Friday, April 4/2025
Pass the donkey on its own, though presumably tethered, on our way down to the Blue Song. Last week it was in the same field but accompanied by its owner who was picking wild herbs. Stopped for a chat. Like many people around here he was happy to engage, though with very limited English (albeit significantly better than our Turkish). He was gathering fennel, accompanied by a fair number of small snails. Said he didn’t eat the snails although people in the south did. As they certainly do. But does that mean that he personally doesn’t happen to like snails or that they’re not normally eaten in the north? And if so, why not? There was an occasion a few years ago when a Turkish Cypriot citizen was apprehended crossing the border to the South with a sack containing ten kilos of snails. He was fined a hundred euros and the snails were destroyed - or so the customs inspectors claimed. But on what grounds? Were they considered live animals or uninspected meat and fish?
