Troodos story

[Kili01]

Hi Devil, I'm enjoying reading your story too! You are also a talented writer. Hope to hear more about what you encountered. Did you tell us what time (year) you arrived in Cyprus. I'm guessing it was late 50's or 60's. Cyprus was so different then, pleasantly undeveloped.

[Devil]

VII. A bed of roses?

Yes, as a simple signalman, my main job was to ensure that transmissions from Cyprus to Egypt were maintained. This mainly entailed maintenance of the American transmitters, so that Fayid was updated at all hours of the day and night. One day, I was doing maintenance on some other equipment when a sergeant came through the door of my workshop, puffing away because he had to run from the offices about 50 m away. "They have lost our signal in Egypt", he cried. Apparently, a signal had come in at the receiver end in Nicosia. I looked around me and found, indeed, that there was no power, anywhere. The only thing I could do was to phone the electricity company to find that the whole of the south side of Nicosia was without power. There was absolutely bugger all that I could do until the power came back on again an hour or two later and I had to go through the rigmarole of starting up the transmitters again. Of course, this merited yours truly having to write a report explaining why communications between Cyprus and Egypt had failed.

There was a result from this power cut; the powers that be decided that we should have backup generators for both the transmitters and receivers. A couple of days later, a REME truck came and deposited a generator-trailer next to the transmitter container and I wired it up but I couldn't test it because it lacked a battery to start the engine, although I scrounged a jerry can of petrol from one of the squadron' s drivers. Frantic telephones involving my commanding officer, the civilian office guy, the quartermaster and myself promised that we would have a 12 V battery the following day. Sure enough, a 12 V battery in a beautiful mahogany case did arrive, as promised. I looked at it and thought that the British Army was living up to its reputation. I connected it up to the generator, press the button and nothing happened. I don't know what that battery had been designed for but I do know that it was totally inadequate to start a Willys petrol engine to drive a generator. In fact, the engine was exactly made for a jeep. More frantic calls and two days later I was able to charge a new robust battery and install it on the backup generator. It worked… So, I arranged automatic switching from the power supply to this battery. Of course, it almost goes without saying that we never had a power cut to justify this new installation but that would not be true; it did its job beautifully quite a few times during my time there.

We all had quite a lot of free time and some of our crowd would go down to Nicosia, where there were all forms of entertainment available. I must admit that, as an innocent 19 year old conscript I was astonished when accompanying some of our older members who had a predilection for seamy cabarets, which I think were only front rooms for brothels. A couple of our guys had to report sick with something that seemed to make walking rather difficult. I think I would be correct in saying that the main attraction to a number of our men was the brandy sour, which I never got around to liking. Of course, in a country growing citrus fruit there were abundant drinks based on lemons and oranges. On top of that, the Keo company introduced a soft drink made from grapes and it was called Keo Vita – and it was as foul as the name implied.

I think a couple of us also visited the Cyprus Museum, which stood where it stands today. There were two or three cinemas ranging from flea pits to reasonable and in summer they were all outdoors. One film that I remember seeing there was "Kim" with Errol Flynn taking the main role of the seasoned warrior and a young lad called Dean Stockwell playing the part of Kim himself – and, yes, I did remember the name. In the interval, a man came round with a tray full of coffee cups and so I learnt for the first time what Cyprus coffee tasted of; it was very sweet, like nothing I'd tasted before!

[WHL]

As a kid on holiday back in the day i used to enjoy a bottle of Keo vita, plulled out of those chest fridges they had in the coffee shops,

[Devil]

Hi Devil, I'm enjoying reading your story too! You are also a talented writer. Hope to hear more about what you encountered. Did you tell us what time (year) you arrived in Cyprus. I'm guessing it was late 50's or 60's. Cyprus was so different then, pleasantly undeveloped.

There was a big clue in my first screeds: I mentioned that I arrived on the island just a couple of days after the King had passed the majestic baton on to Queen Elizabeth II in February 1952.

[Firefly]

Thank you Devil.

Strange how we all like different things, I love brandy sours.

