Monday, June 1/2020

We both reading - as usual - when there is -  very unusually - a knock on the door. Where are the masks? OK. It’s a girl, who hands us two plastic bags, the colour of bin bags but a quarter the size. No explanation, but seems to be food. There was a distribution of food packages at an earlier point and Aysel asked at the time if we needed any but we said no, both because we didn’t need help and because we didn’t feel entitled to benefits meant for residents. Is this related? No way to ask, and in any case she’s gone instantly. Open the bags and find that one contains two dozen oranges and the other about the same number of potatoes. Seems like a massive number of potatoes, although they’re nice, as Cyprus potatoes always are. Oranges will be local too. Interesting little windfall. Really, there are undoubtedly people in need, and we’re not, but not easy to redirect.

Over to the mobile phone place just outside the walled city. Can we buy a local sim? Do we want an international sim? Well, not especially. But international seems to be what they’re ready to sell us. And for a month’s worth rather than a permanent arrangement it’s fine. Trigger having been that we have twice had phone calls on the iPhone that I didn’t answer because there’s almost no money left on its UK sim and I wasn’t about to run it down to zero as someone cleared their throat. Also there is some safety factor in possessing a usable phone. So now we do, for 30 days anyway. Turkish phone number and all.