Sense and Sensibility

The following week at work was busy, but nothing of real significance happened. I immersed myself in my new job as much as I could, so that the next weekend would arrive quickly. On Saturday 18 June, I decided against my previous routine of shopping, reading and beach combing. I was missing my family dreadfully by this time and so, to keep myself active, I caught a bus to Pissouri. Before doing so, I inspected it for roadworthiness, quite prepared to abandon my trip. Fortunately, this vehicle was younger than the driver.

The guidebook said that my destination was a picturesque tourist village some thirty kilometres west of Limassol. More importantly, I could see from the map that it was on the coast road to Paphos, and that my journey would take me past some of the places I'd last seen eighteen years earlier. Having chugged up the steep hill near Curium Amphitheatre, and admired the spectacular views south over the bay towards Akrotiri, a once familiar aroma hit me like a runaway truck. No, not raw sewage this time, but the gorgeous smell that results when nature dry-roasts eucalyptus, pine, juniper, sage, thyme, lavender and rosemary in thirty degrees of Mediterranean heat.

Closing my eyes, the scent led me instantly to one of the wonderful days I’d spent in Cyprus as a young infantry soldier. On returning to my billet that day, from a long energy-sapping run along WSBA beaches, I saw a length of what looked like hose pipe on the porch. Knowing that it hadn’t been there when I'd left, I investigated further. I soon realised that this wasn’t a hose pipe at all, but a large coiled snake! I’d never seen one before outside of a zoo.

The metre long reptile had found a superb spot for sunbathing. Whilst the open sides of the porch let in huge amounts of heat and light, its roof provided excellent top-cover from predators, like the huge birds of prey that circled overhead most days. These birds used the wind-sheer and thermal currents from the cliffs to hang almost motionless, in yet another Cypriot feat that seemed to defy the laws of physics. Apart from being skilful fliers, I could only assume that these birds were also accomplished hunters.

Having recovered from my initial shock, I recalled the briefing that a sergeant had given me a few days earlier. Apparently, snakes bit about five people a year in Cyprus. In reality, bites from Camel and Wolf spiders posed more of a threat. He went on to tell me that bites from three species of snake might cause discomfort, but only one might be life-threatening. It was best to leave snakes plenty of escape routes and then make lots of noise. I racked my memory for the physical characteristics of the lethal one, but to no avail. All I knew was that this one was brown, grey and blue on its upper surface. Perfect camouflage for snoozing undetected in the ‘bondu’ (bush), but not really on a porch.

The snake woke slowly from its slumber. Its head moved lazily from side to side, taking in the apparent perfection of its surroundings, fooled temporarily by the fact that I was stationary. Suddenly, the snake’s sensitive tongue must have registered my hot, sweaty presence nearby. Threatened, it watched me curiously, just as I watched it. Having calculated the best escape route, the snake made its dash for freedom, swishing indignantly towards an edge of my porch, where crickets were chirping noisily. I hadn’t realised how fast snakes could move if they really wanted to. Faster than me in the latter stages of my morning run, for sure!

My daydream over, I awoke to find the bus passing the entrance to Episkopi Garrison. Oh yes, look, there on the right. At the speed we were travelling, the entrance was gone in an instant. I looked quickly left, to see the Officers’ Mess. It was just as I’d remembered it. Now, where exactly was my billet? The one with the snake. I couldn’t see; other buildings and the vegetation obscured my view. Swept along by a tidal wave of emotional excitement, I then saw a sign saying ‘St. John’s School’, but I couldn’t see that either. Frustratingly, I was in the garrison and out the other side in a little more than twenty seconds, and I’d seen little to salve my nostalgic itches. If anything, my torment was worse now.

As we descended into the steep chasm beyond the garrison, I could see white houses to my left and front, their orange roofs shimmering in the heat. They seemed to cling to the cliff tops, as if they were sugar crystals adorning the rim of a large brandy sour. Below me, I could see soccer and rugby pitches, and a polo area. ‘What of the stables, paddocks and jumping rings?’ Like my billet, I couldn’t see them, but I knew that they must be there.

