North Cyprus with Central Heating

Many tour operators and rental villa owners promote Cyprus as an island for all seasons, sunny for between 320 and 365 days of the year and they are actually spot on – it is sunny almost everyday even if not all day – even in the winter.  But what this winter sunshine cannot mask at this time of the year is that at night it is freezing and that on days when it rains it is miserable and the damp and mud get into every facet of your very being and depress you.

Cyprus is not built to be muddy and wet and cold – or rather properties in Cyprus are not built for the rain, wind, cold damp air and mud, mud, mud – and after two long winters when I have suffered damp houses, cold bones and mud-encrusted everything I have finally had central heating installed and my whole life has changed for the better.  In fact – it’s fair to say that North Cyprus with central heating is the best place to be in the whole wide world…

Take today as a perfect example…it’s a stunning blue day, not a cloud in sight and the sun is beating down – but underneath the beauty there is a cold and, some might say, biting wind.  But you know what?  To me it’s actually a refreshing wind, an essential wind, a stopping me from melting wind! 

You see, I’m sat here at my computer writing this, looking out at the Med and sweating my socks off.  It is SO hot in my house – the central heating isn’t even on but when it came on in time to wake me up and inspire me to get out of bed it warmed the fabric of the property and then the hot water from the instant boiler thingumy that gives me hot water on demand as part of my central heating package has showered me into submission and I am wearing not much more than a t-shirt and shorts.  It’s hot I tell you – DAMN HOT.

We went out to dinner at the Vaha Spa on Saturday night (a cold and grim night out I can tell you) and when we walked in they kindly brought over a gas fire to warm us – ‘get that hellish thing away from me before I melt’ I cried to puzzled looks all round from be-jumpered beings whose very souls had not been melted by the fires of the gas boiler in my house and who were huddled around bowls of soup and hot water bottles and who were enjoying the snugness of Vaha before having to return to their miserably freezing abodes. 

You know, I pity the people who’ll tell you seemingly comical but unfortunately true tales of how they get in their cars and go for a drive to warm up or who fly back to the UK just to survive the North Cyprus winters.  I pity the people who have been lucky enough (few and far between) to buy a house with central heating but who forgot the necessity of a generator and who sit around a candle and cold radiators when the lights go out when the winds blow and the power stations go off line and the operators all stay huddled under their duvets until the storms pass…but I don’t pity them that much…I haven’t the time, I’m too busy roasting my butt off, sweltering on the sofa day and night, rain or shine, power on or power off…I have central heating, I have a generator and I think this article should have been called ‘why I’m the most hated person in North Cyprus’ – tee hee!!