First time this year at Foto Kibris, the photography studio and photocopy shop. Google the name backward looking for opening hours, but kibris foto is, literally, Cyprus photograph. Trillions of hits featuring flowers and beaches. But Foto Kibris does the trick. The charming owner not there but assistant as helpful if less extroverted. Usual table full of juices and soft drinks, help yourself. Remember the owner insisting on J’s sharing a tot of whisky last March, Ramadan notwithstanding. Must have more than taken the profit out of the single colour copy we needed. This time the season is marked by a metre high Santa near the door. Red garb but definitely not the fat, jolly stereotype.
Next stop the tiny Lapta post office to inquire about the fate of a tracked letter mailed from London on December 4. Royal Mail has provided detailed info re the hours from registration to leaving Heathrow, and explains that foreign tracking services will have taken over. Surprising number of international tracking services competing for the honour of providing info. One claims to be checking 1542 online trackers. Appears in Istanbul a week after leaving Heathrow. Not especially impressive, but reassuring. Then nothing. Well, not quite nothing. One service keeps repeating that it has been confirmed in Istanbul while another, after I check the box for English language info, delivers a sentence in Russian. Have Turkish and Greek keyboards on iPad but not Russian. Copy and paste it into Google Translate. Says that it means that probably the letter has not been sent yet. Other sources equally unhelpful.
So dolmuș to Lapta post office, theoretical destination. Lady clearly has access to better tracking. Says it’s in Lefkoșa. OK, right country. And probable arrival? Shrugs. Maybe Thursday? Well, happily do have a photocopy of contents. And the humour is free.
Down to Blue Song. J joins friends at outside table while I go to the bar to collect the beer. Two draft, please. One bartender looking doubtfully at the tapped contents in a beer glass. The other says, helpfully, cloudy. And pours me an ounce to see if I find it acceptable. I tell him I’ll get my husband’s verdict. Don’t suppose he follows my English but I’m clearly not absconding with a free ounce of beer. J not impressed. I return to the bar and change order to two Bomonti, an Istanbul lager.
And resume chat in the sun.
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