MEDIA CENTRE - Off The Wall

Phil’s Travels – Nicosia, Cyprus (06.25)

Phil’s Travels – Nicosia, Cyprus (06.25)

Our flight was at a very sensible o’clock on Saturday morning, so, we took the Tube to Paddington (too many big bags to walk) and the Lizzie Line to LHR. At the T2&3 platform, blow me down if I don’t see me old mate Glenn standing on the platform waiting for our Lizzie train. We stepped off the train and I jogged down to his carriage to pop in, shake his hand, say a quick ‘Hello’ and best wishes for the weekend. Turns out he was at the tail-end of an impressive delay experience. He was returning from Morocco. His original flight direct to the UK was so delayed that they routed him through Paris, which was also delayed and he had to overnight in Paris. He got home nearly a full day later than planned. Air travel! Who’d do it?

For us, check-in was quick, security quick (the new scanners really do speed things up, whereby no need to dis-assemble your luggage). Boarding was quickish, although many mothers with folding buggies did jam the aisle far too often (must be a new style of buggy because I don’t remember being permitted to take our buggies on board in the distant past of small kids) and the mums quickly filled the overheard lockers with their collapsed perambulators. 

Fortunately, the flight was not full (maybe why they allowed so many buggies on board?) and we had an empty seat between us. Quel lux. It was shoulder season after all. We took off after a 40-minute delay, which was not long enough for me to watch the Grand Prix qualifying but just enough to be irritating. Air travel! Who’d do it?

We left London at 26C and landed in Lanarca at 20.00 and it was 25C still, with the prospect of 37+C to come.

Despite some seriously strong upselling by the car hire clerk, his persuasive patter and intimidating arms (a chap with forearms bigger than my thighs and biceps larger than my waist) notwithstanding, I stuck to the terms of my booking and he finally granted us a car, with a small free upgrade. It turned out to be a Skoda Fabia, grey, boring, so dull as to be virtually invisible and as innocuous as it is possible for a car to be. Essentially, totally pilfer-proof. The perfect hire car. Its number plate was even in honour of my ‘NAN’.

After our standard first night Pikis Kebab delivery, I watched my maternal city win the Champions League final for the first time, for which my eternal thanks to our super son for setting me up accordingly on my laptop before we left home. Doué was truly doué and must be highly desired.

My week in Cyprus was not a holiday. It was filled with many calls, lots of research and much report writing every day. In the evenings, we had quiet dinners at home and the only stress point was a temporary laundry failure. Solution? To avoid going commando to the museum, suffice to say, reference Joey in Friends episode “The One with Chandler’s Dad”.

We were lucky with our timing for this visit as it coincided with Yaya being honoured again. She had donated one of her secret weapons to the National Struggle Museum in old town Nicosia. The lethal device of cunning ingenuity was an off-white clutch bag. Whilst WWII largely bypassed Cyprus, it too had more than its fair share of bloodshed in the 20th century. In the late 1950s, they fought, hard, literally, for independence from us Brits. Many people were tortured and died on both sides. Yaya’s role as the nation’s first female journalist, first woman to own a car and a leading EOKA member was to ferry messages and equipment about the island for the resistance movement. Think Princess Leia of Star Wars fame. And her clutch bag was R2D2, in which mission critical resistance messages were hidden in a secret compartment.

At the time, a key motivation for independence was a proposed unification with Greece. However, after their arduous and painful struggle against Britain, the newly independent Cypriot nation decided not to unify. Go figure. All that effort and then they changed their minds. But, even more confusingly, some 10 years later unification was back on the table again, which provided Turkey with the excuse it needed to invade in 1974. Net result? Cyprus is an occupied nation, controlling only just over half of its territory. It is a beautiful island full of wonderful people but burdened with a troubled past and Yaya was there throughout, just like Princess Leia. How she authorised her daughter to marry the enemy just shows what a remarkable woman she is.

The principal purpose of our visit, however, was the wedding on Saturday. A wedding by the numbers: 4 photographers (that photobombed all my snaps), 3 stages (explained below), 2 sets of adoring/proud parents and 1 long ceremony in a church the size of St Paul’s, and many chaps sporting ponytails.

The three steps of a Cyprus wedding: 12.00 noon groom is shaved, groomed and dressed in front of a hundred people at home; 17.00 church ceremony; 20.00 reception and late dinner.

At the time of booking this trip, we were going to return on Monday. But, after lots of uncertainty and changing itineraries, we decided to leave a day earlier (Sunday) so I could make a meeting in Yaounde on Tuesday morning. My lovely client paid for the changes and we got a refund on NAN [useful travel advice: I always book a hire car on a pay at collection basis, this allows for changes in advance and cancellations without charge and refunds if your plans change – works out much cheaper than pre-paying, worth every penny of the premium payable in such an uncertain world].

Sunday morning, the highway to Larnaca was busy. Fortunately, no accidents and Nicosia was heading to the beach, not to the airport. We arrived in good time to fill NAN and return her. The airport was busy, but check-in and security were fluid and we even had time for a quick lunch and some shopping. Signs at the airport indicated that an extension is to be developed. I hope they re-consider the road layout too. The drop-off area is a marmalade nightmare, constantly jammed with vehicles and pedestrians. Everything seems to happen in the same few square metres of tarmac. We can only hope the new masterplan will address this otherwise effective air terminus.

Perhaps because of the last-minute flight change, but our seats were on the back row again, by the toilets and galley, and windowless. I hate this configuration that BA has on the A320. The overhead bins were too small too (the new ones are much bigger, whereby bags can be loaded sideways rather than flat), meaning many people sat far from their bags, which created counterflows at disembarkation and led an interminable exit for us from the murky depths of our corner. Thus did we fly, in cramped darkness (no window and my overhead light did not work), to Gatwick (not Heathrow!). Air travel! Who’d do it?

Sadly, our earlier than planned return meant we missed Dinos’ one year memorial and a busy week ended with a quick Indian dinner at home, a quick shower and repack, a few hours of sleep and an alarm call at 04.00 on Monday morning.

To be continued…