Sunny, warm (21) and the town coming to life after two days' holiday. The supermarkets open again - smaller shops hit and miss. We come home past the bakery with a fresh loaf of the sesame studded dense rye bread that we love. Surprisingly, the barber shop on the next block is open - a shave in progress - but the "Hair Saloon" further along is shut. Until recently hair salon opening times were regulated by law - they all remained closed on a Thursday.
One of the happiest things about living in Cyprus is the provision of BBC radio - BBC World and periods of BBC 4 and 5 - by the British forces. The other places we could get this - Iraq, Afghanistan, the Falklands - are not nearly so inviting. There's Gibralter, but it's prett expensive. So we listen to a panel of foreign assignment reporters discussing their profession. Alan Johnston provides a particularly nice explanation of journalistic objectivity. If a reporter were to go into a abar and hear a fierce argument as to whether two and two make four, claimed by one, or six, as another insisted, the proper course would not be to assume that the truth was in the middle but to look for corroborating evidence. All the same, BBC reporters and others, do sometimes get caught accepting the frame of reference provied by one side or the other. Thus the optimistic "coalition" provided by the US and UK in the Iraq invasion suggested a much wider backing than had in fact been achieved, as well as having the happy connotation of "allies." US-UK, especially if pronounced U-suck - would have had a quite different effect.
JAWORSKI TRAVELS