Shopping!

Shopping of any description has never been my favourite occupation, and in England I had that nice man from Mr Tesco deliver my weekly groceries. I justified the extra cost by thinking about all those special offers, the club card points, the club card vouchers, doing less spontaneous nonessential shopping, saving on petrol and most of all time and hassle.

Here, the option does't exist so I seem to spend an awful lot of time in the supermarket. And to be honest, for fresh produce, I wouldn't want to rely on home delivery for consistency of quality. Not that fruit and veg quality is poor, but it can vary from week to week, as can what's available. In actual fact the amount of good value, local, fresh produce in Cyprus is excellent. It is also more naturally seasonal. Unlike the UK, where if you want to buy something local you have to go to the nearest farm shop and pay more than something tasteless imported from abroad, here indigenous fruit and veg is widely available in supermarkets and greengrocers. And it tastes so good!

When we arrived in March it was the strawberry season, then we moved on to watermelon, and latterly it's been nectarines, peaches and plums, with grapes steadily improving. Basics like tomatoes, cucumber, potatoes, courgettes and peppers are also plentiful and very fresh. And I've never been able to squeeze so much juice out of a lemon! On my brief visit to Cyprus in February people were hawking oranges around the old town in their bicycle baskets. They let off an amazing aroma. It's very odd to see windfall oranges and lemons on the pavement.

Although local goods are very cheap, anything that comes out of a packet is hideously expensive especially things like nappies, cleaning products and toiletries. Mind you, basics such as milk and bread are also very dear. There are also very few special offers.

The shopping experience is also quite different, with lots of queuing involved. First of all you have to go to a counter to get your fruit and vegetables weighed and priced up, then there's the meat counter, the delicatessen and the fish counter. It definitely pays to buy cheese and cold meats from the deli. For meat if all you want is some mince and some pork chops then these can usually be found pre-packaged. These are the same product you would have bought from the butchery and for the same price. Unlike the UK there is a very limited choice of pre-packed meat so it's best to select from the whole meat counter. The girls have been fascinated by the sheep's heads and entire livers on display.