Work and Play

Life wasn’t all sorrow and regrets at this time, however. One of the best things about working for my new employer, for example, was that I started work at eight in the morning and finished it promptly at five in the afternoon. Some of my colleagues had even shorter and more flexible working hours. On Fridays, there was no lunch hour and everyone finished their tasks at two in the afternoon, ready for long weekend breaks.

Just before finishing time every day, a distinct shuffling of papers would signal the clearing of desks in readiness for the journey home. I soon found myself mimicking my new colleagues’ behaviour: arrive at eight o’clock, work steadily until twelve, take an hour’s lunch break from Monday to Thursday, work steadily until just before finishing time, shuffle some papers and then leave for ‘home’. Within a week of my arrival, it seemed that I had to be on the first step of the stairwell down to the foyer by one minute past five, like my colleagues. Otherwise, one of them would be standing by the front door, tapping his or her feet, waiting to lock up. No one issued me with a key to the only door, so I couldn’t have stayed late, even if I’d wanted to. In my case, after a ten-minute walk, I’d be back at my room, ready to relax and enjoy my free time.

People’s strict adherence to their contracted hours of employment frankly amazed me, especially at managerial levels. The behaviour represented a real, yet pleasurable ‘culture shock’. In all of my previous jobs, I’d generally worked from home, either for myself or for an employer. The lack of time-keeping rituals and close supervision seemed commensurate with my status as a professional person. In turn, I repaid my employers’ trust by starting my daily tasks as soon as humanly possible and finishing them either when they were complete, or I fell into a heap exhausted. Since most tasks were long-term and ongoing, it was normally the latter.

In the video job for example, on the days when I was to drive north, I'd leave home by five a.m., to avoid the heavy traffic around Birmingham and Manchester. Often, if I had to attend an early morning meeting at a client’s premises, I'd leave home by three in the morning, whatever the weather. Eight to eleven hours of intense work later, I'd head south if I wanted to avoid yet another night away from home. On those occasions, departures from the Lake District around seven p.m. were preferable, again to miss the worst of the traffic around the two major cities en route. With luck, and Enya’s soothing music, I’d be home before midnight.

Whenever the weather was really bad, a customer dictated, or I knew that I risked death by falling asleep at the wheel, I'd stay at a hotel in Cumbria overnight. I’d always feel guilty about the expense though and often invested the otherwise ‘wasted’ time catching up on my notes on a laptop computer, rather than relaxing by watching television or reading a book. Then, after retiring early, I’d wake early the following morning and sneak out of the hotel’s front door around six a.m., having paid of course! With fair weather and no obstructions, I’d be at my desk at home by eleven o’clock on weekdays, or pushing a trolley around the local supermarket on weekends.

As you know, I enjoyed my work at the video company and the treasures it brought me. Treasures like status, respect, esteem, trust, a good standard of living, a nice house, a happy family, cherished friends, a superb car and savings to spend on summer holidays, to name but a few. I had a sense of purpose, a future, and freedom to act for the good of my customers, colleagues and employer. My belief in the causal relationship between hard work and high reward was total. So much so, that I often invested large amounts of my own free time in projects that I found particularly absorbing and prestigious. One such was my part time Masters Degree, which I’d begun two years earlier to enhance my performance at work, and I was about to complete. In my former life in England, I’d felt an overwhelming need to earn a good reputation, not to have a bad one given to me.

Clearly, things were very different in Cyprus. Here, I wouldn’t be sacrificing many of my family’s evenings, weekends and bank holidays to work any more. Good reputations for endeavour, perseverance and achievement just didn’t seem that important. My new goal at work was to meet my business objectives steadily, within the contracted time scales and at minimal financial expense. What surprised me was how quickly and easily I overcame my normal, workaholic tendencies and embraced the much more relaxed alternative on offer in Cyprus.

