Cyprus Letter/Michael Jansen: August is the month for staying home in Cyprus. It is almost impossible to leave the island. Airlines are overbooked and Larnaca's little airport is awash with waves of tourists who arrive white-skinned and leave, at the end of their holiday break, a rich red brown colour, with sand in their hair.
There are no rooms at hotels in prime tourist areas. Beaches become no-go areas, packed with foreigners and Cypriots who take their annual holiday during the second and third weeks of the month. The soiled and rumpled sand is far too hot to trek across to the warm, salty, shimmering sea.
Shops in the tourist areas are besieged by foreign bargain- hunters scanning displays of lace umbrellas, boxes of Turkish Delight, crude pottery and tacky mementoes.
Seaside restaurants are packed with families consuming mounds of fish or calamari from the North Sea, chips and huge bowls of village salad garnished with fresh coriander, feta and olives.
Prices skyrocket. Knots of French, Italians, Irish and Russians in crumpled T-shirts, skirts and shorts are dragged by guides speaking a babble of tongues through cool museums and simmering ancient sites, pausing at kiosks to buy ice cream and postcards.
Highways are crowded with hire cars steered by people who normally drive on the opposite side of the road. Red licence plates warn cautious Cypriot drivers to keep a wide berth.
Fortunately, Nicosia, where I live, is not a major tourist destination. We have the Cyprus antiquities museum, the icon collection attached to the Archbishopric of the Greek Orthodox Church and the 16th century palazzo of an Ottoman dragoman.
We have Ledra Street, dubbed "Murder Mile" because of Cypriot attacks on British soldiers during the anti-colonial struggle, but it is a pedestrianised shopping district these days.
But we have no sea. Holiday- makers here for sun, sea and sand are bused in for a few hours to glimpse relics of the island's 10,000 years of history before returning - bleary-eyed with culture - to its beaches.
I love Nicosia's emptiness in August. Life is easy. There are few traffic jams and no lines at supermarkets. However, repair shops of all kinds close, so one hopes that the car, air-conditioner or television do not break down, although it is usually possible to find someone prepared to step in in an emergency.
The pool where I swim is lovely at nine in the morning. I am almost always the first to arrive and usually manage to finish two-thirds of my daily ration of lengths before the first papa and child trail in and begin to splash in the shallow end. Cypriot papas are very good with their children.
I stroke back and forth in the sparking azure water beneath an impressionist canopy of grey- green olive trees, dusty junipers and pines, and wide white umbrellas against the serene blue sky.
Refreshed, I return home, switch on the air conditioner in the study and boot the computer. News is never on holiday.
The other night I went with friends to Plato's pub in a handsome old Cypriot house located on a narrow street within the thick walls built by Venetian conquerors in the 16th century. Outside August it is necessary to book a table well ahead but we found only two or three occupied. Plato's spirit and wine list is long, its rooms are cool and its jazz is hot.
The menu has only half a dozen items, cooked nicely by the Armenian owner's mama. Prices are modest. The tourists have not yet discovered it.
In Cyprus, the family remains the foundation of society, the administration, and many small businesses. Cypriots can always rely on a strategically placed close or extended family member to help out whenever needed, particularly in a crisis.
Neighbourhood groceries set their opening and closing hours to suit customers and assemble and deliver orders to homes. Doctors still make house calls. Neighbours greet one another when they meet. Relationships are conducted on a personal basis. People keep an eye on each other and an eye out for each other.
Nicosia, with a population of just over 200,000, is just a big small town one can cross by car in 12 minutes when there are no jams.
It is a grand place to bring up children and to reside in retirement, a comfortable retreat from covering the political squalls and storms of the Middle East. Especially in empty August.