Wake up to rain, although it’s tapering off and soon produces a rainbow over the Mediterranean. Would like to go back to the Russian shop and nearby larger supermarket before Christmas but forecasts are slightly iffy - and, worse than that, those from different sources don’t always agree - so decide to get the indispensable groceries today and top them up later if the weather co-operates. So a chicken, more onions and mushrooms and peppers. And J scores a lovely and still warm olive baguette, obviously baked on the premises.
Christmas music not playing in the shops, this being a predominantly Muslim country, although Blue Song, and presumably a number of other restaurants do have decorations and a tree. Woman ahead of us at the supermarket checkout has two bottles of Bailey’s and we joke with her about the Christmas spirit. This is our twentieth Christmas in Cyprus, most of them in the South but a few spent with Jane and Bill at Ship Inn, down the road in Girne.
So memories of Christmases past in Larnaca where the Franciscan church had an enthusiastic choir of Filipino women who provided the standard Christmas carols with a slight twist. The Filipino pronunciation never quite anticipating the slurred joining of syllables - as in "th'incarnate deity" - leading to lines of music ending before all of the words had been fitted in - while a line with "Emanuel" in it had the opposite problem. Every Filipino knew that this is three syllables, pronounced Spanish style as "E-Manuel" - thus the words always finished before the melody. But it was always all heart - and pretty good melody too.
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