anything let alone pills, and going to the vets office does stress her out, even if someone was to offer her a piece of steak when she is anxious she won’t eat anything., anyway Nick and the vet tried for ages to get the pills down her throat but it just made Maggie more anxious, apparently the vet is supposed to see Maggie take them before she stamps the passport but the vet was lovely and in the end stamped the passport anyway and said we could give her all the pills when we got back to our daughters house once she had calmed down. The vet did tell us about a spray called Activelle that we could buy that emits hormones that the mom dog produces when she gives birth to puppies and it’s a calming hormone, so Nick has gone off to the pet shop to find some for Maggie so that also might help her.

The Journey…..26^th September

The taxi came nice and early this morning at 8am to take us to the airport, we had a lovely send off from my daughter, granddaughter and grandsons, and it felt quite exciting as we set off on our mad crazy adventure, the taxi was lovely and big and Maggie soon settled on the floor and we thought all was well until after about ten minutes into our journey the taxi stalled, thankfully the driver got the car going again, but then ten minutes later it stalled again, and it was like that for the whole journey to Gatwick, the taxi kept making awful noises, it seemed every time the driver stopped at lights or slowed down to go around a roundabout or had to give way to other cars it would stall, so we stalled a lot and got lots of angry beeps from other motorists, it also sounded like the brake pads were going as every time he touched the brakes it made a horrible noise, the journey was really worrying at the time, and there were a few times that we both thought that we weren’t going to make it to Gatwick.

When we finally got to the airport we both breathed a sigh of relief, not just that the taxi made it but that we made it alive lol, it was the most horrendous journey I think I had ever been on, and I don’t think we spoke a word to each other for the whole trip as it was just so nerve wracking with all the stalling and the angry beeps from other motorists.

We had got the taxi driver to drop us off at the back of Gatwick where there are some big warehouses which is where we were told to take Maggie, so we went into the office to check Maggie in, to discover to our dismay that we had been given the wrong time, so we had to hang around outside the warehouse for over an hour, which wasn’t too bad really as at least the sun was shining, it could have been worse and it could have been raining lol.

Well the time came to put Maggie into her crate, all the worrying and stressing I had been doing for weeks over this moment and it was here, I don’t think it helped that Maggie has always been a very sensitive dog and gets anxious really easily, so the thought of putting her into a crate and what she was going to have to go through had been stressing me out for weeks. I have to admit I felt really emotional, and all the thoughts I had about her journey came rushing back to me, I guess we all feel protective towards our animals, but I think it was her age that worried me the most, was she going to survive the journey, and if she didn’t survive, not only would life without Maggie be changed, but the guilt I would carry around with me knowing I had done this to her. What really was a help though was something I had read on one of the Cyprus forums, this particular person had told me that when they moved over to Cyprus they had put one of their old t shirts that they had worn for a few days, even slept in I believe, they put the t shirt into the crate with their dog so it would have their smell on the shirt, so before Maggie got into the crate we placed the t shirt in that I had been wearing on and off for a day or two and sprayed it with the hormone spray that Nick had brought from the pet shop. When we opened the crate door for Maggie to go inside, she straight away just went in and lay down, and that was it, no pacing, no panting, she didn’t looked stressed in the slightest, she just lay there and looked quite comfortable, the crate was a lovely size for her and she had plenty of room to stand up and turn around, and the whole thing to my amazement was much less stressful than I thought it would be, she looked very comfy and very relaxed when we left her, I thought it would be more upsetting than it actually was, so at least that was something that had gone right.

After boarding the plane we were told that it was going to be delayed as two people had checked their luggage in which had gotten taken to the plane, but then the couple didn’t show up to get on the plane, I think everyone was worried that there was something awful in their suitcases, the air steward said that the airline was not allowed to take off with someone’s case on board if they weren’t on board, so the airline had to go through all the luggage in the hold and find their suitcases, but an hour and a half later and the plane finally took off.

When we landed we went to find the taxi that we had pre booked as we needed one big enough to take Maggie and her crate, there were a lot of taxi’s holding name cards but our name wasn’t on any of them, at this point I wasn’t surprised lol, we did a lot of running around the taxi’s trying to figure out which one might be ours, in the end we realized ours wasn’t there which was a bit worrying and confusing, the taxi did show up just over an hour later, he said he had been there the whole time but we knew that wasn’t true, but at that point we were just grateful to see him, in the meantime while searching and waiting for the taxi, one of us had been running around the airport trying to find out where the dogs get taken when they land, it appeared not one person knew where they take the dogs which was also worrying at the time, all in all we spent two hours searching for Maggie, until suddenly I saw a woman outside the airport with a dog and she told me where to go, it was really frustrating as we had asked everyone inside the airport and everyone just kept shaking their head, so we eventually found her, poor little thing still in her big wooden crate, we asked if we could donate her cage to a charity which they were really happy with, but then the taxi driver said he wouldn’t take her without her cage as she might dirty the bottom of his taxi….I had already seen his taxi which was dirty on the floor, but the guy from the airport customs told me that the taxi guy was after keeping the cage so he could sell it which is why he refused Maggie without the cage, at this point it was now past midnight and there was Nick and this taxi guy trying and trying to get the cage in his big taxi but it wouldn’t fit lol, so it got donated in the end and the taxi driver was really annoyed.

