Well, I must say I’m enjoying life right now for a couple of reasons. 1. I’ve finished writing my latest book and look forward to a few months without the constant preoccupation that writing requires. It’s fulfilling, yes, but it also makes me somewhat of a hermit and the beloved is deprived of my company. She ought to be grateful, I say, but she isn’t for some reason. 2. The weather’s now entered into a gloriously settled period of sunshine, clear skies and low humidity. The temperature on the veranda as I type this is 28ºC and it looks set to remain fine for at least another week or more yet. The above photo was taken at lunch in the Konaki last Sunday, when we celebrated two things, this past week it was three years since we moved into the house and quite a few more since I first met my wife. No way can I tell you when that was without endangering my prospects of future existence. Fellas, you get what I’m driving at, I’m sure.

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks. Last week we went to visit an elderly friend who lives on the edge of the town. Spiridoula is around ninety and gets around the house with a ‘pi‘ [pronounced pee, not pie] as the Greeks call a walking frame. It makes sense that they call it that because walking frames do closely resemble the Greek letter ‘π’ after all. Apart from that she looks a couple of decades younger than her years, except for the fact that when she smiles her grin reveals a distinct lack in the tooth department. She fixed us both a Greek coffee and then proceeded to tell us how lovely our teeth were. I love it when we spend time with octogenarians and nonagenarians, because they not only make us feel much younger, but they usually make the assumption that we’re a few decades younger than we are anyway too. Great for the self esteem.

“You have lovely teeth, Gianni,” she said, “how come? Are they all real?“

I assured her that they are indeed, although I’d had a little incident with a filling that came out a while back, which necessitated about six visits to the dentist during the first lockdown. I rattled on about it in this post if you want to gloat. I asked her about hers, which seem to be decidedly few in number. She replied, with a mainly toothless grin, that she actually only had one remaining, “αλλά κάνει την δουλειά του,” she added, which translates as ‘it does its work,’ meaning that it still accomplishes something (although it’s hard to imagine quite what) when she eats. Her daughter, who lives upstairs with her family, cooks for Spiridoula, and brings her a meal every day, usually a primarily liquid one apparently. Her tooth situation brought to mind that of the almost 90-year-old Manoli in the village here. I remarked back during the pandemic that his teeth were taking seriously the government recommendation to socially distance. At least he still has a few in each gum to warrant the analogy.

On an entirely different subject, the government here recently came out with a new law that everyone resident in the country needs to register with a doctor, a GP, as one would say in the UK. If by the deadline one hasn’t registered, then it would mean that one would have to pay for all their own consultations, drugs, treatment etc., which could prove quite expensive if you came down with something. So, we decided that it was time we found out how to get registered. At first I asked my friend Mihalis, who lives in town, and he said, “Oh you’ve got plenty of time yet. I’ll tell you when you need to do it, don’t worry,” and then proceeded to forget all about it.

As luck would have it, we were sitting around the table at Angla’i’a & Giorgo’s house a week or two ago and I remembered this necessity to register, so I asked Angla’i’a about it. Just as well I did, because she said it was high time to get it done as the government’s deadline (which fortunately for us, had been extended a little) was fast approaching. She gave us a couple of horror stories about people who’d left it late and then found that two people in the same house, a married couple no less, ended up having to register with two entirely different doctors, owing to the fact that one already had a full quota of patients. ‘Ooh er,’ we thought, that could be difficult.

“What do we have to do to register?” we asked her, since we hadn’t any idea where to start. As it happens, it was no more complicated that booking our vaccinations against Covid-19, all we needed to do was show up at our favourite pharmacy with our AMKA and AFM numbers, and we could register there and then. So off we trotted to the pharmacy we like most, and the lady behind the counter was efficiency and friendliness personified, especially as my wife took a shine to her rather nice watch, and so remarked on how nice it was, which she took as a compliment and gushed about how much she appreciated that. Anyway, fortunately for us she was able to register us with a female doctor (for some reason, even I preferred that option) who was not only local, but also a friend, and thus came with a good endorsement of dependability, although strictly speaking the pharmacist was forbidden to make an actual recommendation. Once we were registered, she printed out our A4 forms and we went our way feeing most medically secure.

And so, as per usual, to some photos…

Above: The citrus fruit is now beginning to turn, making one look forward to fresh, juicy oranges, mandarins and grapefruit straight from the tree in just a few weeks time.

Above: Another sumptuous and delicious lunch at the Konaki. Not a bad location is it, eh?

Below is a gallery of a few shots taken during my walk out from the village and around what we call “dingly dell’ a couple of days ago. There is evident water damage to a stone wall just behind Gianni’s house, he who lives above and behind out upper garden. Plus a couple of shots of rural stone walls in the nearby olive groves, which I love to gaze at and ponder over their history…

There you go. Hope you like that one. Have you rashly shelled out for my new novel yet BTW? A man’s got to live you know…

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