About to leave for the shops when Bill catches us on FaceTime. Good to see him and he seems in good form. He’s eighty-eight now but says he can still walk a couple of miles, just more slowly than in the past. Fair enough! We reminisce about the Christmases we’ve spent together in the past, most of them at Ship’s Inn in North Cyprus but the last at their place near Ipswich in 2018, a year and a half before Jane died. And in the pre-pandemic universe.
Shopping really more recce than purchasing, although J does buy a kilo of peanuts. Raw and therefore, needless to say, unsalted. He’ll roast them himself in microwave or frying pan or combo. Infinitely nicer than packages of pre-roasted but no idea where we’d get them at home or at what gourmet price. Here they’re cheaper than processed, as one feels they should be. Other than that we’re checking out what we’ll buy on Friday. Probably chicken, although we have cooked lamb at Christmas. Saturday will be crazy busy and Friday probably not much better. No Cypriot would buy anything frozen for an important meal or by choice at any time, though frozen food compartments are becoming somewhat larger and more varied than they were ten years ago. So we’ll join the last minute queues.