Yellow

This week's Gallery theme is 'Yellow', so I flicked back through some Lightroom archives and found some pictures from the swimming classes that Zenon and Leo took with Sue at the International School pool a few years back.  I loved the way that the afternoon light picked out colours in the floats and the pool and asked Sue if I could take pictures.  She was thrilled, and I think used them for her website.  Unfortunately politics, as usual, intervened and the school made it difficult for Sue, a foreigner, to continue working from their facilities.

To see how other participants handled the prompt, please follow the link to the Gallery.

Greek Ferries

The theme of The Gallery this week was Means of Transport.  Follow the link on this page to see what others came up with!

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In the summer of 2008 I took my children to Greece.  We left Limassol harbour for Rhodos, then worked our way up through the Dodecanese and the Northern Aegean to Thessaloniki over a period of six weeks using a variety of craft from cruise ship to caique.

Leaving Limassol

Leaving Rhodos

Bound for Telendos

Bound for Telendos

Bound for Telendos

Leaving Kalymnos

Somewhere in the Dodecanesos

Patmos Harbour, waiting for Best Beloved

In the summer of 2008 I took my children to Greece.  We left Limassol harbour for Rhodos, then worked our way up through the Dodecanese and the Aegean to Thessaloniki over a period of six weeks using a variety of craft from cruise ship to caique.

The Gallery -- Morning

The prompt from The Gallery this week was 'Morning', so I looked back through my files and chose these.

Kato Paphos is a tourist spot, usually heavy with the smell of suncream and souvlaki, loud with the ubiquitous Mediterranean whine of scooters and the tooting of horns, full of children and life and ice-cream.  But on the Sunday mornings of mid-summer, when the air is pre-humid clear and the water as yet unstirred by the feet of bathers, it can be a paradise.

I was experimenting with shadows and wet footprints that morning.

Please follow the Gallery link and see how others approached the Morning prompt.

'Light' for the Gallery

This week the Gallery's theme was 'Light'.  Please follow the link to see how other's handled the theme.

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Zenon goes once a week to play with clay in Nino's pottery workshop in Yerouskippou. Ninos has a wonderful space: part shop, part studio, part coffeehouse where anyone is welcome and discussion touches topics from art to zoology, embracing gardening, politics, and society on the way.

In the winter afternoons the late sun lances through the windows and open door, warming, caressing, pinpointing, highlighting.

Barbie and the Van, Cappadocia, Turkey 1991

The Gallery this month asked us to find a landscape and 'show what a wonderful and diverse place the world is'.  So here's mine: the record of a wonderful week in a beautiful place with a   dear friend.  Please follow The Gallery link to see what others came up with!

From November 1987 until August 1992 I lived on the road in this van. Sometimes I was alone, sometimes with friends. For nine wonderful months, my best friend Barbie was with me. She flew out from London and I picked her up in Heraklion, Crete on Easter Saturday. We raced up through Greece to get out before my customs documents expired, then spent three months in Turkey looping from Constantinople to Mount Ararat, up to the Black Sea coast, then across into Syria. We spent a month in Syria, a month in Jordan, then alternated between the Sinai, Israel, and Cyprus depending on time, work, customs documents, and visa restrictions.

One of our more relaxed times was a week in the central Turkish region of Cappadocia where the wind and weather have sculpted the rocks into 'fairy chimneys' – some of which were used as monasteries and churches in years gone by, others have been turned into dwellings and hotels still in use. Local people were genuinely helpful -- whether or not we chose to buy from their shop or eat in their restaurant. No refuse, plastic bags or scrawny animals were to be seen in the streets and urban areas: the horses pulling the little carts were groomed and carried bags under their tails to catch manure for well-tended gardens and fields.

Barbie is far away now, living on the other side of the world. We are still in touch, though our lives have pulled us in very different directions. I still think of her as one of my best friends, and remember the times we shared – terrifying, exuberant, exasperating, tedious, and poignant – as some of the best of my life.

