Well Andy Murray didn’t win but he really didn’t need to apologise for not winning when half the country wanted him to lose anyway! And if it makes him feel any better, I am sure his mum reassured him that he did lose to possibly the world’s greatest ever tennis player, playing on top form, so fair enough. Maybe next time………I enjoyed watching the match twice. Once in the morning, which was very stressful and once in the evening just to enjoy the tennis, particularly the third set. The tennis was exquisite but Murray’s inability to convert five set points was no less frustrating the second time round. But I really felt for him when he cried.

I LOVE being home in the UK but some things are just completely bonkers. On my top ten list of things that irritate are having to separate rubbish into about 20 different bins, excessive political correctness and just how many people hate Andy Murray…

SEVENTY-TWO hours in London and I can confirm that the snow has gone, you can eat sushi at Canary Wharf for less than I have ever eaten it in Nicosia, it is possible to drink cappuccino on the Southbank for £2.25 and people really do talk to each other! Not sure why people who don’t live in London always seem to think that it is such an expensive, anti-social city.

I HAVE TO say that the new Larnaca airport is a vast improvement on the last one. The only thing I liked better about the old one was that you could actually smoke in it but I suppose that little pleasure, which did for a while set Cyprus apart from the rest of Europe, was too good to last. While legal issues and property rights in Cyprus are still a hot topic, there is an interesting debate about the Larnaca airport site I found on the blog of a Labour MEP called Mary Honeyball.

IT HAS been a jolly week in Cyprus. Much joy and backslapping, as it seems that the Cyprus property issue now been resolved, thanks to the UK Court of Appeal decision in the Orams’ case. It is great being in Europe. Tourists could now be sued for trespassing in hotels in the north and presumably, restaurants, beaches and any public toilets build on Greek Cypriot land. Why stop there? In Europe we don’t discriminate. Why not sue some European tourists on this side of the island too and scare them all away. A good place to start would be all those Brits that could be said to be trespassing on properties they don’t own in Paphos; they may think that they bought them but if they still don’t have the title deeds….

SOMEONE commented on my last blog that I should try talking to my neighbours. It might be easier to get invites to their houses for coffee and then I would have something to do other than Facebook and shopping. There’s a thought. It would certainly be cheaper than going out for coffee with my friends. And in my (believe me vast) experience of doing the whole coffee with the neighbours thing here, it would also give me the opportunity I love to wax lyrical about the benefits of living n Cyprus that always seems to go down well…Tempting thought but why has no-one here in Cyprus ever invited me in for a bottle of wine and a PS3 session on Singstar? Or is that just a London thing?

Conspiracy theories are rife in Cyprus. I am not referring to any possible suggestions that yet again the Brits and Americans are trying to derail the peace process or that Engomi is the new gun capital of Europe. It is simple; I read a post on Facebook that claimed that most of the idiots in the world were in Alfa Mega supermarket yesterday morning. I was in that very supermarket yesterday morning. How should I read this? Was I one of them?

I love Cyprus because while the UK is covered in snow, you can sunbathe here for about 360 days a year, if you like that sort of thing. And when you get bored with that you can always drink overpriced coffee, attempt to solve the Cyprus problem or get a job…

John Donne once famously wrote: ‘no man is an island’. I know what he was trying to say but when a woman lives on an island, i.e. Cyprus, she sometimes has to remind herself that there is another reality on the rest of the planet; a mind-bogglingly different reality from which some people on this small island seem blissfully divorced……….

Take, for example, the whole shopping and going out for coffee experience.  I went to Ledra Street the other day and paid €6.50 for a small cup of hot chocolate with a bit of orange peel in it.  That is like paying nearly £6 in London or more than $9 in New York for a small hot drink. Hello, what about the recession? What about value for money, even if we were not in the middle of a recession?