WHAT weather. The wind. The snow. The ice, sleet, rain and hail. Must have been dreadful.

Now us, we've been in Cyprus. Blissfully warm, blue skies, azure-coloured sea, gentle breezes to cool my sweating brow. Came back and we were freezing. John's mum, who had been farm house sitting, said she had been permanently clad in a fleece waistcoat to keep the chill out of her bones. At these times I think seriously about emigrating to a warmer clime but the problem is I don't think that traditional farming skills would be much use in a Mediterranean environment

Apparently Cyprus is working hard on its eligibility for entry into the European Community. In Paphos, where we were staying, half the roads had been dug up to install a decent sewage system. The rest of the roads had been scraped down to re-tarmac them. Good job we hired a four-wheel drive. Even from that vantage point, however, the only livestock we could see that might be able to apply for EU subsidy were some moth-eaten goats being shepherded by either elderly ladies swathed in black, or shotgun toting juveniles. I have re-examined our IACS application guidelines and on an initial glance can find no claw-backs for nanny or Billy goats.

As the only crops that we could see were a few fields of barley (grown we presumed for brewing purposes), I foretell on the basis of the acres of vineyards the reappearance of the European wine lake.

We had gone to Cyprus on the offer of a friend's villa. All over the island the almond and cherry trees were blooming. Just as they are doing in England. But, whereas in our trees the birds gather to sing, in Cyprus we heard and saw virtually no bird life. Once, up above, we glimpsed an eagle, and another time a kestrel. Four partridges and a few Cypriot spuggies completed the picture. That is apart from magpies. We saw quite a few of those so the lack of little birds was down to the magpies.

Or it could have been attributable to the shotgun hunters, although from the number of gunshot and cartridge dents in every signpost and speed limit sign I do not think that they would have had enough cartridges left to shoot at any bird flying across their path.

We did see a lot of tractors, though, some of which had also been shot at. From the general age of much of the agricultural equipment, John decided that Cyprus is where all old tractors go to die and briefly entertained a tractor export business. The climate must be a great help to preserving vehicles. Even the very oldest tractors showed few signs of rust and the most dangerous threat to them must be the steepness of the hillside slopes that they are expected to drive on and their lack of ability to stay upright on an extreme tilt.

Coming back through customs we were subjected to the mandatory X-ray scans on our hand-held and hold luggage. Our friends were pulled over for a suspicious hairdryer in their baggage and strangely-shaped pieces of tackle that turned out to be Dizzy and Lofty toys from Bob the Builder fame. A lady just ahead of us had to surrender a packet of mushrooms in her bag. She was mortified.

At home, unpacking, I realised that we had gone through all those X-ray machines with a deadly grallocking knife that John takes to Scotland when he goes stalking. It is a vicious thing, like a machete with a hook on the end and used for skinning the deer to remove the intestines, and he had left it in his case by mistake.

How they had missed it I do not know. Mushrooms, toys and hairdryer are now the weapon of choice.

Updated: 12:05 Thursday, March 07, 2002