Saturday, December 20/2008

The American Academy has a car boot sale in the morning. Pick up 4 paperbacks for a euro. Then market for oranges, cucumber, courgettes, cauliflower, kohlrabi and eggs. Coffee there with M&M. Good Cypriot coffee with the glass of water on the side and a nice breeze blowing.

In the afternoon to Carrefour. Still getting stocked up. Last time J spotted a Cypriot woman checking out the liquor. She opened the caps of two different fancy for Christmas bottles of vodka, sniffed them, returned them to the shelf, and bought neither. Today we check the meat counter. There's a sign with a price for lamb, but all that appears at that point under the glass counter is thirteen sad looking sheep's heads, eyes glazed, and beside them a pile of miscellaneous offal. No sign of the better bits. What would one do with a sheep's head if one were inclined to cook it? Not that I am.

At Prinos, the greengrocer across the road I get a huge bunch of dill - almost the size of the bouquets of roses in grad photos - as well as lemon, garlic, and onion. A man comes over to offer me a small white paper bag. Turns out to contain 5 hot chestnuts that he's just been roasting, so J and I stop at a park bench to eat them while they're still hot.

BBC World TV shows a circle of policemen surrounding the Christmas tree in Syntagma Square, central Athens. Its predecessor was burned by rioters and t he protests continue. We have fond memories of sitting in Syntagma Square in mid-December the year we retired, pleased that we could leave our jackets open in the winter sun (before we'd first come to shirt sleeve Cyprus). It seemed so exotic then seeing both Christmas lights and oranges on the trees of the square. Now, unfortunately, we've become blind to the miracle, walking past laden orange trees in December without really seeing them.