So, what caused the sudden sea change in my behaviour and attitude to work? Was it simply the need to conform in a strange new office environment? Was it the hot, humid climate? Had the Hellenic work ethic simply overridden the Anglo-Saxon one that British society had instilled into me from birth? Was the whole issue more complicated perhaps? Didn’t the financial and other rewards on offer in Cyprus justify hard work? Had I achieved the pinnacle of my career? Had I proved my worth to all those who I felt mattered, almost thirty years after being abandoned by my father? To be honest, I didn’t know the answers to these questions then, and I still don’t know the answers today.

In a way, the answers didn’t matter. Much more important than the causes of my new behaviour and attitude were the effects. This new approach to work and play was clearly better than the one I had before; it just meant accepting lower standards of achievement. People, good health and fun were more important than material excess, after all. Work was a means to an end, and not an end in its own right. In Cyprus, I felt free to rest, relax and recuperate in my spare time. Consequently, I could indulge in some satisfying and long-forgotten pastimes like letter writing, sunbathing and walks along the beach.

I’d forgotten since my days in the armed forces just how important letters are to friends and family living apart, much more so than brief radio messages and record dedications for example. I soon rediscovered that they’re an excellent means of rationalising new phenomena and boosting flagging morale. However, one worrying missive from my mother indicated that, to her, our move to Cyprus signalled some sort of major 'ending'. I knew what she meant. There’d been many minor endings in recent weeks. I tried to be upbeat in my reply though. It reassured her that I saw our emigration as a 'beginning', one that I'd like very much to show her when the weather became cooler, if her health allowed.

All this said, the recreation time that I gained in June was poor compensation for the buying power that I lost. Whilst material excess wasn’t that important to me any more, for much of it had gone by this time anyway, material sufficiency was. To my horror, it rapidly became clear that I'd seriously underestimated everyday living costs in Cyprus during my reconnaissance. Seven weeks earlier, closeted in the luxury of a good hotel, I’d had no need to buy fruit, vegetables and other provisions. Consequently, my review of local food costs had been too superficial. All that I'd accurately established from the few times that I'd shopped for food was that Rob was going to have problems finding ready-made vegetarian meals, like the ones he enjoyed in England.

Perhaps my perception of food costs in Cyprus was coloured by the inexpensive brandy sours that I’d consumed in the Officers’ Mess way back in 1976. Clearly, our more recent package holiday to the island had exerted little influence on my thinking. From now on, I realised that I wouldn’t have the disposable income to eat out. I would have to cook on the small camping gas burner in my room. Until I was paid, I’d also have to justify even the smallest purchase, if my income and expenditure were to balance at the end of the month. For all of us, the days of impulse buying without concern for the consequences finished on 31 May 1994.

By early June then, additional harsh realities about our much hoped-for ‘easy going life in the sun’ had become all too apparent. Perhaps my heart had obscured the food cost issue in the early days of my reconnaissance. Later in the trip, when my head was firmly back in control, perhaps I’d subconsciously used the occasional costs of canned drinks and crisps to help me conclude that our economic future in Cyprus was going to be precarious. Having finally decided to stay in England by the end of my reconnaissance, perhaps the expensiveness of local food had become an irrelevance, so I forgot all about it.

No, this was just a contributory factor on reflection. The real blunder came in not realising the renewed significance of basic food costs in the moment of panic immediately after my resignation. Again, I’d lacked the prerequisite information and cogitation. Above all, I’d lacked the emotional control to make sound decisions in a moment of pressure.

In the dark days after my reckless resignation and acceptance of the chairman’s offer, I’d dug a deep, steep-sided financial hole, the bottom of which was I’d filled with sticky, clinging mud. Having plunged headlong into it, I was in a mire, unable to see much with clarity. No matter how many times I tried to scramble towards the light, no matter how many routes up I tried, there was no way out. The more I fought to get out my hole, the deeper I slipped into it, and the more tired I became. In the end, I only saw what was immediately ahead, like the wanton disposal of our capital assets, which only served to deepen the hole. My primary instinct was survival until a rescue came.

Oh, I had the lifelines of a one-year contract and Cypriot Temporary Residence (or Work) Permit by this time, but these pieces of paper couldn’t reverse my family’s long-term incarceration in financial hardship.

