Green Monday. Pretty overcast, which is hard luck on those planning the traditional kite flying picnics. Not including us, as we've been invited to join the community of Norwegian winter stayers. Two couples are staying here at the Sunflower and two other couples used to be here but have found other accommodation, but there are, amongst the various hotels in Larnaca, quite a few Norwegians, all of them here today, it would seem. There are thirty of us, including J and I as honorary Norsk.
Knut and Rigmor, who invited us, seem to have done the arranging and persuaded Mr Andreas to let us use the large dining room in the hotel's currently unleased restaurant and to order a catered meal, leaving us to each bring our our own wine or beer. Lovely meal and tons of it - skewers of chicken, Spicy Cypriot sausages, meatballs, Cypriot pasta, salad, and more. We'd been feeling sorry for the unlucky Norwegians who ended up sitting next to us and had to speak English throughout the meal. But as it turns out it's OK. Those sitting near us speak very good English, and in one case worked in England. Everybody very friendly. Meal stretches from 2:30 til nearly seven as it moves to coffee and pastry and then on to comic readings (with some later attempts at translation for us) and then singing, as Tore, who used to stay at the Sunflower until the distances became too much for his wife, who uses a cane, plays the accordion.
Interesting comment on the Cypriot tribal trust - and on the trustworthiness of the Norwegian tribe. We spend four and a half hours in the unleased restaurant with our food and wine, and on the wall behind the bar are the usual bottles of liquor. None of us, of course, would have dreamt of touching them - and clearly the hotel management trusts that this is the
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