[Devil]

VIII. Life goes on, sometimes!

The powers that be decided that we must be a lazy bunch and needed waking up. All of a sudden, about five bicycles arrived for our recreation purposes, or at least that was what we were told. They were good steeds with the name Raleigh. Two or three of us decided to give them a try and hopped on them to take the road in the direction of Athalassa. After two or 3 miles, we stopped and admired the sweat pouring off us, in what was probably about 35° C – too hot for physical exercise. We turned round and pedalled back from whence we came and had a cold shower. I don't think the bikes ever left our camp again. On the whole, we enjoyed the warm summer weather, trying to keep in the shade around midday. On the negative side, we still had to work at times in the midday sun, but we were appropriately dressed as nature originally intended with just a pair of thin cotton shorts, enough to cover our confusion!

On one occasion, I was working on the outside equipment when I heard a distant roll of thunder. Within a quarter of an hour, it had become very dark and I looked up from the work I was doing to see black clouds all around us, as high as I could see, accompanied by a hell of a din of thunder, almost simultaneously with the lightning. A good powerful storm, as I wondered what would happen if the lightning strike hit our antennas. There was I, standing in an "oasis" of dryness in the middle of rainstorms in all directions. Foolishly, I stood there looking at Nature showing me its fury, no matter where I looked. My reverie came to a sudden halt when it started to rain where I was. No! It hadn't started to rain, God's buckets were being emptied over me. Perhaps for half a minute, I had this mother and father of all rainstorms landing on me and then died down to a simple heavy downpour.

Although we had a few conscripts of 18 to 20, most of the men were seasoned soldiers. The oldest one was a character, approaching the age of 55 when he would have to retire. Despite his 43 years of service his rank was that of simple signalman but, over the years, his Irish character kept getting him into trouble. He was known by everyone simply as Paddy and he had many tales to tell of his active service much of which took place in India. Being Irish, he was very loyal to the Green Isle and, in particular, to one of the products of his native bog, Guinness. I have never known anyone drinking beer or other similar drinks, like he did. Because of his long active service, he was never short of money and it all went on Guinness. At night, he always had a bottle on his bedside table with other bottles hidden around. By the time of the morning parade, he was already three sheets in the wind and this continued throughout the day. I'll swear that Paddy had more Guinness in his bloodstream than blood. As I mentioned earlier, our unit didn't have a NAAFI but we did have a kinda sorta canteen to supply Paddy with his lifeblood and us with everything from a cuppa tea to a pint of British beer and maybe even a snack or two. I don't even really know what job Paddy was supposed to do in our squadron!

Another little anecdote was about an 18 year old national serviceman who arrived out of the blue one morning, I believe as a teletype operator. That evening, he joined a group of squaddies and they went down to Nicosia, ostensibly to a "night show". It seems obvious that they didn't choose their company very well and they came back up to camp slightly the worse for wear and with some hilarity about the newcomer. Apparently, he disappeared into a house of ill repute in the Turkish part of Nicosia. The following morning, he joined the "sick squad" wanting to see a doctor because he was pissing blood. What an introduction to his life in Cyprus!

[kingfisher]

Without wishing to be aeronautically pedantic, Devil; with reference to your earlier saga when two engines failed on your DC3, you would require more than a bulletin from the captain. The DC3 unfortunately only possesses two engines...

[Devil]

Hee-hee! You are perfectly 100% correct, the plane was not a DC3, it was a converted Lancaster bomber and, yes!, it did have four engines, possibly even Rolls-Royce Merlin, although I'm not sure about that.

[Devil]

IX. I'm an idiot

Every year, there was a general inspection of the unit by top brass. I was chatting with our quartermaster, who complained that he had a large carton full of safety matches in his store and he was upset that they would be found during the inspection. Somehow, he had acquired them without their being on his indents and bulk flammable material could get him into trouble. However, he had a guardian angel or rather a guardian devil, me! I offered to take them away and dispose of them where they couldn't be found.

