A Ride in Aphrodite's Hills

When Leo had his ninth birthday last November, I decided that I had hosted my last kids' party. Eighteen years of cakes, jelly, party games and piles of washing up came to a gentle but definite halt: there was no point in putting in my twenty. “Tell that to Zenon,” Sophia had said when I announced my early retirement to my older children. But “I'll think of something,” I had replied. 

I broached the subject to Zenon at the end of March, and after disappointment flashed across his face, hope flared. “Can I go with some friends to paintball, then?” he asked. My heart fell. I hate paintball for the same reason that I hate computer war games and anything that encourages little boys in the phoney heroism of sanitised combat. So I temporised with “Maybe we can think of something else – would you like to take two friends and try riding?”

Riding was part of my childhood. Never as accomplished an equestrienne as my sisters, I was, nonetheless, pony-mad, and began riding at four. Except for a time in Hawaii where there were no nearby stables, I rode until I left Ireland in my mid-twenties.

Cyprus is not a horse place. Donkeys have always been a part of the furniture, draught animals since time immemorial, but the few horses on the island are either on the race-track or the preserve of a (mostly English) horsey set in a few scattered saddle clubs. The climate and environment are harsh and feed is expensive, so horses have not been a part of my children's lives as they were a part of mine.

His eyes lit up immediately, so I called Anarita Equestrian Centre, open for a year or more in a village about thrity minutes drive away, where we went for pony rides after Leo's party. But Marlene said that they did not have enough suitable ponies for five of us (Zenon and two friends, Leo, and me) to go for a quiet hack in the countryside. She suggested that I call Pat at Aphrodite Hills – the saddle club attatched to the nearby InterContinental Hotel.

Pat had enough quiet horses for us all, and enough helpers to lead the boys. We settled on a date three weeks hence (Zenon's birthday falling, this year, on Orthodox Easter Sunday); a time that would allow us an hour on horseback, cake back at the stables, and a reasonable hour to hit Gino's La Sardegna Pizzeria in town for a celebration meal; and a price (discounts for being local and a group of five).

Zenon chose two friends, Loucas and Marcos, to come with us, and we showed up in plenty of time. Pat and several young ladies fitted us with hard hats, and introduced us to our steeds. Leo had a smart-looking little grey Welsh pony called Mr Bojangles, and I had a rather classy looking dark brown mare called Twizzle. The others had solid looking bays and a chestnut of around 14 h.h., which looked quiet but a long way from bored riding-school gee-gees.

We spent a peaceful hour riding along a track through olive and carob groves to a look-out from where, on a clear day, the view stretches from Troodos to Akrotiri. Each of the boys chatted with the girl who was leading him, and I – when I wasn't out in front because of Twizzle's longer stride – chatted with Pat, discovering that her son had been in Sophia's class and was also at drama with Zenon. There is no escape in our small community! Everyone is linked somehow, either through relatives or school or neighbourhood or afternoon classes.

Arriving back we did some exercises in the arena, then enjoyed Zenon's choice of cake – New York Sweets profiteroles – which we shared with our patient 'leading ladies'. While we were eating, one of the girls resaddled Twizzle and rode her around the arena, practising for an upcoming dressage test. From quiet trail horse, Twizzle metamorphosised into a nicely balanced show horse, and watching her revived dormant memories that I patiently shoved aside.

Collecting Best Beloved and Alex – Sophia was at work – we rounded off the day with an array of Gino's pizzas and I dropped Marcos and Loucas off at their respective houses just before nine in the evening.

I was a little unsure of how the boys had enjoyed the unorthodox celebration, but both of mine were enthusiastic and, according to their parents, Loucas and Marcos 'haven't stopped talking about horses since'.

So glad we passed on paintball...

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...

***

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!

The Turning of the Seasons, the Turning of the Years

We are leaving spring behind and roaring, full throttle, into summer.

Every year the change in seasons happens this way: for the first half of April we cruise through a beautiful honeymoon spring, green grass, bright flowers, air crisp enough morning and evening to make long sleeves and a sweatshirt neccessary. The butter can stay out of the fridge in its butterdish, and retain the perfect consistency for spreading. Then around the middle of the month, the season shifts into higher gear. Overnight the grain ripens and the flowers die. Shorts and sandals come out of the closets, doors and windows stay open all day. One starts to avoid the sunshine. The butter sags into a golden pool and, if not refrigerated during the day, gets a rancid tang very quickly.

