Christmas Day. Sunny and mild, and the breakfast room is windows on two sides. After breakfast we go into the centre of Kyrenia (Girne in Turkish) and walk down to the harbour, one of the most charming in the world. Stop for coffee and are joined by an old man who has been sitting by himself at the next table. He’s talkative - tells us he went to the English school in Nicosia as a child and to Nottingham University as a young man. He studied architecture, and was at one point the third most highly ranked architect in the North, the thirteenth in the whole of Cyprus. He’s eighty-eight, meaning he would have been forty-five and we’ll established in his career at the time of the 1974 hostilities. He still laments the division, repeating we’re all brothers.
A walk around the harbour and a light lunch in the lane here the little restaurants are - or were, as shops seem to be overtaking them, with clothing and luggage predominating. Christmas dinner back at the Ship Inn. Quieter than we remember it in the past, with both fewer people and less festivity. The Christmas crackers gone, fewer guests, and the dessert buffet diminished. We’re in good company though.
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