On these, I suppose they could be called blogs today, I admit that I have worded them with some touches of humour, although the basic facts are 100% real throughout. The following paragraphs are the honest truth without any touches of humour. They don't show me up in a very good light but please remember I was still a teenager at the time. Anyway, there I was with several hundred boxes of matches; my memory fails me as to the number but it was a lot. I think my idea, at the time, was simply to burn them outside the camp. Then I found an amusement; if I took a large nut with a bolt half screwed into it, filled the gap with the match heads and scraped in some of the strike powder from the side of the box and then close the lot with the second bolt, I could throw it on the ground to make a resounding bang. After a few of these miniexplosions, it became boring. And I was still on the first box of matches with many boxes left. A couple of my colleagues came into my workshop where I was doing this to find out what all the noise was about and I explained to them that I had all these matches to dispose of before the annual inspection. We put our heads together and decided we could make a good firecracker with them. The three of us sat round a table and scraped off the heads of hundreds of matches without any wood. After some time, we had accumulated quite a pile of the dark match heads. One of us also scraped the powder from the side of the matchboxes, keeping it well separated from the extracted heads. I became more instrumental at this point in that I looked around for a casing to make a firework. I found the aluminium casing from a vibrator, about 25 to 30 mm across and over 100 mm long. We poured the powder from the heads into it followed by the powder from the matchboxes, being very careful not to set the whole lot alight. Little by little, we filled the casing to within about 15 mm from the top. From there, I bent to the edge of the can over a piece of bakelite in which I had put a loop of nichrome wire. We were ready for action!

Of course, we didn't have a clue as to what was likely to happen if we passed the current through the wire to ignite the contents and I admit that we were a little scared – or at least I was. The important point was that the powers that be within our squadron had no clue as to what we were doing. In reality, neither did I. We had to choose a moment when there was nobody in the camp except the orderly NCO. All the officers lived outside and had gone for lunch. The only person left in the offices was the Cypriot clerk. I was aware, it goes without saying, that what we had was a bomb of unknown power. We buried it in a fire bucket full of sand on some waste ground a few metres from the battery charging shop. A wire was drawn from the latter while the three of us retreated into the shop looking out the open window at our fire bucket. Five, four, three, two, one, FIRE! There was most certainly a very resounding bang. We gingerly stuck our heads outside. All that could be seen was a crater, probably about 1 m across and 30 cm deep but absolutely no sign of the fire bucket, anywhere! Everything had volatilised!

The sound of the explosion brought out the Cypriot clerk from the offices in quite a tizzy. He had thought for a moment that we were under attack. To avoid awkward questions, the three of us got shovels to fill in the crater and, an hour later, everything seemed back to normal. Notwithstanding, we did see one permanent effect from our little adventure: about three or four m away there was a small transmitter mast. At the top of it, our fuse, along with the bakelite stopper, had wound itself round the wire, probably about 15 m high.

All's well that ends well, even though I'm sure that one fire bucket was missing from the inventory of our annual inspection.

[Devil]

X. inspection

A few days after we tried to blow up the camp with innumerable matches, the day loomed for our annual inspection. Bullshit was the order of the day. We had to wear full uniforms, smart and neatly dressed – they felt uncomfortable after weeks of much more informal dress. Our most senior officer, a seasoned major forced us on to the small parade ground for a preliminary inspection before the bigwigs arrived. In his great wisdom, he decreed that our main antenna for transmissions to Egypt was vulnerable to attack and therefore needed guarding. Guess who got the job? I was given a rifle and ordered to stand by the antenna, which you will remember is outside the camp perimeter. By this time, the sun was quite warm and I had to walk round the perimeter through thick undergrowth to get to where I was supposed to be, in full uniform and carrying a rifle. I spent the next hour or so, looking at the dried vegetation.

