From one Half..............

Custard perhaps!

Red pillar boxes for posting mail are all over the place in Britain. But they are not confined to the UK and there are many parts of the world that were part    of the British Commonwealth which are now independent, and they too had these iconic pillars where you could    post your letters. In countries where they have been retained and are still in use, some are coated in classic pillar box red, e.g. Malta and Gibraltar; elsewhere they've been repainted other colours. In Ireland they all went green   in 1922 and in Cyprus we saw plenty of yellow ones - here you can still see the crown and the letters GR indicating that this was erected in the reign of King George VI. They're not exclusively red 

in the UK though - following the 2012 Olympics pillar boxes in the home towns of the various British gold medal winners were painted gold; we have one near us in Flint to commemorate our local hero Jade Jones who won a Taekwondo gold medal.

I'm still standing!

Some more Roman ruins, this time in central Paphos where successive stages of occupation have been gradually peeled away by archaeologists, this is the place where in the first century AD, St Paul the apostle was tied to a pillar and whipped - a very white marble pillar still stands among these ruins and apparently this is the one he was chained to. The church in the centre of the photo was built in the 13th century on the site of a much larger basilica. All very impressive and only a stone's throw away from the nightclubs and bars.

Every little helps!

I love wandering round supermarkets on our travels. Looking at what the locals buy provides a good indication as to what kinds of produce feature in their diet. Papantoniou's wasn't especially big but their fruit and veg section was rather amazing featuring a wide range of exotic fruit and veg many of which were unfamiliar to me, lots of different types of aubergine too. The fish counter was pretty impressive with lots of octopi (that is the plural isn't it?) and fancy shellfish. On the way out I spotted this sign which puzzled me a bit - I went back in and looked around and found some Sainsbury's tea for sale but that was about it. I guess the signage represents some sort of agreement that benefits the Cypriot shop in terms of attracting British visitors to do their shopping here.

Everyone's a winner!

And here we are, the real reason we came to Cyprus. A bit of a running festival, Vicky did the 5K and I trundled round the half marathon. Don't let the clear sky in the background (behind Paphos Castle) fool you - it was desperately cold, we'd run in sleet and rain and a stiff wind and by the time of the presentation I was well wrapped up, thankful that I'd brought a bag of clothes. 1:41:56 was my time and I was happy with that especially as I was able to stand at the top of the podium with an oversize trophy to wave around. Vicky was 40:19, she would have liked to have broken the 40 minute mark but, as I've said, the conditions were against us.