Zenon Takes to the Water

Zenon has joined the Paphos Nautical Club and started rowing (sculling? kayaking?) on Asprokremnos Dam.

He came home from school a few weeks ago and announced that he's like to try, so I arranged a swim test for him with the team instructor.  He plopped into the Yerouskippou pool one chilly evening shortly afterwards, swam one hundred and fifty metres without a murmur, and duly pushed us to take him to sign up.

It's early days yet, but he seems to love it: Paphos has an active water sports club and there are a few members of his age, several older teens – including the Cyprus champion – and some adults including one of Best Beloved's cousins. We go twice a week for now, Wednesday afternoons and Sunday mornings, and he comes home glowing, as much from the sense of achievement separate and totally different from what anyone else in the house does as from the physical work-out (rigourous stretching before and after plus six or seven kilometers of rowing).  He also loves the different perspective that being on the water gives.

For the moment he's learning the basics in the four-man shell. By the summer he should be in the double or the single ones, and if he wants by then, he can go every day. I don't know the first thing about rowing, but am supporting him all the way: he desperately needs something to feel good about that is his alone, and I'm thrilled that it's something that happens outside in the fresh air that will be good for his mind, body, and soul rather than something academic or technological that keeps him indoors.

Leo is desperate to join in, too but we are holding him back at the moment. He gets a turn on the rowing machine when we drop off or collect Zenon, and the team coach, former Soviet Olympic rower Mr Vladimir is keen to sign him up, too. Although even he admits that Leo's a little on the small side for now.

O Xeros Potamos -- 'The Dry River'?

This morning when I went to make breakfast at six, I saw that we were out of milk so I set out in the car for the nearest place that would be open, the Market at Mandria Junction.  Crossing the bridge over the river below the dam, I realised that something had changed.  Instead of the usual dark chasm of earth and rock, the space below the span was white and swirling, and even though there was not light enough to see, I knew that the dam had overflowed and that the river was coming down.

A few hours later, I set out under (relatively) clear skies to have a look... Along with, it seemed, the rest of Paphos and his donkey.

First stop was the river side, where I joined an elderly gent who was videoing from his phone.


"O Xeros Potamos?"  I asked him.  "The 'Dry River'?  That's its name, right?" I asked him in Greek.  He snorted.  "That's what they say!"  Then shook his head in wonder... "Πολύ νερό, πολύ νερό..." A lot of water, yes indeedy!

Atop the dam, the populace and the press was out in force.  Even when the hail began.  The Highway Department has blocked ingress from one side of the dam, but a steady stream of cars, icecream vans, fruit sellers, and donut and snack vans kept arriving from the other side, parking, leaving, hooting...  The buying, selling, photographing, laughing, continued unabated.

"Κοίτα! Ξανά χαλάζει! (Look!  Its hailing again!) yelled one man, grinning, and turned his face to the sky.  Lightning flashed, thunder cracked, and hailstones gathered in the folds of my jacket.

By this time my shoes were wet and my jeans soaked to the knee.  I decided that I had had enough and ran for the car.

Asprokremnos Dam

Yesterday, Leo did not have a tennis lesson: as soon as we reached the court the rain started again, so his teacher shrugged, pointed at the sky with its complement of lowering grey clouds, and waved goodbye.

“Can we check out the dam and see if it's overflowing yet?” Leo asked. So to assuage his disappointment (Leo loves tennis – a passion I cannot find it in myself to share) we headed for Asprokremnos on our way home.

It seems like a lot of Paphiots had the same idea: both the ice-cream van (“Mum, who in their right mind would buy an ice cream on a day like today?” Pause. “On second thoughts, I would. Can I have an ice cream?” “Are you in your right mind, Leo?” “No!” “Well, no. Sorry.”) and the loukomades van were there, as well as a number of people who, like us, parked on the dam wall to look over the side and cheer on the water level.

I only had my phone camera, and that was a little wet, so the pictures are a little... lumpy.

The rain continued all last night and was still falling when I went to collect Galena the Cleaner at seven-thirty this morning. I didn't want to come back on the motorway, so we mosey-ed back on the old road, and just before the dam turn-off I said: “Let's go and see if it's full yet.”

This morning there were more people than last night – and the ice cream van was still there! A man from a blue pick-up truck and I found ourselves side-by-side looking at the water, now only half a metre below the spillway lip. “Another day or two?” I said in Greek. “Nah,” he answered. “Later today!” It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him if he wanted to put twenty Euros on the question, but I was too shy. Chances are, we would have had a good laugh over it, but I didn't want to seem too forward.

As I dived back into the car (the sky was chucking down cats and dogs and I didn't have a jacket on), even more people arrived to look at the spectacle. I guess there's nothing much to do around our neck of the woods when it's pouring with rain just before eight on a mid-week morning.