Suddenly, a sergeant came running round towards me and said, "They're coming to look at the antenna!". Sure enough, a posse of officers appeared on the horizon led by a brigadier and they advanced to where I was standing. I snapped smartly to attention and saluted and said loudly, "2249 6174, signalman Ellis, SIR". This apparently met with their approval and I was asked what I was doing. I replied that I was there to protect the antenna. The brigadier seemed to wake up at that moment and asked me what I would do if a horde of men with ginger beards, armed to the teeth, came rushing down the hill towards me. I replied that I would run down the hill in front of them. After a small fit of apoplexy he told me that that was not the answer that he would have expected from a soldier, could I explain? Interspersed with "SIR" several times, I explained that I had no defence, even though I was carrying a 303 Lee Enfield rifle but I didn't have a single round to put in it! He hummed and hawed, said very good, turned around and marched away with his cohort of fellow officers. I was later given a bollocking by our own Lieutenant, but that was just for the form.

I have no idea whether it happened as a result of our inspection, which apparently passed faultlessly, having filled in the crater that had "accidentally" appeared near our technical Nissen hut a week or so earlier. About two or three weeks after the general inspection, I was ordered to present myself smartly to our commanding officer. I did so, to find that he had another more junior officer with him. I was asked about the studies before I was conscripted. I explained that I had the Full Technical Certificate of the City and Guilds of London Institute, which was the only UK degree in electronics at that time. (The following year, Southampton University was the first to issue a formal bachelors' of science degree.) The upshot of this meeting was that it was deemed that I had the qualifications, subject to a practical test, to become Radio Mechanic II. This more than pleased me because my weekly wages were more than doubled and I was put on the same scale as a Staff Sergeant, but without the rank (this was actually to my benefit because, if I was given a couple of stripes, my pay would have been that of a corporal, considerably less!).

[Firefly]

I laughed out loud at that one Devil.

[Devil]

XI. It wasn't all fun!

I think there may be a little exaggeration by the dispatch rider, but it could have ended up quite nastily. When an urgent message comes in, we were obliged to deliver it as soon as possible, day or night, in all weathers. At one particular moment, but about 01:00 hours, such a top priority message arrived for delivery to Akrotiri. The rider on duty went off on his two wheeled steed and things settled down at our end. About half an hour or so later, the phone rang; it was the military police who, by chance, happened to find our rider sitting by the side of the road, with his motorbike beside him. Apparently, he had ridden straight into the backend of a camel. By good luck, neither he nor the camel were hurt, but he lost his helmet which he claimed stayed in the animal's backside.

Much more serious, and the worst thing that I came across during my National service, was the case of Jimmy (borrowed name). Jimmy was also a dispatch rider and appeared to be very extrovert. Round the camp, there were a few stray dogs. One of them was a fine -looking animal of medium size, named Scamp. Jimmy, from a poor London suburb, took to Scamp like a magnet and they became powerful friends for each other. One could almost say that they were both strays who saw in each other what was missing from their own lives, such was the bond that developed between them. They were almost the epitome of a story of a poor man and a poor dog. Of course, it was impossible for a serviceman to really adopt a dog, no matter the bond between them. Jimmy looked after Scamp like a long lost brother and they were inseparable in Jimmy's free time. Naturally, this came to an abrupt end because Scamp had wandered onto the road beside the camp and was killed by a passing vehicle. Probably for the first time in his life, Jimmy burst into tears and cried his heart out, lying on his bed. Suddenly, he got up and started to destroy everything that he could find within his reach. He had become inconsolable. He attacked anyone who approached or tried to console him. An officer called for medical help, although I'm not sure that "help" is the best word. He was taken away to the British Medical Hospital under restraints. We never saw him again but we did hear, some time afterwards, that he had been discharged from the army, despite the fact that he had over 20 years of service before he could be demobilised. I don't know whether it was just me, but I felt that the open atmosphere within the squadron had darkened a shade, even from the moment when we learnt that Scamp had been killed.

