Tuesday, January 18/2011

Sirens, many police cars and motorcycles, helicopters hovering loudly overhead. We don't have long to wonder if it's a case of incipient insurrection, as the police are followed by a series of black limousines, some with flags. So it's diplomatic (and as M later discovers, by dint of aasking a policewoman) the President of Armenia enroute to the airport. Interesting that love of importance and drama trumps any sense of equality with the plebs with this Communist led coalition. We're reminded of being in China twenty years ago and our little van having to pull over to the side of the road to allow a diplomatic cavalcade to zoom importantly past us to the airport. Our thought then was much the same - in the capitalist west we're certainly not equal to the powers that be in wealth or influence, but we don't have to pull out of the road to let them pass when there's no public appearance.

At least the police sirens are long past when we walk back from Lidl in the afternoon. J is carrying the goods in his blue nylon bag when I offer to take some in my bag - and am horrified to realise that the weight on my wrist is a small clear plastic bag containing three green peppers that I forgot to pay for at the checkout as they dangled lightly from my hand. We're well on oour way home by this time and the thought of going back to explain - English to Greek - that we need to get the peppeers weighed, but no, the rest is paid for, is just too much.