Andrew Orphanou 4th July 2023

Sitting here and thinking back at the good old days. The days when we didn’t have a car. Pappou and Yiayia would come and pick us up to give us a lift, short or long. Or on those much longer journeys to Wolverhampton… oh how much fun we had (we would go over the ‘wee’ hill a couple of times!). Or those trips to the farm for our family picnics and the strawberry picking every year. Special times. No phones or gadgets, just us. Then there were the chickens in their back garden, where we were allowed turns to fetch the eggs in the morning on the weekends. Or the sleepovers. Then there were the times in Cyprus where we would all, sometimes four families, cram into the flat, how we drove yiayia mad, but we knew she loved nothing more than having us all there together with her, even after mum burned the kitchen with a chip pan. Yiayia got mad for a little while, but we were back to normal in no time… playing cards with Pappou and yiayia on the Veranda … spastra, kounka and many more. Then there were the pranks I would play on yiayia, phoning her and pretending to be the police, or her long lost cousin from Cyprus and many more … got her every time! Seeing how she deteriorated over the last few years was not nice, she wasn’t living any kind of life and I no longer recognised her as my yiayia, just a poor soul on a bed. Now she is finally resting. Reunited with our Pappou and auntie Nina. RIP yiayia xx