While we are on the sad parts of life, please allow me to cite my own case. One morning, I woke up with a very violent diarrhoea. I was obviously absent from the 7 o'clock rollcall/parade, as I was otherwise occupied. Between bouts, I was ordered to go on to the sick parade at 08:30, which I did. From there I was transported to the British Military Hospital and put into a bed in a small ward. I was given a hefty dose of sulfaguanidine, which seemed to stop the diarrhoea (maybe it should be mentioned that penicillin-derived antibiotics had not yet become available). Anyway, I was discharged from the BMH the following morning and I was able to resume my normal duties.

[Devil]

XII. Not everything was bad!

Effectively, there I was, landed by circumstances on an island that I knew bugger-all about. Ever since I was a little kid, I had to know what was what, not really knowing the difference between curiosity and downright nosiness. Having to wear khaki clothes doesn't change one's outlook on life. I was very lucky in that I did land in Cyprus and not in some forgotten land. I quickly realised that Cyprus was a country with a long and deep history, going back more than 10,000 years.

One of the advantages of serving in Cyprus in 1952 was that our working day ended 13:00; after that we could do what we liked provided that it didn't interfere with the way the squadron was run. Quite often, I would walk down to Nicosia and look around, especially in the Turkish quarters. Of course, I kept away from Tanzimat Street which was "out of bounds". Right in the middle of Nicosia was the St Sofia Cathedral that the Turks had converted into a mosque in 1570. This was quite interesting because the brilliant decoration of the Venetians had been whitewashed to conform to Moslem requirements, including adding two tall minarets, looking out of keeping. This building was right in the very centre of the old Venetian city, which was built as a circle with a number of bastions for defence. Close by the cathedral/mosque was the Beuyeuk Khan, which had fallen into disrepair but was originally an inn, which had served to provide accommodation for travellers' camels on the ground floor and travellers themselves in rooms on the first floor.

One of the other many fascinating things to see was the Tekké Mevlevi Dervishi, which was run by a Muslim sect of men, wearing special robes and a tall felt hat. Their form of worship was to hold one hand with the palm upwards to receive the blessings of God and the other hand downwards to pass them on to the earth. A musician would play a rather haunting melody and the faithful would start turning on the spot, slowly at first and then faster, until they fell to the ground. I would have liked to see this, but the practice was stopped a year or so before I was there. Nevertheless, it was still a place of religion. (Nowadays, I believe that it is nothing more than a museum devoted to the sect.)

The old city of Nicosia was surrounded by a circular wall in which there are 11 bastions projecting out. It originally had three gates facing Famagusta, Paphos and Kyrenia. It was faced with stone and stands today almost as of it hadn't been built by the Venetians about 1520. Inside the walls there is a maze of small streets with one Main Street going north south called Kyrenia Street in the North and Ledra Street in the south. It was very narrow and surrounded by shops and various other public establishments. It fell to the Turkish invasion in, I think, 1573, but I may be wrong. In the 1950s, the walls were mostly intact, as they are today, although access to the old city was, at some time, made easier by the more modern gaps. Outside the walls, there is the deep moat which was originally filled with water from the Pedios river. I don't know when this was drained but I do know that it had been a breeding ground for malaria for many years. (For the anecdote, malaria was eradicated from the island in the late 1940s by the efforts of a Turkish Cypriot engineer; before that, the disease was rife, particularly around Larnaca.) To assist drying out the area around the moat, eucalyptus trees had been planted above it. These Australian intruders were introduced for their deep roots which helped to dry out the area. They were already magnificent, when I was first there in the 1950s.

Outside the city walls, the British had built buildings here, there and everywhere to house different administrative services for both the Nicosia area and for the country as a whole. As a squaddie, the main one that affected me was the Wolseley barracks, where our receiver and teletype services operated. It was a magnificent building with a massive coat of arms sculpted over the doorway. Generally speaking, my duties did not generally involve any of the other military services and, even less, the civilian ones. For the anecdote, I was ordered on one occasion to report to an office, hidden in a civilian building. A major explained to me that they were worried about illicit arms being imported by communists and that these people needed radio communications to operate their clandestine boat-to-shore movements. As the island's expert, would I try and find out more about how they operate. I befriended a Greek Cypriot radio technician and got absolutely nowhere with him. The only benefit that I saw was that I was given two pounds to cover my expenses (a couple of sketto coffees!). I did not become like Dick Barton, Special Agent, popular on the radio at that time!

