Thursday, December 31/2009

New Year's Eve. A day in which regular activities don't so much finish early as drift into celebration. There's a market on, but a rather smaller version of the regular Saturday market, with some of the larger stalls missing. We meet M&M at our usual coffee spot, actually rather behind the cafe and a bit littered, but deliciously warm in the sun.

By the time we go home, about noon, some businesses have begun their traditional New Year's Eve barbecues, once upon a time events that were open to customers and passers by alike. We pass a long cypriot style barbecue - rectangular trough with a dozen spits durning a row of browning birds, surrounded by employees on the street corner.

The main New Year's Eve celebrations are at the north end of the beach, the stage on Europa Square only a block away from us. We wait until about half past eleen and head over to joiin the crowd. There are singers on stage and a sound system designed to cause hearing impairment. We thread through the crowd lookiing for the booths belonging to the breweries and wine companies, which dispense beer and wine in plastic cups, ignoring the tables with pretty picked over plates ofnuts. As always, the beer and wine are free - though the wine is a prett young domestic - and there's absolutely no sign of drunkenness. In fact large numbers of people, the majority probably, are not drinking at all, and some are drinking soft drinks.

It's a very mixed crowd - predominantly young adults but also old people, children, and quite a lot of babies, some of them fast asleep. There are a surprisiingly hign number of Moslems - many families with young mothers in hijabs, babies in pushchairs and small children in tow. some revellers have clearly come directly from indoor parties and we're passed by a sparkler of young women, one a girl in a short black off the shoulder sequinned dress - fetching, but probably freezing. We ourselves have bundled up warmly for temperatures probably in te low teens. We sit on a bench on the promenade watching the throng - some tourists, some local, probably disproportionately resident foreigners.

The birds are uneasy about disturbed roosting, and as they flit past we hear the first of the New Year in the deep tones of the horn of the ship anchored in the bay. Then the sky is alive with fireworks and we watch, standing on the beach. As they finish, J points to the sky where first one and then a second small fire-lifted hot air balloon drifts through the dark sky and out to sea - Thai style balloons like the ones we ourselves sent off last year in Chiang Mai, little skyward signs of human hope. As we leave the beach we pass a stack of empty sparkling wine bottles, neatly stacked for disposal by peaceful celebrators. Avoid stepping on a small white dog out on his lead and a bit overwhelmed by the festivities. Ahead of us are two seventyish couples, the women doing a few jive steps together as they leave. They turn out to be Scandinavian residents of our hotel, and we wait while the tiny lift takes them up first. Then home for us. It's 2010.