Droushia Rocks...

So six of us, Arty Knips, Wheelie Smeatons and John and I went to the extravaganza that is the Droushia music festival.  We were taking our lead from Sheila and Klaus who are veritable veterans at this malarkey having been several times previously!  Our evening started with a rendezvous outside the school at 8.00pm armed with our cool boxes - early to avoid the stampede of the locals.  The four of us who had not been before were gobsmacked by the space at the back of the schools - it is huge and was looking very professionally geared up for a concert - just as well really as that was what we were expecting!!

There was a veritable fleet of catering wagons lined up ready to feed the anticipated 2,000 attendees.  Our €20 ticket entitled us to watch the acts and partake of the food (for which they were only taking a measly €5 so we weren't expecting a gourmet meal but we were very pleasantly surprised by the selection of salads including rocket and sun-dried tomatoes - unheard of!!!  John got the biggest piece of kleftiko known to man and at one point didn't think he was going to finish it.

So here is John unpacking the contents of our industrial sized coolbox so that we were well stocked with nibbles and booze!!  We had even managed to source some Twiglets which is practically unheard of up this end of the Island and they were neither out of date nor soft - RESULT.   As the tables began to fill various stalls started to sell their wares - plenty of tat to keep the children happy and plenty (and I mean plenty) of whisky being sold to the local men.  Looking around it appeared that we were just about the only ex-pats supporting the event - shame really because it was a pretty professional event for a small village.  One other English lady seemed to have a bit of a collapse which meant that our neighbour Savvas (who is a doctor in A&E in Nicosia) was called into action - I bet that happens to him a lot!

John suddenly became best mates with one of the local guys who seemed to have had one too many whiskies and who transpired to be the guy who has the new cheese making plant in the village - John is hoping for a big discount when we go!  We also managed to avoid eye contact with the Tupperware lady for feat that we would be booked in quicker than you can say airtight!

The entertainment involved quite a bit of traditional dancing with groups of differing ages and which included most of the local children who demonstrated a great deal of pride in their performance - this was followed by a fairly rocky group and a female singer who was really rather squeezed into her white spangly dress.  Klaus and I agreed that the best part of the evening was the opportunity to people watch and marvel at where the hell they had all come from.  Our presence at the event did not go unnoticed by both the Muktar and his assistant (and daughter in law) Marianna.  We are all of the opinion that it does us no harm whatsoever to be seen to be supporting local initiatives.

Finally Antepas himself arrived - according to a website I have found he is only 58 - he looked like a well preserved 60-70 year old (perhaps he had a bugger of a paper round as a child) - the crowd went wild - he is obviously very well known and clearly deemed to be a star and was flanked by at least four minders!  People were jostling to get near him and have their photographs taken and he worked the crowd so that people were up and on the tables dancing.

To our untrained ears after a while the songs all sounded the same and they had a strong middle eastern influence which is a bit of an acquired taste!  We threw in the towel not long after Klaus and Sheila had decided to make their way back home.  There wasn't a lot of point rushing as the concert was going on until 3.00am and as our house if very close to the back of the school we were still going to be hearing it long after we had gone to bed.