Cyprus, Wednesday.

Via email

I'm indoors to escape the midday sun - around 78 and climbing - but never fear, the smug look will be well and truly wiped off my face tomorrow when I arrive at Bristol Airport at some god forsaken hour and no doubt a rainstorm will greet me.

Any thoughts of holiday lie-ins went out of the window last Thursday when the Red Arrows arrived here for their annual training period.

Nice, you might think, to have an airshow every day. Which is what I thought on Friday morning when the planes, all nine of them, did a perfect display right over the house at around 8am in the morning, zooming up into the sky and then falling away like a burst of fireworks. Later, we went to the beach and climbed down the low sandstone cliffs into a little cove where the water is shallow and fish come right up to the shore. Ten minutes later the peace was shattered and we were given a solo performance by two of the Red Arrows, which came down so low that you could see the pilots.

Every morning since, apart from Saturday and Sunday they have faithfully appeared for the breakfast appointment, then another stint later in the morning, then on into the afternoon. As I write one of them is noisily writing a heart in the sky in smoke, with an arrow going through it. I fear the novelty will wear off.

Driving in Cyprus is probably easier than most other countries. They drive on the left, the road signs are in both Greek and English and for the most part the same as the UK. The main roads, especially the new motorways, are excellent and most rural and mountain roads are well maintained, albeit for a few potholes.

City driving, however, is another matter. I'm amazed that my daughter, who has been driving here for only a few months, seems to have no fear of the teeming roundabouts. I read a travel guide recently which pointed out that Greek drivers take the rules and regulations of the roads as merely suggestions rather than as the letter of the law. Cypriot drivers are much, much better but there still seems to be a case of 'who dares wins' on most roundabouts and crossroads. The favourite move on intersections when the red lights are against drivers is to play the 'who can creep over the line furthest without getting hit by traffic coming through the green lights' Everyone plays it, no silly old waiting behind the studs and letting pedestrians cross in front of cars. Pedestrians very sensibly seem to keep well away from pedestrian crossings.

Then you can be driving along and spot a vehicle heading from a side road. At home you sometimes think 'surely that idiot isn't going to pull out?' Here they invariably do.

Parking - anywhere you can get in. We saw someone parking on the central reservation, literally, with wheels over the raised bit in the middle. Then there are kamikaze motor cyclists, doing wheelies in and out of fast moving traffic, not wearing a helmet and on one road, a dual carriageway with a couple of tunnels under the roads, split into in and out traffic, where a big black car came through the tunnel on our side, the driver using a mobile telephone and who grinned shamefacedly when we gave him the age old hand signal which says 'idiot' in any language.

My daughter has picked up a few of the local habits already; pulling out of Woolworth's car park we went down a one-way street the wrong way to reach the main road. 'It's a one way street' I said. 'I know', she said, 'everyone does it to avoid going round the long way'. And they did.

Oh yes, and the Cypriot version of the white van man is the slightly off white truck man. He's similar in habit, he drives on your tail and waits until you are approaching the most dangerous bend on the road, preferably up a mountain with a ravine on either side, then pulls out without warning or signals and zooms past, pulling in so tight in front that you have to brake. Same the world over, with the added little filip that this white truck man is usually carrying half a ton of unsecured planks in the back of his vehicle which wave menacingly at you when he finally gets in front and threaten you for the rest of your journey which, not surprisingly is very slow because white truck man always slows down to a crawl for the rest of the time you are behind you before pulling off to the left or right again without warning or signals.

Not that I'm complaining. It's nice to find a country where you rarely pay for parking, where you don't have to lock your car very often, and where the countryside is largely unspoiled.

I waited eagerly for the weekly paper to see if there was a follow-up to the on-going letters I mentioned last week, which started with letters from a Filipina lady complaining about being 'insulted' by elderly Cypriot men.

I wasn't disappointed, this week's edition had two more letters, this time in support of the local OAP population. There was one from a British woman who said she had lived here for years and rather wistfully reported that she had never been insulted in this way. Perhaps she's been visiting the wrong parks.

Then a man wrote and suggested that the original writer, when confronted with the sight of an unwanted piece of elderly anatomy should either laugh loudly and point at the offending item or take a photograph of it. This is a typical male reply really; to a man's point of view having your person mocked is by far and away the ultimate punishment. As for photographs, the writer didn't consider that the perpetrator might be quite pleased to have his elderly apparatus preserved on celluloid for posterity. Not with my photographic talents he wouldn't, I've never been able to get anything big or small down on film in focus.

I'm sorry to have to leave this hot item but my daughter promises to keep me up to date on developments.

I've quite fallen for the new cat here, he's a tiny little tabby with a loud cry. Although only young he's already acquired a girlfriend, an enormous grey Egyptian type cat twice his size.

She pads in and out and flicks her tale beguilingly and for his part he keeps looking at her and thinking that he knows he should be doing something with her but he hasn't quite worked out what.

I hate to tell him but he had better be quick - I've seen his appointment with the vet written on the calender.

As of today he has exactly three weeks to find out what is required of him. So he had better hurry while he still has the ways and means.