We eventually arrived at the Airbnb house in Kouklia at nearly 1am, but the guy who owns the house sat patiently and waited for us, we were exhausted by the time we came into the house, the home owner had bought us groceries which was lovely of him so I can count that as something finally going right lol, he bought bread, milk, butter, cheese, biscuits, ham, beer, tea and coffee, it was such a nice thing to do and we were really hungry so that was really lovely, although to be honest at that point all I wanted was a very large Bacardi and coke which I promptly had as soon as he left lol.

Since that night though we haven’t seen him, he was supposed to pop back to let us know about hiring a car and show us how to work the TV, I don’t suppose it matters to much but it would have been nice to have some TV on now and again, thankfully we do have our laptops with lots of movies etc. so it’s not important and we have seen somewhere in the village that does car hire, so first thing Monday morning we will pop down there.

Our First Day……… Thursday 27^th September

Well here we are…finally in Cyprus.

This morning I woke up at six thirty, exhausted still, but to excited to go back to sleep, I wanted to look out of all the windows and see my first glimpses of this lovely island, when I wandered out into the small back garden I was amazed to see an orange tree, a pomegranate tree and a huge fig tree and they were all full of fruit, how amazing, and the weather was beautiful, blue skies and sunshine, and it was hot lol.

The village that our Airbnb is in is called Kouklia, and it seems really pretty, we have had a few walks around the village, the weather is glorious and it is really hot, unreal that in another few days we will be in October, but it feels like the middle of summer and a heatwave lol, today I saw a banana tree in someone’s front garden with loads of banana’s hanging, I find all of it quite fascinating to be honest, we are taking Maggie out for her walk at eight in the morning and again around seven in the evening, even then it is still really warm but it is cooler for her, I am happy to say I have finally put cardigans away and its great being back in shorts and t shirts.

We walked down to the village square on our second night, which is only a ten minute walk, there are four or five taverna’s on each corner, it seems every Thursday night they close the roads and fill the square outside with tables and chairs and put on a buffet and Greek dancing, the whole thing was really fabulous as the evening was really warm and the music was very Greek, the food was delicious and the Greek dancing was really good and at one point they even had little Cypriot children dancing, it was so entertaining, we actually felt like we were on a movie set of Moma Mia lol, apparently they have this wonderful evening every Thursday throughout the summer, we will definitely have to go again.

We are hiring a car on Monday as we have to start looking for somewhere to live, but it has been nice having these few days not doing a lot, I woke up on Thursday with really aching legs and my knees hurt, I didn’t know whether I had been doing too much or they needed exercising, but the pain felt pretty bad and not just like leg ache, anyway by Saturday they were back to normal so I am guessing they had been overused lol and just needed a rest.

Maggie is doing well, and is also eating well, I have been putting some of the ham that the house owner left into her food so it’s nice to see her eating properly, and this morning she finished off a whole bowl of scrambled eggs that I cooked for her lol, I always feel happier when she is eating well as she is the pickiest dog I have ever met, thankfully there are huge ceiling fans in all of the rooms so she chooses a different one through the day, the house is air conditioned but we prefer the fans on as we both like to be warm.

Yesterday as I was talking to the neighbour I asked her what was growing wild opposite the house as they had big funny looking fruit on them and she said they were prickly pears which I think are normally quite expensive to buy, but here they are just growing wild.

The neighbor is a strange one but really lovely, her name is Katie and she looks after a lot of the village cats, I think there are probably about thirty cats that I counted one morning but there could be more, I was shocked on our first morning here to see them lying outside her house, they are all wild cats so she told me to be careful of stroking them, she said there are a lot of stray cats in the village and the taverna owners all help to feed them, so as we are out on our walks we see them everywhere, they look happy to be roaming  around and it’s nice to know the village feeds them, some of them are so beautiful but I am a bit too worried to even try to pet one of them.

This evening after the sun went down it was pretty hot so we had all the doors open to get a breeze going through the house which was lovely, but then I spotted a stray cat wandering through the house, followed by another and then another, I think we had about five cats in all just wandering around the living room and the kitchen, I actually just sat there in shock, I am a bit scared of cats as we once took a stray cat in and I got badly bitten, and of course with the neighbor Katie telling me to be careful as they are wild cats I have to admit I was a bit worried so I tried to sit as still as I could so they wouldn’t come near me, Nick had gone into his room to play a game on his laptop so I was shouting him but he didn’t hear me as unbeknown to me he had his headphones in lol, then I tried calling him on his mobile phone but he had left that in the living room, it was funny but also a bit worrying, anyway one by one they just left through the doors and windows, but one decided to stay and she was adamant I was going to stroke her as she kept crying and purring, so after about half an hour I actually did get down on the floor and stroke her, she was lovely, but then she wouldn’t leave, when Nick finally came into the living room he wasn’t impressed at all and when he got her out the door she lay outside on the patio all night, I think she wants a home poor little thing, but she had gone when I woke up, I did wonder if she would be back later on, but the following day I found out that she is a he and he is called Noddy and he lives a few doors away and isn’t a stray at all lol.