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| Screenshot of radar at 03:00 Wednesday |
Well, seems yesterday’s weather warnings had some validity but then so did my best guess - that eighteen hours worth of storm was not heading east across the Mediterranean. Call it a draw. About three this morning a storm was conjured up from nowhere. Nonstop thunder and sheet lightning, strong winds and (briefly) heavy rain. But sunny by morning and a sun and cloud mix the rest of the day. Blue sky and a sapphire sea.
Not sure whether Valentine’s Day trumps Ash Wednesday. Though did know someone who trained as a nurse in the forties under some pretty strict nuns who informed her that Lent notwithstanding one never fasts on St Patrick’s Day. In any case, we don’t normally observe Ash Wednesday as a day of fast or abstinence and really only celebrate Valentine’s Day in a kind of opportunistic fashion. Which leaves us deciding to go out for a late lunch.
Altınbaşak is a small family restaurant about a kilometre from us. Mostly uphill, but then that does translate to downhill on the way home. Very friendly though we don’t have much language in common. J would really like to have lamb but it’s “finished”, so he settles for a chicken doner kebab. I’m always a little cynical - in a nice way - about the use of “finished”, thinking it a soft way of saying that there isn’t any and possibly never will be. A bit like the Polish menu. Small restaurants in Poland do have menus but they’re likely to include everything they might ever be lucky enough to have in the kitchen. If you want to order you might as well start by inquiring politely what they recommend.
Although I have been wrong about the “finished” response. When we were living in Gazimağusa in 2020 we sometimes ate, after the lockdown was lifted, at one of the outside tables at a restaurant around the corner. Şeftali sausages were on the menu and each time we ate there I would try ordering them and the waiter would say “finished”. Which I regarded as polite fiction, thinking they must be too difficult to obtain. Until one day he said yes. And maybe Altınbaşak does have lamb if you get there early enough - say brunch time. And to be fair it is three o’clock in a country where the main meal is traditionally at midday, leaving us alone if you don’t count the three cats. Cats ever hopeful, and not at all deterred by my having accidentally stepped on one of them.
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