Interesting how respect for a queue varies culturally. So much so that when someone worms their way in ahead of us J or I will often say "Funny, he didn't look Taiwanese." But this moroning J experiences a particularly blatant version. We go early to Lidl, mindful of the crowded supermarkets that accompany the days before Christmas. J is near the front of a line and has reached the checkout counter when a woman phshes in from the side, shoving her shopping art ahead of him. J says that there is a queue and points to its end, but she continues to push, while talking to him loudly in Greek. Eventually J removes her trolley and the people behind, a mixed English/Greek Cypriot couple take up the argument with her in Greek, showing her where the queue forms. She then has an unsuccessful go at crashing the line-up at the next counter before resigning herself to the rear.
Well, perhaps not entirely cultural variation. After all most Cypriots would not have done it and those behind J were less than impressed - but in the UK, land of the sacred queue, only the mentally ill could be imagined trying it on.
There are Christmas films on TV - fortunately Cypriots use subtitles instead of dubbing - but they're ostly things like modern take offs on A Christmas Carol and we're old enough to feel nostalgic about Jimmy Stewart. Tonight's film, The Christmas Choir, is about a man who takes men from a homeless shelter and forms them into a choir. We're thinking that it's a good story line but that in real life the problems would be insurmountable Turns out that it was based on a true story.
JAWORSKI TRAVELS