Yesterday we celebrated Zenon's birthday. He invited a crowd of friends and most of their parents joined us as well. Best Beloved did a simple meal of pork, lamb, and chicken souvla. There were hummous and grilled halloumi for the vegetarian contingent, and a massive salad. Cake and jelly followed the games, then the children dispersed to bike races, lego building, and table tennis – which the adults soon joined. Everyone left by dark, and BB and I cleaned up then sat sipping white wine on the verandah.

I guess I've been doing birthday parties – an average of two or three a year – for seventeen years now. And as I looked around the gathered well-wishers, I saw some of the same faces that appear in pictures taken more than a decade ago. Stelios is about to finish his army service now. Yioti is about to do his A-Levels. I have pictures of Yiotis's fifth birthday party, with several of the same characters gathered around his chocolate cake as were gathered around Zenon's yesterday. Maybe that's because Lisa's and my kids grew up side-by-side... But it's been a while since all her big boys were here, and as she said yesterday, as we watched them scoffing cake and jelly with the same enthusiasm that they showed twelve years ago “They don't get any smaller, and they take up So Much Space!”

Little People parties are dominated by Pass the Parcel and Pin the Tail on the Donkey, Sophia's last one – when she turned fourteen (she couldn't decide what to do last year, so opted for nothing) – was a tea party, complete with crustless sandwiches, elegant cups and saucers, and trifle... and head banging rock and roll or heavy metal rumbling from the nether regions both before and after the meal. Leo's is a winter birthday, and the weather is often too bad to spend it outdoors, but Zenon's is the perfect opportunity for outdoor games. Last year we had water ballon wars with washable dye. All the invitations included the admonition to 'wear old clothes' – not a usual warning on a Cypriot invite.

Next weekend belongs to Easter, and the spate of parties and feasting that accompany the major festival of the Orthodox year. I'll shun the bangers and bonfire of Saturday night: custom is that the whole village goes for the Midnight Service, shares a light from the Paschal Candle, and witnesses the celebration of the Risen Christ. The Pagan side of me enjoys the fire and the concept of the gathering, but in practice I usually avoid it – I hate the firecrackers, and don't enjoy the religion.

The Big Ones have friends in the village now to hang out with, and will surely go. BB or his parents may take the Littles.

Then it's back to school – revising and GCSE's for Alex, end of term exams for Sophia, the Three R's for the Littles. After that? The long, glorious ten weeks of summer holidays.

Roll on!

Rescue Horse

Zenon’s tenth birthday party was planned for Saturday afternoon. He wanted Best Beloved to do a souvla, he wanted a cake with DragonballZ from Zorba’s, and he wanted a crowd of friends over for games that included water balloon paintball and three-legged races. So we complied, planned, invited his friends and their parents, and prepared for the day.

At about 10, Best Beloved went out to buy the souvla meat, and as soon as he came back I left to collect the cake. As I passed the turning to the dam, just past the end of our road, I noticed a horse standing by the side of the road.

“That poor thing!” I thought to myself. It stood hunched in the blazing sunshine, its head hanging. As I drove down the road I wracked my brains to think whom it belonged to: there are few horses in Cyprus, and I thought I knew most in the neighbourhood. “I’ll take it some water as soon as I get back, and I’ll call Yianni (a friend who keeps racehorses in a nearby village), he must know the owner.”

Resolved, I continued on the cake mission, and a moment later my phone rang. It was Best Beloved: “Did you see the horse?” I told him that I had, and what I had decided to do about it. “Keep Yianni out of it for now,” Best Beloved advised. “It got hit by a car last night and the police are looking for the owners. When you get back, we’ll take it some water together.”

The cake collection was completed in record time, and back at the house Alex and I filled eight four-litre bottles with water, put them and a big bucket into the Land Rover, and headed toward the horse, stopping to pick up Best beloved from the field en route.

Close to, the horse was smaller than I thought – only about 14 hands – and standing awkwardly, tied to a boulder with a rope, chain, and too-large head-collar. She was resting a back leg, a gaping slice carved out of her side midway between hip and shoulder. Blood still trickled down her matted coat, and the flies clustered hungrily.

