The other night it was an August full moon. These days virtually every time there’s a full moon it gets given some exotic name or other, “it’s a wolf moon this time,” “It’s a strawberry moon,” …”a sturgeon moon,” I shouldn’t wonder if there isn’t a “Builder’s moon” too. To me it’s all just tosh, a full moon’s a full moon and they’ve been happening every 30 days (or is it 28?) since time immemorial. They all look spectacular if you catch them right, and I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been duped in recent memory (mainly through dodgy Facebook posts) into trying to see something in the full moon that wasn’t really there. Every time there’s a full moon it looks like a full moon, get over it, I say. Some of those fanciful photos that show it rising like an alien spaceship over the Acropolis, they’re all very pretty, but doctored to hell and back in Photoshop (usually to make earth’s satellite look ten times larger than it actually is), if you ask me.

All of which doesn’t detract from the fact that a full moon on a Greek August evening, when you’re invited to a beach party to not only enjoy good company but also to watch as the moon rises over a flat calm sea, is awesome. Now, my photos don’t do it justice, but maybe these will at least give you a taster of how magical the evening was…

As per usual, we had about 24 hours notice that the gathering was happening, which is the equivalent of months of advance planning in the UK. We were told that things were kicking off at around 6.00pm, so we decided that meant we could arrive safely at 6.30-7.00pm and we wouldn’t have missed much. When we got there at around 6.45, there were probably around twenty already ‘camped’ on the beach near the water line. Most were sitting around in folding chairs, and some were in the sea. We still had an hour or two of daylight so we joined those in the sea for a dip and a cool off, which was very acceptable. All the while there were chaps parading back and forth from the nearest area where one could park a vehicle, which was probably around 50 metres back from the shoreline, carrying huge crates, bags and boxes down to the ‘camp’ area.

This is one of the things I love about our Greek friends, they never do things by halves. “Just bring a picnic” they said, so we arrived with some homemade pitta-pizzas and some chopped honeydew melon, plus a can or two and some water in our modest little cool-bag. The Greeks, however, were feeding half the world’s starving millions, or so it appeared. They brought huge great tapsis full of all kinds of different foods, cakes (some of which resembled our good old British Chelsea Buns, only without the currants). In fact Dina (who was passing around the huge tapsi cutting portions for anyone who wanted a piece) told us there was cheese in hers. It still tasted distinctly ‘Chelsea-bun-ish’ to me, only less sweet – which was good thing in my book anyway. Then there were huge salads, along with plates and wooden forks which which to partake in a civilised manner, massive dishes of fresh fruit from various peoples’ trees or vines, great chunks of freshly made bread, cool-boxes packed with ice in which you could fish out a beer or a bottle of water. There was enough meat to fill an average refrigerated lorry as three chaps set about getting the barbie going.

Having a barbecue outside in the current dry conditions is something you only do if you know exactly what you’re doing, and to do it within a few feet of the sea and hundreds of metres away from the nearest vegetation meant that we had no worries on that score. Of course, no one spends money on firelighters, either. They brought, along with a few large sacks of charcoal, several large bundles of dried weeds, I presume of a particular kind of plant that carries dense seed heads, and these were used to kindle the thing. Giorgos and Giannis dug a substantial hole in the sand too, to make a fire pit beside the now completely assembled barbecue (and don’t even think of visualising one of those little portable throwaway affairs, right?), which was a major engineering marvel, homemade of course, but even when disassembled it had taken up half of the back of one of the substantially sized pickup trucks in which four of the party had arrived.

One of the younger members of the group, Elena, had brought along with her 5G mobile phone, in which she of course has access to Apple Music, or Amazon, or Spotify or whatever, one of those barrel-shaped bluetooth speakers which, when she placed it on top of a towel on the ground sounded to me as good as your average DJ’s sound system. Once the music was under way, Elena toured the group asking for requests and, whatever song anyone asked for, she’d find it and play it. Talk about technology having moved on a pace from the portable cassette player.