Ah, Happy Valley: that wonderful brown and green crease in the WSBA coastline. That patchwork of grass, hedges and trees made lush by liberal soakings of diluted sewage. As we plunged further into this exotic setting, I could imagine the orderliness of the army’s recreational facilities, most of which were still hidden from me by bushes. In wilder parts, those still untouched by the military mentality, I could envisage small groups of mature poplar trees. From the ground up, their magnificent trunks gave way to elongated cone-shaped leaf canopies. Their tips seemed sharp and high enough to make white scratches in the azure sky beyond.

As one hazy daydream merged into another, a particularly clear image from the valley entered my mind. I couldn’t recall if this snapshot existed in reality, somewhere in one of my many photo albums. I didn’t think that it did. Until triggered by that moment in time, I believe that the image existed as a set of chemical impulses stored in the deep recesses of my memory.

At the bottom of this image, somewhere near my feet, a metalled road petered out and a sandy beach began. A quarter right, for this was more like a three-dimensional diorama than a two-dimensional photograph, a bright yellow peninsular sank into a deep blue sea. It was then I realised that my diorama had movement and sound too. Small white waves were exploding repeatedly, where the peninsular and sea shook hands and, over the big boulders near the shoreline, I could see a string of dark green soldiers scampering toward me. Half right, a colony of carrion was sheltering from the scorching heat and gritty dust in various cliff crevices. The birds’ cacophony was so loud they might have been mocking the mad humans below subjecting themselves to so much unnecessary discomfort.

I awoke from my second daydream that Saturday to see the village of Paramali rushing past my window. Beyond the garrison by this time, my brief but intense trip down memory-lane was over. Now I realised one of the many reasons why I'd been so excited by the chairman’s advertisement six months earlier. I’d wanted to satisfy my insatiable curiosity about the marvellous time that I’d spent at Episkopi during 1976. However, so many of the questions that I’d posed about the garrison over the years remained unanswered. I supposed that there were only so many that I could have addressed by travelling along the road that bisects the camp at speed. With Rob due to start school at Episkopi soon, I could only hope that the opportunity to walk around the garrison would arise in the not too distant future.

A little while later, having past a road sign to the familiar-sounding Bloodhound Camp, the bus driver stopped near a junction and told me that it was time to get off. I’d have to climb the rest of the way to Pissouri on foot, up a steep zigzag road. The extreme effort was worthwhile though. The village was intriguing: like the set of the ill-fated El Dorado television series, with cobbles, white washed walls and narrow passages full of twists and turns, reconstructed recently in a traditional manner to ensnare tourists I supposed. One passageway took me past a tavern of men chatting, smoking, playing backgammon and drinking thick black coffee. They invited me to join them for a drink, which I declined. They also confirmed that I was heading in the right direction for the beach and bid me, ‘kalo taxidi’. Roughly, have a good journey.

A short way beyond the village boundary, I came across a stone barn wearing some of the largest lizards that I had ever seen. They were sunning themselves on the walls, maintaining the body temperatures that allowed them fluid movement. They were the kind of creatures that played prehistoric monsters in the early black and white films of my youth. Whilst blissfully engaged by this notion, I almost stepped on a family of jay-walking partridges. Their panic, in turn, startled the sparrows hiding in nearby grapevines. All of a sudden therefore, Hell broke loose. The unanticipated commotion, in what had been until then a heavenly scene, brought me to my senses. To recover, I stopped to rest and relieve a green fig tree of some fruit. Only the appearance of a tourist ‘Z car’ halted my scrumping. The driver stopped, not to chastise me, but thankfully to offer me a lift to the sea that was still some way off.