I discovered one oasis outside the city walls, the Cyprus Museum of Antiquities. It was stuck in the middle of a short private road, not very far from the Paphos gate. It was there that I started to understand a little about the history of Cyprus. Unfortunately, I couldn't spend too much time absorbing more than a tiny fraction of it, trying to learn from the artefacts on display, the wide history of so many invaders over about 3000 years or so. Of course, I failed to acquire very little real knowledge of the island that I was living in. Probably, even today, I'm unclear about many aspects of history and prehistory.

[Devil]

XIII. Some things are good!

In the last section, I evoked a tiny proportion of some of the interest that I found in Nicosia. Nevertheless, Nicosia is only one small part of Cyprus and really came into its own only when the British moved the administration centre from Larnaca, where it was first established. I wanted to see a bit of Cyprus, rather than a British administration. When the warm weather came, a recreational veicle took a body of men from our camp for bathing in the sea – or building sand castles? – and the popular spot to do this was a few kilometres west of Kyrenia, on a beach not very far from Snake Island. At the time, there were no buildings in sight, the waters were crystal clear, an idyllic spot with clean sand between outcrops of light rocks. I don't really know what it is like today other than the fact that it is probably clumsily built up with overrated villas, as I haven't been there since the 1950s.

Of much more interest to me was a long excursion which started at St Hilarion. This was a thirteenth century fortified castle strong upwards along the slopes of a mountainside at about 700 m. The castle existed at the end of the 12th century when it was known by the English king, Richard the Lion, who had been shipwrecked on the island in a storm. It was then taken over by the Venetians and thereafter abandoned. The view from the castle's Royal apartments along the north coast, including the town of Kyrenia, was magnificent.

About halfway down from St Hilarion to the coast stands the Abbey of Bellapais which is renowned for its magnificent Gothic cloisters, dating from the 14th century. With the exception of the chapel, it was not in good repair but it nevertheless stood out by its magnificence. Historically, it was part of the Roman Catholic Church but it was abandoned and fell into decline during the Venetian occupation. Its final coup de grace was the occupation by the Turks in 1570, considering Catholicism was barbarian. My mid-20th century visit there was interesting, particularly because the original chapel had become the village church, Orthodox, of course.

Our next course was a look at Kyrenia harbour, at the time very small. It was used mainly by fishermen and for pleasure craft. At the time, it had two stone pylons, one on the end of the jetty and the other on the shore. I understand they were quite ancient and were intended to hold a chain across the harbour entrance, to prevent pirate ships from entering and laying the town waste.

Next to the harbour, stood the magnificent Byzantine castle which was later rebuilt in the 13th century by the Lusignans and in the 16th century by the Venetians. There were architectural relics from the various dynasties that held the castle over the centuries. During our visit, the general feeling was one of neglect. Today, I understand that it is much more a focal point for visitors, with very old remains of a boat carrying amphoras. The view from the battlements East, South and West are to be seen to be believed with the tiny little harbour underneath.

For me, this day was very memorable and I believe my colleagues did as well, from the chatting during the drive back home. In 1998, I repeated the same trip with my wife, teenage grandson and young granddaughter. It was equally enjoyable and I was able to point out one or two of the changes that had taken place in the intervening 46 or so years. Many of them were for the better and some for the worse. I think what astounded me the most was the way North Cyprus had become much more built-up, more so than in the south. The price of progress!

[Devil]

XIV. I'm going bonkers

Believe it or not, my memory has failed, just when I was congratulating myself at remembering all the incidents in the previous pages. Today's effort is based on a mystery, where I can remember the incidents without any difficulty but I'll be buggered if I can see how they came about. I do have watertight proof that the rest of this page is the truth and not just a figment of my imagination. Okay, so how did this come about? I wanted to see and visit some of the historical sites on the east of the island. I guess, at this point, that I was alone, with this wish, because I have absolutely no memory of doing the trip with anybody else.