As Alex and I approached with the bucket and water bottles, she lifted her head and whickered, moving painfully toward us and plunging her nose deep into the bucket. She drained four litres in a gulp, so I gave her some more and more and more. After four bottles, she slowed down and I decided to wait before she had any more in case it made her colic.

She allowed me to stroke her nose and examine her wound: her shoulder was bruised, and her stifle, and I went around the other side to see if I could see any other injuries. There were none visible but a slightly swollen fetlock on her near hind leg. While she had some more water we discussed what to do and Best Beloved filled me in on the story as he knew it.

Billy had been drinking at the Cousin’s Café until late last night, and one of his companions had been the man from Choletria (the next village up) whose wife had been murdered last year by the man who had lost his grandkids and his mind in a tractor accident five years earlier. This man spends his life now in a bottle, and when he left at two in the morning (after Billy had gone home) instead of going up to his house, he inexplicably turned south – and hit the horse broadside. He returned to the Café with a broken windshield and an incomprehensible tale. Then went home.

At some time in the morning the police came, tied (and left) the horse and breathalysed the driver, finding him still well over the alcohol limit. Billy was trying to find the owners of the horse.

We called Yianni who said that he was working thirty miles away but would come with painkillers at about five. We called other people in the village, but nobody knew the horse or the owner, so we finally called Paphiakos Animal Welfare, the only people in the country who do large-animal rescue and who are fortunately just down the road. They said they would be with us in half an hour. Meanwhile the horse downed another twelve litres of water

They were as good as their word. Half an hour later two men pulled up with a trailer. “Still no word on the owner?” they asked. And when we said that the matter was in the hands of Kouklia police, and that we had advised the Boys in Blue that we had called the Rescue Service, the lads went into action. Examining the horse gently, they tried to lead her forward, but she rolled her eyes and refused to move until they put a rope around her hindquarters. They half-lifted her up the ramp into the float, and securing her head-collar set out for the animal surgery in Kato Paphos.

“Well, that’s the drama of the day over with,” I said to Best Beloved as we rolled up to our house.

“The party hasn’t started yet!” was his reply. “Sixteen ten year-olds are descending on us in a couple of hours…”

And so they did – with their parents and their old clothes. And a good time was had by all.

Marcos, the son of our former land-lord, broke the piñata with a brilliantly placed swipe, and showed his practical side and engineering skills in building towers with balloons. The teams drew in the paintball water-balloon war, with Kay’s little Marios switching sides like a demon. And we never got to the three-legged race. The souvla, hoummos, salad and spuds, cake, jelly, and baklava were cleaned up with just enough left-overs for Sunday lunch, and people began to trickle away at around seven-thirty – tired, happy, and full. The way that people should be after a good party.

I will call the Rescue Service next week and see how our Lady is doing. I did think about trying to adopt her if her owner doesn’t show up, but we have no place to keep a horse properly and no time to build one, so I’ll keep that idea in fantasy land and refrain from mentioning it to my children.

Armistice Day Baby

Eighty-three years – almost to the hour – after the guns stopped roaring, the gas stopped seeping and the great curtain of mud and steel that had bisected Europe from Switzerland to the sea had ceased to seethe, Leo, my last-born, made his appearance.

I have an Armistice Day baby. He was not born on ‘Remembrance Sunday’ – the closest Sunday to November 11 – when the Queen bends her knee before the Cenotaph to honour her fallen soldiers; nor on Veterans Day – the nearest Monday – when the Americans take a day off for barbeques and Super Sales to remember their veterans, living and dead. No, Leo arrived on The Day itself: a day that for as long as I can remember, I have marked with a silence at eleven o’clock. When I was little, the ranks of the red-coated Chelsea Pensioners still included veterans of the trenches, but now that Harry Patch has passed on and the Great War – in England at least – has passed from living memory to history, their ranks are filled with other men and women, but the number of families touched by continuing conflicts is continuing to grow by the day.

***

But there was no two minutes of silence for me in 2002 – not at eleven, anyway.