Sometimes, I had dreadful visions of our coffers being empty by the end of September and an inability to refill them before the next bill arrived. I’d never had to worry about money like this before and my late thirties, a time of life when I should have been reaping the financial rewards of all the hard work earlier in my life, wasn’t the right time to start.

The lovely sunshine that I was enjoying every day simply didn’t justify the monetary traumas that lay ahead. If my fundamental reason for wanting to live and work in Cyprus was to avoid seasonal depression, then I might as well have stayed in England and bought myself a good light box, to supplement the sunlamp and gym. It would have been a lot cheaper and a lot less troublesome.

One day, my concerns became so great that I confided them in the chairman. He was sympathetic and offered to reimburse some of the expenses that I’d incurred in taking up my new job. He also offered me an interest-free loan, to tide us over until our finances settled around Christmas. His offer regarding the expenses was welcome and helped me to focus on work again. However, Allie and I seldom borrowed money. I think that the mortgage on our home in England was the only loan we’d ever taken out. I hated paying interest you see, preferring instead to do without luxuries and live within our means. For these reasons, I resolved only to take up the chairman’s offer of a loan, if our cash flow dried up completely.

The weekend of 11 and 12 June was a drawn-out, lonely affair. I felt lost without my usual family and do-it-yourself commitments, and missed Allie and the children. With far too much spare time swilling about my life, I spent an hour or two on the Saturday morning in Limassol’s indoor market. The mounds of brightly coloured fruit and vegetables contrasted strongly with the drab yellows and reds of the meat. Everywhere, dappled sunlight percolated through numerous holes in the roof. The smell of musty grapes on one stall gave way to the aroma of fresh fish on the next, then dried herbs and spices on a third. Stall holders bellowed and waved their arms about, in an attempt to boost their sales. The scene was so like the indoor market in my hometown in England, except for the flies and lower standards of hygiene.

Having taken some green figs, prickly pears and a honeydew melon back to my room, I settled on my balcony to read. I read for an hour or so, until a gang of irritating flies drove me inside. Reading for pleasure, rather than for work, was something that I'd only ever done on holiday before. I’d never had the time or inclination to read novels when the alternative was hard graft. Hence, that Saturday I wondered whether this was the real nature of our adventure: a standard vacation in the Mediterranean, only twenty five times longer than the norm, and partly paid for by someone else. A vacation that would come to an end one day just as all our other vacations had ended, with a nostalgic walk along the shoreline and an airport check-in desk piled high with suitcases.

When I’d had my fill of fruit and someone else’s fantasies in my book, I donned a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and went for a walk towards the Tourist Strip. My route along the beach offered plenty of stimulation, in the form of holidaymakers desperately trying to make the most of their two-weeks’ radiation, just as my family and I had done the year before. Of course, we no longer had to cram all our thrills into fourteen short days, which was another benefit of my new job. All the usual beach characters were there: nappy-swathed babies, spade-toting toddlers, swarthy Romeos, hopeful Juliets, harassed mums and pink dads. A truly cosmopolitan scene, and the complete age spectrum.

In contrast, my route to Ladies’ Mile Beach the next day was much less interesting. Instead of sand, shingle and walkways, I had to negotiate harbour buildings, trucks and dirt tracks. Having battled through the industrialised port area, I did find a reasonably clean place to lay down and sunbathe though. There were fewer Coke cans, discarded cigarette ends and lollypop sticks here. The main hazard was lumps of crude oil cunningly hidden amongst the pebbles, capable of destroying expensive clothes in an instant. Ladies’ Mile was much less crowded that the Tourist Area too. For this reason, locals went there on Sundays, to better their tans and swim in the sea, but mostly to avoid the hoards of foreigners.

I miscalculated my exposure to the sun that day and recall plodding the two or three kilometres back to the café near my room. Sun burnt and dehydrated, I arrived in a distinctly dishevelled state. Once ensconced in the air conditioning, I made the mistake of drinking two large beers in quick succession. Within minutes, I found myself mumbling total gibberish to the owner. My head swimming much faster than I had been in the sea earlier, I teetered to my room for a long siesta.