My first memory was arriving at Famagusta and admiring the relic locomotive in pride of place at the centre. Like I mentioned for Nicosia, an old Roman Catholic 14th century Gothic cathedral, dedicated to St Nicholas, was right in the centre of the town, a magnificent building. As Famagusta was the main seaport, it was defended by massive walls, including what was known as Othello's tower but much of the ancient city had more or less fallen into ruin.

A few kilometres north of Famagusta lie the ancient ruins of Salamis. By the day's standards, it was not only an important seaport, it was a large, rich, city, unfortunately built on a seismic fault. Two massive earthquakes in the fifth century totally destroyed it. At the time of my visit, there was little of interest to see; nearly everything from that period was buried under metres of a very fine sand. However, I hadn't come here just for sightseeing; I had brought with me my swimming trunks and I took a dip into the water over where the port used to be. My eyes nearly came out of their sockets when I saw the quay about 2 m under the water. Standing on it were a couple of rows of amphoras neatly arranged against a wall. I swam down and tried to pick up one of them, but found that over 1500 years, it was strongly "welded" to its surroundings. I don't think it would be possible to free one of the amphora without destroying it. What struck me the most with this mini-visit was the obvious immersion of a working harbour in a matter of seconds or minutes. My mind boggled at the thought of the energy realised to produce these results.

After I left Salamis, I saw the outside of what I was told was St Catherine's prison. It was an uninteresting hangar in the middle of a field, carefully surrounding it. Honest, hand on heart, I don't know anything about it and it may be better that way! Much more interesting is the Monastery dedicated to St Barnabas, just a few metres away. At the time of my visit, the tomb of St Barnabas was being renovated. And the place where his body would have lain was being very carefully preserved, but there was nothing really to see. The monastery itself was run by three elderly brothers who were also priests and monks. They dedicated their lives to painting icons in the traditional style.. Within the Monastery chapel, there was a large, wide, alcove which they had painted with life-sized figures. The left-hand wall depicted the discovery of the Gospels, I think purported to have been written by Barnabas himself. The middle, larger, wall showed this copy of the Gospels being presented to the Emperor Zeno in Constantinople, in return for which the Emperor gave powerful rights to the Archbishop of Cyprus, including the perpetual autonomy of the church and the writer of the Archbishop to sign the documents in red ink (still today). The right-hand wall depicts the acceptance of these rights by the Church of Cyprus.

[WHL]

Enjoying them very much keep them coming.

[Firefly]

Hear, hear.

[Kili01]

Only just seen your latest post, Devil. I found this latest one really fascinating to read.
You must have had great powers of observation as well as an amazing memory.
I have been fortunate to have been to most of the places that you wrote about. I first visited Kyrenia in 1968, driving there with a friend from Akrotiri. It was a very different small quiet town then, with low white houses lining a most picturesque harbour, with fishing boats. Overshadowed by the very impressive castle.Which we visited with a guide. It looked a little run down then and was inhabited by the military. But we saw a few places which in my memory included the bottle shaped deep dungeon which we were told had been used to imprison any one who they wanted to be rid of.with the open curved side being impossible to climb. It was called 'The Oublette' The grimness has stuck in my memory. On a much later visit to the castle with my husband, there was no sign of this, but we saw the preserved ancient boat with its Amphora instead. Very interesting,

Devil, you are a brilliant writer, I am thoroughly enjoying reading all your reminiscences.Thank you,

[Devil]

Thanks to all of you who have bothered to make comments on what was originally intended to be a single paragraph and has now been divided into 14 sections, with two more still to run in the next few days. I suppose it could be considered as a form of blog but my knowledge of 21st-century English doesn't allow me to find an adequate definition of that simple four letter new word. Please be patient for the remaining sections as I am patient for my medical treatment just now!

[Firefly]

Devil

I'm pretty sure that you have many more fascinating tales to tell concerning Cyprus. Don't stop at just two more, just change the title! Good luck, and good health.

Jackie