Hi Donna, you've done a bit of all right for yourself owning a bar and restaurant in Cyprus.

Is it very hard work? What food do you serve and do you and your husband/partner cook it yourselves? If you ever need a good, plain cook, I'm your woman. (only joking - well half-joking).

Which part of Cyprus are you in anyhow? That's one country we've never visited but always heard good reports about it.

To reply about a couple of your queries; John McArdle is married and lives on the Magheralave Road.

The youngest boy of the Marrs died years ago. He was a lovely young fella. Just cannot remember his name now. Might have been Paul. I wrote a piece on the Forum a while back about how he climbed through our bedroom window one St Patrick's Day when I had locked myself and the baby out. Always remember him for doing that.

hi ann,
don't know about doing well but we do have to work very hard, 18 hours a day when the season kick's in, which is pretty hard work when you have two kids as well, but then you know all about that...we are in the protaras area which is just outside ayia napa, but more family orientated, most of our tourists our english, welsh, scotch and irish, with a few german's and scandanavian's threw in so we do what they call international cuisine, just good fresh homecooked sort of food, and we also do a good old ulster fry.. paul and i are both qualified chef's but i prefer to work with joe public than to work in a hot stuffy kitchen at over 50 degrees in the height of the season,so paul does all the call order cooking and i do all the baking in the morning's when it is a lot cooler, am glad john mcardle is alive and well, but can't really imagine him married, he was a real joker when he used to drink with my dad, i remember mr's marr, but can't really place any of her kid's though i must have new them.do you remenber my uncle richard portis, you might have known him better as ben he married sandra who was a hair dresser, they all went to hilden school, i remember my mummy talking about dolores ferris, i went to school with nichola, dolores daughter. i hope your hubby is doing okay...take care, donna.

Donna, I know your uncle now that you mention he married Sandra. I know Sandra very well - she looks very like the singer Lulu. She's still very glam, nice and thin and her hair's always lovely. Her daughter, Michelle, went to school with my youngest daughter. I was speaking to Michelle just a few weeks ago and she's expecting her second child. Sandra & Ben still live in the Low Road.

Very interested to learn that you're a trained chef. God, we'll sicken all the Forum ones now because I love talking about cooking.

Tell us what you bake in the mornings. How do you keep everything hot? Is Joe Public hard to please?
Do you ever get time to sunbathe? Are you glad you moved to Cyprus? Are you making a good living? Is it worth all the hard work?

I know I've asked a lot of questions but I am interested in hearing how someone from NI copes in Cyprus, especially running a restaurant/bar.

Donna, did you train as a chef while you were here?

Do you do tapas too? What is the most asked for dish?

Just back from the hospital. The boss goes under his op tomorrow morning, but he's fine at the moment. He's getting a rest, more than he'd get at home.!!!!!!!!!

hi ann,
been ill over the weekend but am feeling a lot better to day, hope hubby is doing okay, my aunt sandra does look a lot like lulu, even more so when she was younger, i haven't seen her in about seven year's but i bet she still look's good.
ann, cyprus is a beautiful place, so although i do miss lisburn at times i am glad we moved, we have a good life here, especially the kid's and little or no crime compared to home, we could go out and leave all windows and doors open and come home and still find thing's the way you left them, business is good, although it could be better and we aren't really expecting it to be a good year this year because of the financial climate, but you just have to persevere, as for baking in the morning's i do soda bread, potato bread, pancakes, scones, apple crumble, apple pies, chocolate fudge cake, chocolate brownies and pavlova's, baking is done fresh every morning, as for keeping stuff warm we have a full fitted kitchen, with bain-marie's, pizza oven's, heated cabinet's and spit roast oven's not to mention several industrial cookers, ovens and microwaves. we do most of our sunbathing at the start and end of the season, i think last year i was on the beach once and it is only about five minutes away, we have a pool out the back so we use it more, especially when we finish work about 3am a lovely cool swim is just what you need. we do a lot of steak's in different sauce's but our biggest seller's our, our rib's and half roast chicken's also our home made pie's.

Donna, have been busy so didn't get thanking you for replying to my questions about food, etc. Hope you're feeling better by now.

Goodness, you are now definitely the Kitchen Kween with all that variety of food you cook. (Low Roader named me the KK a long time ago) but I know when I've met my match. Mind you, I don't know how you manage to get up so early in the morning, considering sometimes you don't finish until 3 am. Makes me tired even thinking about it. You must love your work and if you do, then that's the answer.

I'm sure the weather is nice over there now. Our spring has finally arrived. Most of my daffodils are out, my 3 Christmas cacti indoors are blooming again, a beautiful fuschia pink. Tulips are budding in the garden, the wee blue grape hyacinth are out, everything's coming to life and the evenings are stretching. The garden has quite a bit of colour. I'll probably be looking for the tomato plants soon. Exciting life, eh?

hi ann,
hope hubby is doing ok, and that you are looking after yourself as well, i am feeling a lot better thanx, must have picked up a viris cause for two days all i could do was lie on the sofa in between running to the porcelian throne, bet that doesn't present a nice picture. have been watching the news about home and feel very disheartened, so i can only hope thing's return to the better very quickly, have got used to the early morning's, as i worked in jeffer's bakery market square for year's, weather here is glorious at the moment, getting hotter every day, thank goodness, your wee garden sound's lovely, bet your glad you don't have to tend the big garden that you had in lawnmount now, you'd be there a couple of day's weeding, planting and cutting that lawn and hedge.have a nice weekend, speak soon.

Donna, my youngest daughter, Trea, worked in Jeffers Bakery part-time while she was studying. She worked with another student named Barbara. Do you remember them? Trea may even have been the wee girl with dark hair and brown eyes who you remember from Lawnmount. Mind you, she would only have been about 4 years old then.

She loved Jeffers, she served out the lunches, etc and cleared the tables.

She's now a community matron, married, no children and lives outside Manchester.

ann, now that you say the name trea, that was the little girl's name, she was really cute, i remember barbara because she ran about with my stepdaughter amanda, she also worked in jeffer's doing the tables, dishes etc...we had some good laugh's in that place, on a saturday i went in at about 5 am and was away home again for about 11, so i don't remember trea from then, but a lot of the wee ones were so quiet, you wouldn't have known they were there. what age is trea now? and does she get home often to see you?

Donna, Trea is now 39 years old. She has been living in England since she qualified in nursing. Couldn't get a job here or in the Republic at the time. Some of her friends settled for jobs as nursing assistants for a while as they didn't want to leave home, but she held out for a staff nurse post which arose in Oxford.

She lived in Oxford for a couple of years but found the people very standoffish, didn't like the fact that she couldn't speak to a baby in a supermarket without getting strange looks.

She met a boy from Manchester and they both moved, married and are living there this 16 years I suppose. Trea and Pete come over once a year, usually around Christmas. We visit them during the year too.

I told on the Forum about Trea having a bad 'flu maybe a year ago. We decided to fly over as she sounded quite ill. The boss and I just arrived at her back door one evening. She nearly died but was glad to see us.

No-one quite like your mother and father, eh?

Was that Billy McMillan ??