Wise-Eyed Fishing Boat, Pomos

The prompt from The Gallery this week was 'Eyes'

Soon after I bought my digital SLR, a Nikon D-80, my family and I went for a day trip to the northwest area of Cyprus near the village of Pomos. Pomos has a wonderful restaurant set high on a bluff above the small shelter for fishing boats. You can bet that your lunch is fresh!

On the way to the beach we walked around the tiny harbour, watching men repair their nets and dodging children who ran with icecream cones in hand.

This boat reminded me of the children's book The Story About Ping, the tale of a duckling who lived with his mother and father and brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts and cousins aboard a 'Wise-Eyed Boat' on the Yangtze River.

Far from having a duckling in mind, the boat's owner was probably taking precautions against the Evil Eye in a custom that has long predated Christ in these parts. You'll often see eyes on boats here, but usually they're smaller and a single eye is more common than a pair.

Please follow the link at the top of the post to enjoy others' work on the same theme.  Why not join in, too?

The Gallery: My Kitchen

This week, the Gallery's prompt is 'My Kitchen'.  Please follow the link to see how other Gallery members interpreted the theme.

 

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My friend Cleo came over one morning for some baking. She and her four children and me and my two younger ones made plain rolls, olive rolls, and some wonderful cheesy pull-aparts with a filling loosely based on the recipe from Greek-Canadian food blogger Peter Minakis – but incorporating some of my mother-in-law's jewel-like cherry tomatoes.

I love the hands-on aspect of breadmaking, the texture and feel of kneading, the smell of rising dough. For kneading technique, we freely adopted our own take from Martin Bertinet's Dough, which incorporates a lot of banging of dough onto the table.

It is one of my favourite kitchen memories, and I'm glad that I had my trusty little Lumix on hand to record it.  

Cleo and her family are leaving to return to the UK on Monday, and we will miss them.

Pets -- for 'Gallery'

Over the years here we have had several dogs as I've mentioned elsewhere in these pages. Sputnik has been with us since we found him in June – a starveling staggering along beside the road. Since, he's  gained hugely in weight, confidence, and personality.

Stumpy, our long-cherished three-legged cat, still has no idea why we introduced this bumptious canine into his heretofore peaceful routine. And still has no time for him, rebuffing every good-natured Sputnik overture with a hiss and a slash of his remaining front leg – generally a failure as he can't keep his balance and ends up on his face.

Lucky, on the other hand, is delighted to have a playmate and takes no account of their size difference when she pummels, chases, and plays with him.

Sputnik amuses us endlessly with his snores, his outre sleeping positions, his engaging expressions. He guards our house from snakes and feral dogs, plumbers, gamekeepers, and men who come to measure for guttering. Best Beloved (in typical grumpy Cypriot fashion) still can't figure out what posessed me to stop the car and pick him up; but even he, I suspect, enjoys Sputnik from time to time.

Black & White

I'm trying something new here, linking to a blog called The Gallery which I found through another Cyprus blog, Emma's A Matter of Choice.  So The Little White Donkey will continue to chronicle the ups and downs of Family Life in Rural Cyprus (as it says in my header), but will also be navigating other photographic routes as well...

The Gallery's prompt this week was Black & White...

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Yioti, my friend's son, had his fifth birthday party thirteen years ago, and his mother made him a number cake -- chocolate, with smarties.  Yioti's older brother is looking on in the snake t-shirt, and the little girl in the middle is my daughter.  The lady at the side is another friend.

How time passes -- how things remain the same!  Sophia is planning to go to England for her A-Level studies next year.  Yioti came by for a meal last night during a brief break in his mandatory Army service, Stelios was here over the weekend -- also on a break from the Army.  Six months ago, my middle son celebrated his 11th birthday, and the same characters were in shot -- but it wasn't a black and white picture, so we'll have to wait for a new prompt to see that one!