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SOLOMON: What is it about Cypriots, tobacco and suicide souvla?  

Giorgios was done 12 years ago by Panicos, a distant relation of mine and heart specialist at the Apollonion Hospital. Giorgios reckons he was lucky to survive and has reduced his smoking to a cigar every evening, just like President Sarkozy. Cutting out cigarettes has more than covered the cost of the operation. . . .

Manolis stubbornly chose to go out with a bang - he would get through half a bottle of whisky and 10 cigarettes with his souvla. After the fourth stent, he miraculously came to his senses and reduced from five packs a day (one every ten minutes) to just one, no whisky or souvla. He is now a slim shadow of his former self - inactive, laconic and sad.

What is it about Cypriots, tobacco and suicide souvla? Do we compete to see who can smoke and eat the most, abusing our bodies in search of Zen and the Art of Merc Maintenance? What's the alternative - antidepressants? Outwardly, we seem such a happy people...

I smoke a pipe like a baby sucks its dummy - unloved as a child I suppose. . . .

No longer are these old souls left outside to die when too aged to be useful. Nowadays they watch the box in centrally heated wood cabins, smoke, go shopping on snow scooters, eat McDonalds and suffer heart attacks. Thought for food, n'est-ce pas?

You are what you eat, said Nietzsche. It is rumoured that the great German thinker committed suicide. He must have been of Cypriot extraction and never said so...

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