This is the story of my week with my daughter Andrea in Cyprus.

Sunday I stayed in bed until 10. Andrea who had had a much earlier evening but had also been relieved when it was over because she hadn't really enjoyed her night out with Maretta's friends. Andrea had towered over all of them. Maretta is about 4'10" and her sister Martha who is 16 but looks 18 "because she is so tall" must have been all of 5'2". And Andrea (5”8”) wore her high heeled boots to make it even worse.

I think Maretta felt bad about missing the late night-club scene, but thought they might go out on Sunday night instead, but Andrea said she'd had enough, and so we all had a fairly early night on Sunday. But they did get up early to go to church - and I had intended going with them too, but I didn't wake up in time.

Maretta's family belong to the Orthodox Greek Church as I'm sure most people in Cyprus do - and the service apparently usually goes on for 2 1/2 hours, but Maretta said people mostly just went at the last half hour for communion. So that's what they did, went at 9 for the service that had started at 7. The communion wine apparently was dished out from the chalice in a teaspoon and Martha said it was very unhygienic and wouldn't take it. The bread was a big loaf with a symbol on it, which was sliced up and people went to the back to take a slice from there. The leftover bread was taken home by the men of the parish who wanted it, and Maretta’s grandpa, who was always at church apparently, brought some to our house. I wasn't entirely happy about the consecrated host being treated so casually as to have butter and jam spread on it, so I didn't take any.

The other thing they brought back was some cereal with sugar on it which you were to eat while you remembered the dead. Also Maretta talked about people burning orange peel outside the church to pray for the dead. And people had to kiss the icons in a particular order, but she couldn't do so because she was menstruating and therefore unclean. But when we went to visit a little burned out wayside chapel the next day, Maretta's mother did just that - kissed them all in a particular order before she left.

Sunday was a big meal with the grandparents coming over for it. We ate in the dining room at the big table instead of the usual kitchen where we had been up til now. The meal was a sort of pasta dish with cheese inside little squares like ravioli but in a sort of thin soup as well. And then we had lamb and spinach cooked together and some nice bread. And I was given very potent red wine - local brew - but Andreos rejected one bottle as not special enough before he gave me the stuff we had. It tasted like 50 year old port. I think it was before dinner that we drove down to the sea and walked along the beach - a very beautiful spot with hardly any tourists and the sea looking a beautiful blue.

Maretta said she had missed the real sea so much when she went to the ugly green dirty sea in England. The sun shone a bit, although each day it had grown a bit colder and windier, so we weren't missing terribly good sunbathing days at our hotel.

After lunch we drove downtown to watch the big carnival parade - which went on for 3 hours or so - 80 floats. We were late going but didn't miss anything - and we left early finding it just too much to stand any longer.

There was no live music at all - just the odd tape playing on a float. Apparently the two rival music groups had been fighting for the better position in the parade and in the end both declined to go at all. The priest that morning in church had preached against the carnival and parade as too secular in this holy season - and in fact the floats were not in the least religious. They had political themes mostly - and the children dressed up and walked the long route - many looking very fed up before they reached our vantage point. I felt very sorry for one little girl who was in a costume which meant she had to stand as if she were crucified, with candles lit by her hands - and no place to rest her legs or even shift her position as they went along. Her parents (presumably) were pulling her float. They obviously had put a lot of effort and money into making each of these groups very impressive and the people seemed to have enjoyed the experience - but we did feel it was a bit too much of a good thing. I remember best the kids dressed up as 101 Dalmatians and those dressed up like a pack of cards.

We had an ice cream on the way back to the car, and then when we got back had tea and more rich honey and nut cakes - some deep fried ones which were very good and absolutely stuffed with calories. We ate lots. The girls went off somewhere and I decided to take the time to myself and sit in the living room and read my book, but Gena obviously thought I was bored and lonely and sent Grandma, who had very little English, in to talk to me. She actually could talk English quite well - just couldn't carry on a conversation in it. As long as she did her monologue, it went well - so I didn't interrupt her very often. She told about her holidays usually on her own because her husband didn't want to go - so she would go with a bus tour company - first to England -then the next year when she had told him all about it they had to do it all again so he could see what is was she had enjoyed so much. The same thing happened on trips to the Holy Land and Russia - she did a reccy and then the next year they both went. But before too long Andreos gave Grandma a lift home and we all relaxed a little bit. We had one more meal that day - about 10 at night again - leftovers from the lunch.

Monday we were all going into the mountains for a family gathering on Green Monday - so called because it was the first day of serious Lent and nobody was supposed to eat anything but vegetables from then on for 50 days. But they cheated and most people stopped fasting after the first day - and the fast was a very relative thing as the banquet we went to had snails and octopus and loads of rich cakes and puddings. But all made without milk or butter we were assured so it really was fasting. We had wine and beer - and the men who didn't much talk English except for Christo - who had been to graduate school at Ithaca in New York - so they went their own way and sat and smoked in the living room waiting for the women to make their coffee - while the women (mostly the younger women but not us) did all the dishes and waited on everybody.

