Good morning!
As I can only get to a PC when I leave the side of my Brother's pool and venture out into the world I wasn't able to post yesterday. But here I am, you lucky people!
Anyway, first off, ow! Why didn't anyone warn me about the sun???
OK, everybody warned me about the sun.
My shoulders hurt, and my arms, and my chest. Fortunately my face, probably my brownest part, is OK. The problem is, when you're in the pool you can't feel the heat of the sun so you don't notice it slowly killing you. Still, I'm coping.
What have I been doing? OK I'll tell you.
Thursday afternoon - sunbathing next to pool, into pool, out of pool, sunbathing, into pool, out of pool, reading in the sun. I met my neice, Alexandra, she's very cool. She's like most intelligent seven year olds. Firstly you're like, "wow, you're clever and articulate". Then, three hours later you're like "wow, you never shut up or let go of me". Finally after seven hours you're like "hey, can someone get this thing off me!!?!?!" OK, that's not really true. She's adorable, and calls me 'Uncle Dave' all the time, as long as she can remember my name, which is most of the time. We swim a lot together and she likes to tell me about every time she's ever been ill or injured. It's great.
Friday (morning and afternoon) - Basically the same as Thursday afternoon. In and out of the pool, reading one of Paul's books, chilling with Alexandra, teaching the dogs to talk, playing mind-games with the cats (I'm winning). At lunch time one of
Peter's friends came round for a dip in the pool, and his and Dea's two sisters came over for the afternoon.
In the evening we all went to a gig in the harbour of Peter's friend's band, who just happen to be the biggest rock band in Cyprus. One of them is Cypriot, one is Russian, one is Ukrainian and one is English. They were good, even though blues rock is soooo not my thing. Also the delivery of Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing" in a Russian accent was a little strange.
Anyway, that pretty much brings me up to now, and now I'm about to head off around Paphos to do some shopping, look at things of historical interest and examine the beach in closer detail.
Something for you to try until my next opportunity to blog - my aforementioned mindgames with cats. This provided nearly an hour of fun for me so you should try it, but vary it to your own pool-less situation:
Firstly, get at least one cat to sit near you when you're in the pool. This is easy when they're all really soppy and just want to rub all over you. Then swim around underwater for a bit and then pop your head up at the side of the pool where they are, with just your eyes sticking out over the top of the pool. Then gradually slide yourself along the side of the pool always maintaining eye contact with the confused looking cat. Then swim off.
Now you have to repeat this several times. The cat will start to look really quite bemused / peturbed, but this is OK. It means it's working. After a bit the cat will look p'd off and will try and not look at you, but if you stay still just out of it's line of sight for a few seconds it won't be able to resist turning to look at you. At this point you've won the current round.
Now my plan is to do this daily for length of time that I'm here. I think it will, in some way, be an experiment in conditioning. But I'm not sure quite yet what I'm hoping to prove / discover.
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Before I forget, I was in one of the souvenir shops on Thursday and they had a selection of badges for English football fans. They were amazing. If they weren't £1 each then I'd have brought a few home. I'll try and remember some of them:
* F*** off Wolves, I'm a West Brown fan (yes, Brown!)
* F*** West Brown, I'm a Wolves fan.
* I support Man Utd. We're the best! (edgy huh?)
and my favourite, and I'm serious, this is exactly what it said:
* "My old man said to me, "be an Arsenal fan", I said "F*** off, B*llocks, you c***".
OK, I'm going to have to go back there to remind myself of some more of them, because they were really funny.
Anyway, I'm off shopping now. Byeeeee!