Not of stitching, as I did virtually none over the weekend in Ayia Napa........ it was mostly work of one sort or another and was quite tiring.

We did not get there until about 6.30pm on Friday, as we stopped for a rather large late lunch, which was prudent as it turned out, since they had not organised dinner for us. There was a sort of drinks thing, and then they kind of told us to go to a restaurant. I think all of our group went to bed, do not know about D and Mrs D, as none of us spoke to them all weekend, except poor Nicky, who was corralled by them at one point. Also my friend Francis from Singapore, who was here for the weekend, got penned in by them, I went to rescue him and he embraced me in relief. Much to the astonishment of D! Actually I saw him in a state of constant astonishment, as about twenty men came and kissed me, including Roddy, who came up behind me and embraced me lavishly, to the extent that the person I was talking to thought he was my husband. Nicky and I were asked by the receptionist if we wanted two rooms or one, also, we blushed and said two.

On the Saturday, I got up very early and swam, as my room had steps directly into the pool, which was a tropical lagoon style........... I was swimming happily along, then noticed someone waving, it was Alec sitting on his terrace on the other side of the lagoon. I was slightly embarrassed as no-one at work has ever seen me in a swimsuit before. Then we had to go and listen to talking from 8.30 to 2.30 with only a short break for lunch.

One of the talking things was actually our team presentation, no singing and dancing for us, only commentary on slides written for us by D - too dangerous to let us write our own slides, of course, but he couldn't actually control our comments. Nicky purposely forgot what he was supposed to say, Alec and I were pretty subversive in our commentary. But people thought D was a jerk, as he made some crack about my Greek skills in his speech, it went down very badly with the audience. I made use of it later, when I introduced Nicky "our technical expert, and of course he really does speak Greek", which got a huge laugh.

On Saturday afternoon we went for a ride on a catamaran from Paralimni down to Cape Greco, where we anchored and swam, then came back and had about an hour to sleep or get ready for dinner. Which was a huge disappointment, it was supposed to be Cypriot meze, but it was the worst I have ever had. Most people just gave up and drank too much wine. The place was staffed by Russians who asked Nicky and me to speak English, not Greek! On the way back, we dropped most of the younger ones in the nightclub area, which meant we didn't see them very early the next morning.

They made us start at 8am the next morning, and we were told it would be over by 11.45, so that we could check out by midday, but of course people were still raving on at 11.50, so I just marched out and back to my room, Nicky followed, and it was good that we did, because all the people who politely waited for the talk to finish found that their keys had been deactivated and had to walk all the way back to reception to get them reactivated. And the complex covered 14 acres, so it was a long walk for some!

We did get very nasty navy blue and beige t-shirts which we had to wear for a photograph - 70 people standing on one bridge, it was rather nerve-wracking, and I was pleased to get off it. Finally we were allowed to depart, but then we had to wait ages for Leo, our driver, who was chatting with the bigwigs. We fell asleep on a big sofa in the hotel lobby - Alec, Nicky and I - and naturally there is a photo of this, as the entire weekend was photographed and videoed ad nauseam.

Back now, and we have major crisis here, with testing and databases......... I am sure we will be working all weekend, and I have a massively sore throat.