I spent the rest of the morning in the oppressive heat and extreme brightness of Pissouri Jetty. I never did find the jetty by the way, which was fairly typical of Cyprus, given its unpredictability and many surprises. The beach was splendid enough though and, taking off my sandals, I walked right to one end, keeping to the narrow strip of shingle like a gymnast on a balance beam. Walking on the sand higher up the beach would have been like fire walking, such were the temperatures that day.

Some higgledy-piggledy limestone boulders ended my balancing act. Amongst them hid a group of young German holidaymakers, sheltering from the sun under a make shift tent. A middle-aged English couple sat on top of one particularly large rock. They were lounging in the heat like the lizards I’d seen earlier, and I engaged them in conversation. The couple too felt nostalgic, as it transpired. The British Army had also posted them to Episkopi in an earlier time, and we shared many memories and anecdotes, as well as regrets that we were no longer entitled to see the garrison properly.

Half an hour later, I left the couple to relax in peace, for this day in the Mediterranean was the last of their annual allocation. Later, they’d probably be taking a stroll along the shoreline before heading back to murky Manchester via the airport. How sorry I felt for them at that moment. How privileged I felt to be on the threshold of a permanent life in the sun, never having to dread the last day of an annual vacation.

Sampling briefly the dubious pastime of fire walking, I made my way up the beach to a tavern for lunch. A carob tree provided natural shade and its ripening seeds rustled and rattled in their pods as the afternoon breeze took hold. From my table, I could survey the entire bay, and I realised that this place and time encapsulated paradise for me. Indeed, all of my experiences since boarding the bus that morning had been euphoric in their way, so much so that they countered all the deep-seated doubts that I’d harboured ever since leaving the security of England. Even the flies left me alone for once at that moment. What bliss! As I sat waiting for my salad, I stopped my cold beer from getting warm by drinking it quickly.

Typically, the agony to counter my ecstasy arrived a short time later. As soon as the proprietor arrived with some grapes and watermelon to round-off my salad, so too did the first hornet. Minutes later, the unwelcome intruder was joined by several of his colleagues. They all then buzzed around my head like racing cars around a circuit, each homing in on my dessert. That day, I declared open season on the yellow and brown beast, along with mosquitoes and flies. Eventually, the hornets caused me to abandon my meal and I headed back towards the main road. Sticky, from my encounter with fruit and earlier dip in the sea, I reflected on my splendid day at Pissouri Jetty. There had been few finer days by the sea.

As I walked north, I realised suddenly the time and that I’d missed the last bus to Limassol. All I could do on reaching the main road therefore was hitchhike back to my room, an activity that I understood to be legal in Cyprus. Legal it might have been, feasible it wasn’t! Many drivers took great delight in my predicament that late afternoon. From their increasingly predictable reactions to my ‘thumbing’, it was obvious that sweaty singed Englishmen seldom stood by the side of Cypriot roads pleading for lifts. Clearly, such a man was a fair target for banter and abuse, since I suffered half an hour of derisory horn blasting, gestures and shouting, before a British family from RAF Akrotiri eventually took pity on me.

The family was returning from a day out in Paphos, and my northern European colouring, lean body and short hair were probably the main reasons why they stopped. When I told them that I was an expatriate and not a soldier or airman, they were still willing to offer me a lift. Just like the corporal and his wife therefore, this British family was exceptionally kind. As we stopped for some cakes in the village of Kolossi, the mother told me that she worked as a classroom ancillary at Akrotiri. Surprised and delighted, I told her that Allie hoped to teach there in September. ‘What a small world,’ I thought to myself on reaching home. Maybe this lady and Allie would become friends. If so, I could only hope that the friendship would flourish, since the ones Allie had in England might soon begin to fade.

As I emptied the sand from my sandals before taking a shower, I concluded that my meeting with the family that Saturday was yet another positive sign. At least the tale would give Allie something to start a staff room conversation with, assuming that she got the job at Akrotiri in September. Everything seemed to be falling into place at that particular moment. The early horoscope predictions had been spot-on, it seemed. So why wouldn’t my nagging feeling of foreboding go away?