There is an enormous water shortage in Cyprus at the moment, (1997) as it hasn't rained properly for about 18 months. So water was only allowed three days a week - and people filled up containers with water to see them through for cooking and washing on the water-off days. And they all seemed to do their washing-up with the minimum of water. They had a small round container like a margarine tub, and a sponge which they squirted with washing up liquid and a small amount of water. With this they wiped over all the dishes, one after the other until they had touched them all. Then they rinsed the soap off and put the item in the rack to dry.

Each week when Maretta's parents go to their mountain home, they collect water from there, which was very tasty, and we didn't suffer at all from having local water.

It was a very friendly and happy gathering and I enjoyed it very much. First of all that day we had come to the house which Maretta's family had built in the mountains - a beautiful house on the top of a hill, with pine panelled ceilings and lots of windows. They had only had it a few years and were still adding to the garden, but it was furnished almost better than their town house. After we had been in the house only a few minutes, and they had got a fire started as it was very cold, Andreos took us on a tour up to some lovely little villages in the hills. Before he picked us up, we walked down the hill and visited a little burned out tiny chapel, which was still used for services, apparently.

The first village we visited was Omodos, the most popular tourist spot and we went into a monastery church which apparently had a relic of the true cross. We also went to a little typical old house - where we went down into the cellar and tasted some wine and bought some, of course - and at another shop nearly bought Andrea a hand made lacy top - but it was expensive and not very practical. All we got were postcards at that shop and even then Andrea thought they gave her the wrong change.

We drove farther on to another village Pano Platres, where the family had moved to be safer during the Turkish invasion - not so very long ago, about 1970 I think. But it was pretty much a dead town, so we drove back to the house. Then we all went over to the Aunts for the feast and she also had her daughter, son-in-law and two children, and her son-in-law's mother, father and sister there. So it was quite a houseful. We stayed until about four - went back to the other house for a cup of tea, and then headed back to Limassol.

Then after saying goodbye to the grandparents and Gena and Martha, Maretta and her father took us back to Larnaca. Andreaos told me that he might get a job sometime soon as a school inspector but he would have to drive every day to Nicosia where the Education Department had its offices, and he didn't know if he would like doing that.

The trip back seemed to take a lot less time than the trip going had done - but maybe that was because we had more confidence in Andreos' driving. We said a quick good bye to them at our hotel door. It had been a very interesting three days with them, but we were both looking forward to a better night's sleep in our hotel.

We unpacked, and went across to Dominick's for another Greek meal - although I had an urge for something less Greek so I had a hamburger and chips. Again we had our beer and the complimentary orange liquor at the end.

Tuesday was our last day and we felt we owed it to Larnaca to at least take a short look at it. So after breakfast we took a local bus - which took about half an hour. It was on time coming, and then about half way in, the bus stopped and a man came on to collect the fare - which was 40 p each. We were dropped off near the sea front - and we walked along it - then went inland and found the shops and the market. The prices in this market were slightly cheaper than the one in Limassol, but the products were more or less identical. We found the church of St. Lazarus and went in for a quick visit.

I bought some tea towels and a leather handbag. It took ages to get it because the man couldn't get my credit card to work properly. But in the end with some help from somebody on the telephone, he managed it. It was coolish, and we decided to have a cappuccino before we went for our bus home - and then we had to wait about a half hour for it to come.

When we got back to our hotel, we thought we'd do a little bit of sunbathing - and found a fairly sheltered spot. Our pool man was pleased to see Andrea again - he'd worried that we had left - all those days without shocks - and had brought her a present on one of the days we were not there. After an hour or so, it turned cloudy so I went in and Andrea investigated the gym, but found that it didn't have the sorts of machines that she wanted.

Our last evening we went to a free wine-tasting in the hotel - two white wines and a red were on offer, with some small snacks. I think we each had a taste of each. Then when we went out to eat, we had a glass of wine instead of our usual beer.

We both had Greek food for this last occasion. Then we went home, and I napped while Andrea contacted Philip, the taxi man and arranged for a call for us at 2, and a taxi at 2.30 for our 4 a.m. flight. Everything worked well, with the taxi being a little late and overcharging slightly, so he didn't get a tip.

The flight was right on time - thank goodness - and we tried to sleep for the 4 1/2 hours we were in the air. We were offered a hot breakfast about an hour before we landed.

We separated after we got off the plane, because I went in to a transit lounge and needed to go through a different customs than Andrea. She was going back to Stephanie's for the night - and to get ready for her 2 week work stint in France, which she had been dreading the whole week.

I seem to have walked miles before I finally got into the lounge for the shuttle flights and I had only just sat down when there came an announcement on the tanoy about a fire alarm - first in a nearby area, and then in our area, so we all had to evacuate the building for half an hour or so and stand on the runway. But nobody seemed worried, so I decided it was probably rather routine and the airport wasn't really on fire after all.

Our flight to Manchester was about an hour late, due to fog. We landed okay because our plane had computer landing equipment - which they were rather proud of - but the fog made a huge backlog of planes waiting to take off. It was just as well, though, as Philip was teaching from 9-10 and couldn't possibly have met my flight if it came in as scheduled at 9.30 - but was in good time for the actual 10.45. Thus ended our holiday in Cyprus, interesting and good fun, despite the cool weather.