For the last few weeks of my pregnancy, Leo had been breech presentation (feet down), or lying sideways. On November 10, Best Beloved had left for London and the World Travel Market, and Doctor Michalis, my ob-gyn had warned me “Any pains and you come straight in. I’ll do a breech delivery with you because this is not your first baby and we know each other well, but a baby lying transverse cannot be born and will require a Caesarian.”

Fortunately, on the morning of the eleventh, I felt Leo turn around, and was in the English Butcher, half-way up the Mesoyi hill, when the first dragging pain told me that today would be the day. “Looks like you’ll be having your baby soon,” Rose smiled at me from behind the counter. “Actually,” I gasped. “He’s on his way now!”

It wasn’t the first time that I had driven myself while in labour, but I hope it was the last… Kay was at home with Zenon, then two. She called Lise who picked up Alex and Sophia from school and contacted Barbara, a friend who was going to help Kay look after Lise’s and my combined children because Lise was coming with me to take care of Sophia who wanted to be at her brother’s birth. Kay also called Jude, a midwife friend who had agreed to act as my ‘doula’ or birthing assistant (something unknown in Cyprus) throughout the delivery.

All these ‘additional extras’ to Leo’s birth are testament to Doc Michalis’ unusual temperament. Not only was he willing to deliver a breech presentation with me, he agreed to letting Jude be present, as well as Lise (though he knew them both well – Jude in her capacity as a midwife and Lise as a patient), and he sanctioned Sophia’s presence, although he insisted on a letter from a child psychologist saying that in her professional opinion, Sophia’s witnessing the normal delivery of a sibling would not cause her harm. He also allowed me to dispense with a shave, an enema, and a drip – all normal birth procedures in Cyprus.

Everyone duly arrived and the house began to bustle with eight children, two baby-sitters, and two carers. Jude dosed me with Rescue Remedy “To reduce trauma” and massaged me with essential oils of clary sage and frankincense “The first one to totally bliss you out and the second to induce stronger contractions”, she said.

Lise drove us to the hospital where our arrival, just as labour was beginning to accelerate, caused quite a stir at the Well Woman reception. The nurse showed us to our room, Doc Michalis checked me out (“Not long now”), someone thought to call Best Beloved (“I thought it wasn’t ‘til next week!”), and within an hour or so, I was moved upstairs to the delivery room.

“If you want to watch, Sophia,” Doc Michalis said. “Come and stand behind me.” So Sophia, one little hand in Lise’s, took up station at his shoulder, her eyes growing wider and wider as the top of Leo’s head began to appear. “Is that his brains?” she whispered. “No,” Lise whispered back. “That’s his dark curly hair… Look… the rest of him’s coming now!” And with a slippery wriggle, the rest of him arrived. Doc Michalis caught him with the ease of a thousand other births, and after cutting the cord and wrapping him in a cloth, handed him to his six-year-old sister.

“Well, that was easy,” the doctor said, putting a stitch into a small tear (99% of births in Cyprus include routine episiotomy – a cut to enlarge the vagina and make delivery ‘easier’ – Doc Michalis had promised me that he would avoid cutting me, and he did). “We’ll do the next one at home, shall we?”

“No next one, Doc,” I answered. “I know where these little buggers come from now!” Smiles all round. Home births do not happen here, yet.

***

We had Leo’s seventh birthday party on the Sunday before the eleventh – ‘Remembrance Sunday’. Fifteen children came and played traditional games like Pass the Parcel, Musical Chairs, and Pin the Tail on the Horse. We ate sandwiches and cake, jelly and pies, and when the last cars pulled away began the clean-up: dishes in the machine, paper in the bin, toys downstairs to the bedroom. A little boy went to sleep tired but happy that night.

Yesterday, the eleventh, I taught my second Organic Principals for the Backyard Gardener workshop at Lise’s Turtle and Moon studio in Trimithousa. At eleven, I was in full spate, explaining the workings of compost and mulch.

But at one, eleven GMT, I was on the road home. I pulled over for my two minutes of silence and wondered why I hadn’t said something during the class. Was I being Politically Correct? (“Don’t mention the War!”) My (two) students were, after all, English – brought up in the same tradition that I had been. Britain is now losing soldiers at an ever-increasing rate in Afghanistan, and thirty years ago, when we were all children, not pausing for the silence at eleven would have been inconceivable.

That’s something to think about for next year.