The Summer Solstice (21 June) had become a day of deep significance and reflection for me over the years. Consequently, a friend and I would take ourselves to the top of Hallen Fell in The Lake District on mid-summer evenings around this time, to reflect on what was and what might be, whilst surveying the beautiful scenery below. To sum up my mood on mid-summer’s day 1994, you probably won’t be surprised to know that the words ‘unsettled’ and ‘troubled’ applied. I missed my friend and Hallen Fell. Many aspects of the new life that I longed for were in place, but so were some that I hadn't foreseen or appreciated, and a few more that I didn’t care for at all.

I missed Rob and Anne too of course, but I missed Allie’s level-head most of all. I needed to talk through my concerns with someone that I trusted totally, but neither the telephone nor a letter offered the right medium, given the nature of the discussion I wanted. Anyhow, the last thing Allie needed at a time of turmoil back home was a husband two thousand miles away wobbling again about the wisdom of our venture. No. Tenacity and stability were required now. I had to sort myself out, for it all to come right in the end.

To while away the rest of my free time that weekend, I watched sport on the television in my room. Hence, I gained another new experience: watching motor racing, test rugby and the preliminary rounds of the soccer World Cup with my feet dangling off the end of my bed. Yes, ‘feet-dangling’ was one of the constants in my life, along with sunshine and strictly observed working hours. Clearly, the same carpenter that had built the beds in my hotel had also built them for my rooms, what a coincidence! The trouble was, he’d built them all to accommodate shorter, southern Europeans.

I couldn’t get over how monotonous and downbeat the sports commentaries were on the local channels. For example, even when racing car drivers performed spectacular overtakes at high speed, the commentators would drone on as if nothing had happened. This was odd given the excitability of most Cypriots in most other areas of their lives, but not so odd perhaps in that such overtaking was commonplace on the island’s roads. Local television commentaries were the very opposite of those at home though, where Murray Walker for example would become ecstatic at times. Perhaps Cypriot commentators were told to bore their normally excitable audiences for fear of public unrest, whilst British commentators were briefed to excite their normally docile viewers for fear of public apathy.

Even worse than the lacklustre sports’ commentaries, to fund their World Cup coverage, I found that the local channels ran advertisements every few minutes during soccer games. I’d become accustomed to high-impact images and tawdry jingles on the commercial channels in England. There, though, the adverts only came at half-time. The British arrangement had its benefits, in that it provided an ideal opportunity to put the kettle on for a cup of tea and go to the loo before the second half started.

Worse still, the local channels’ ‘quickie adverts’ mid-game were triggered by some sadistic director at the first sign of a corner, or free kick just outside the penalty area. I guessed that these directors sat in deep bunkers somewhere, guarded by an elite force of soccer-hating wives. The advert ‘quickies’ would always overrun the time that it took the players to place the ball and take the kick. Consequently, I often found myself rejoining games three seconds after their one and only goal had been scored. To add insult to injury, the crowd’s reaction would almost always indicate that I'd missed the goal of the tournament!

Unlike the BBC and ITV soccer coverage in England, there’d be no replay of events whilst the players rejoiced. There wouldn’t even be a recap of the game’s turning points after the full time whistle. Instead, the directors would whisk me off to enjoy a local news bulletin, an inane game show, a light entertainment programme adorned with pretty young girls, or Mediterranean music.

I, for one, vowed that I would never buy any of the goods advertised on local television during those all-important World Cup group matches. It was a matter of principle. So much so that I even made a written list of the brands, to make sure that I didn’t buy them by mistake. Thankfully, I could also receive British Forces television on my set and enjoy uninterrupted coverage of my home nation’s games from the BBC. Even when it was ITV’s turn to televise a match, BFBS Television would show me something interesting at half time, since BFBS didn’t broadcast commercial advertisements.