The sun went down behind the hills above Ierapetra to our west and the darkness gathered. The company was in full swing when the first slither of the blood-red moon began to push itself up from the horizon, causing just about everyone to stop, and gaze at what is, every time one sees it, a thing of great beauty. That first group of photos above are in time sequence, and if you look at them carefully you can see that the moon is decidedly red when it first appears, then gradually loses the colour the further up into the night sky it climbs. It’s always at times like this when I wish I had an all-singing-all-dancing camera to capture the spectacle properly. Still use your imagination, eh?

Something else that happens every time we go to gatherings like this one: you’ll recall I said that Mihalis, who had organised the thing (I didn’t mention his name above) had said to arrive at around 6.00pm, and that we’d finally got there after 6.30pm? Well, fast forward to around 9.30pm and people were still arriving. Just when you think that all the gang are there, another family or couple turns up and, in the darkness away from the mobile phone flashlights and the embers of the now-dying down barbie, you ‘d see a few more shapes and try to work out who they were. In fact, the last arrivals probably got there only minutes before we left!

All in all, it was a magical night on a beach lit by the panselinos (full moon), where we’d even danced a few steps in the sand to a well-known hasapiko number, eaten our fill (whilst studiously avoiding the dead animal part, of course) and caught up with a lot of people before we wended our weary way across the hundred metres or so of vast beach back to the car for the fifteen minute drive home. I know, in the UK this week they’ve even had daytime temperatures in excess of ours, and they’re very welcome to them, believe me. This August so far has been a blessed relief from the kinds of temperatures that we usually get at this time in high summer, but in the UK I’ve seen the weather forecasters saying that “it’s going to be a muggy night, maybe no lower than 18ºC, which will make it difficult to sleep.” Umm, hate to say this, but over here, even if we’re a few degrees down on your daytime temperatures in sunny Wiltshire or Norfolk right now, we’re actually 8-10º up on you in the middle of the night, but then again, we do have the luxury of air-con, if we choose to use it, I suppose.

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I’d like to cap off this post on an entirely different note, and hopefully it’ll appeal to you. Yesterday, as I was preparing our iced coffees for sipping while keeping company for a while with our pussy cat Mavkos on the sun terrace, I asked our Echo (Alexa) if she’d play for me an old album that for some reason had come into my mind lately. Way back in the mists of time, must have been 1968-69 or thereabouts, I’d been a fan of the Bonzo Dog Band (they were originally called the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, but lost the ‘doo dah‘ at some stage). They were distinctly whacky and entirely unique at the time. They released a string of very funny, yet musically accomplished albums, one of which was called ‘Tadpoles.’ It’s the album on which the song ‘I’m the Urban Spaceman‘ first saw the light of day. ‘Urban Spaceman’ though, is my least favourite track on the album. Anyway, it’s quite fun asking ‘Alexa’ to play some old obscure album and, to be honest, she sometimes draws a blank. Imagine my delight when, as I took some ice cubes out of the freezer and asked, “Alexa, play the album ‘Tadpoles’ by the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band,” she responded by saying, “Playing Tadpoles, by the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band,” and the first track “Hunting Tigers out in India” began.

Now, the world’s not doing all that well at the moment, I’m sure you agree. So, imagine the scene: Here I am, cicadas ringing in my ears from the trees outside, with a view down olive grove-clad hillsides to the Mediterranean Sea below, fixing iced coffees, and listening to the Bonzo Dog Band in a tiny Greek village, I mean – surreal or what? If you need a bit of cheering up, and you have access to one of the music streaming services, I strongly recommend you give the album Tadpoles a listen. It’s totally whacky and not perhaps completely PC in places by today’s standards, but it can’t fail to cheer you up. One of my favourite tracks is ‘By a Waterfall.’ Listen to the wonderfully warm production on that track as the sax and rhythm section gets under way, and then listen for the sound effects when Viv Stanshall (hugely underrated eccentric musician and playwright) sings the verse through for a second time. If you give the entire album a listen, I can’t believe that it won’t lift your spirits and help you cope with yet another day in this topsy turvy world!!

Have fun.

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