Many years ago, when I was a carefree youth, Monty Python’s Flying Circus was on the TV, and one episode contained a rather silly, but hilarious sketch about flying sheep. The sheep were up in the trees and a bowler-hat wearing townie (Terry Jones) comes across a yokel (Graham Chapman) leaning over a farm gate, and proceeds to ask him why the sheep around there are up in the trees. The yokel explains that a most dangerous animal, Harold, a clever sheep (sheep are mainly pretty dim), had concluded that a sheep’s life consists of standing around in a field for a few weeks and then being eaten, a most depressing prospect for an ambitious sheep. So he’d hit on the idea of trying to behave like birds, although unfortunately their attempts at flying amounted to not so much flying as plummeting…

Well, there I was a couple days ago down in the lower garden, looking across the lane at Evengelia’s chicken run, which is largely hidden from view at this time of year because the high fence that surrounds most of it is overrun with Convolvulus, or Bindweed. Now, OK, chickens have a headstart on sheep in that they are actually birds, but apart from that, the advantages of actually being a chicken are negligible. I mean, let’s face it, a sheep’s life and a chicken’s are pretty similar when you come down to it. The sheep may surrender some wool for a while, but still carry on living, until the inevitable happens (or Greek Easter, maybe) and they get eaten, right? Well, a chicken does the same, only substitute wool for eggs and the rest is identical. Now as far as I am aware, and I admit to being no expert, chickens are largely flightless birds. OK, yes, they might be able to flutter on to a low wall or something, but as for maintaining sustained flight in any way, shape or form? No, they’re non-starters.

So, imagine my surprise when, as I glanced across the lane, there was this chicken, ten feet off the ground on the top of the bindweed-covered fence…

I was tempted to call it “Harold,” too, until I remembered that one of the flaws in the Monty Python sketch had been to assume that sheep were male, when in fact they’re female. It’s only the rams that are male, right? See, there we are again, sheep and chickens, so much in common. Chickens are all female, it’s only the cockerels that are male, right? So, what ‘Henrietta” was hoping to achieve I don’t know, but she seemed to be finding enough stuff to peck at as she idled around up in sheep-heaven. She appeared to be in no hurry to get down, assuming she knew how, of course.

Funny, isn’t it? When we used to live in the UK we always called Bindweed (or Morning Glory) an invasive weed that had to be rooted out from anyone’s self-respecting decorative garden. Its roots could multiply mega-quickly and it could very rapidly choke your climbing roses, for example. And yet, that Bindweed across the lane, when it’s in flower, is a glorious wonder to behold. In spring and summer it’s a riot of purple-blue bell-shaped flowers that stun the eye. Plus, apparently, I’ve only recently discovered that a fair number of butterfly and moth larvae depend on it to feed before pupa stage, thus assisting in the creature’s survival prospects. Returning to Henrietta, I do feel slightly sorry for her, I must admit. Not much later she’d disappeared back down to the realms below, among her fellow egg-laying ladies and the couple of cocks that keep them company over there. How long does she have before she herself gets eaten, eh?

I think I’ll move swiftly on…

This past week’s been a tough one I must admit. I can’t remember having such a bad cold for years, and yesterday was the first day I’d left the house in over a week. That also helps explain why it’s been a week and a half since I last posted on the blog. Plus, I’m not over it yet. I still have a hacking cough and a runny nose, although the pain behind the eyes has now subsided, thankfully. After I’d had it for three days, Yvonne began coming down with it too, so she’s a few days behind me in the whole process of it running its course. How wonderful it is to have such concerned friends though. Our closest friends Timotheo and Sylvia, in whose apartment we stayed when we first arrived in Crete and were waiting to get the keys to our new home, well they knocked the door with a huge tureen of delicious pumpkin soup, plus (As with all Greeks, you’ll no doubt know), Sylvia didn’t want us to starve, so she also included along with the soup (enough to feed a garrison anyway) a tupperware container filled with steaming fresh, boned white fish, all ready simply to spoon into the soup or to eat alongside it. Oh, and she gave us a bag containing about 15 lemons. You can never have too many lemons, after all.

We’ve had numerous phone calls from people wanting to go shopping for us, or bring us provisions, or simply to see how we were doing. Mind you, it can be difficult sometimes fending off all the advice. I’ve mused many times over the fact that Greeks, as I see it, are a nation of hypochondriacs. This is well born out by the fact that every Greek kitchen has a blood pressure machine in a drawer somewhere, and the fact that Tim and Sylvia couldn’t bear the thought of us not having a medical thermometer n the house. What? we didn’t know what our temperature was? How were we even surviving? So, along with the soup, the fish and the lemons, Sylvia also placed a thermometer on the kitchen worktop when they delivered their goodies, and half an hour after they’d left us she rang to ask whether we’d taken our temperatures yet.

Now, I’m as grateful as the next man for the concern being shown by friends and neighbors. But when they almost insist that you ought to go to the doctor for antibiotics, take your blood pressure and read your temperature several times in a day, when it’s universally acknowledged that there is no cure for the common cold, it can be slightly awkward trying not to offend. OK, so a few aspirin may alleviate the symptoms a little, but if you have a cold then you have a cold. Deal with it. It’ll run its course, and that’s the end of it. Over the years we’ve lived here in Greece, if I had a Euro for every time I’d foolishly mentioned some minor ache or pain to a Greek friend, and then been given a lecture on all the medical procedures that I should avail myself of and that were open to me in order to cope with it, I’d be pretty well-heeled by now, I can tell you. Not a few drug companies would be offering doctors even more golfing breaks in the Gulf off of my drug-use too.

Just before I close, I’d like to mention the bird song again. It’s that time of year when, if we sit out on the veranda, which we have been able to do with our coffees most days this past week or so, and tune our ear in, the cacophony is a marvel. When we used to live in that area of outstanding natural beauty, the Vale of Glamorgan in South Wales, before moving to Greece, we’d do nature rambles all the time, and all throughout the year. I’ll not lay claim to us being experts or anything, but our enthusiasm for the indigenous bird population while we lived in St. Athan village meant that we became pretty dab-handed at identifying an impressive list of local birds. It wasn’t uncommon for us to get home after a walk of a couple of hours along quiet country lanes and we’d have spotted with complete certainty well over 20 species of birds.

The best time of year to listen to birdsong is the spring. What’s amazing to me too, is the fact that although there are birds here that we never saw in the UK, Griffon Vultures, hooded crows and hoopoes among them, there are even more that are the same as those we’d hear around the area where we’d lived in South Wales. This morning, as I went outside after opening the blinds at around 8.00am, I could hear blackbirds, chaffinches, redstarts, great tits and blue tits, wrens and house sparrows right away, all trying to outdo each other, it was simply beautiful. There are various warblers around too, and chiffchaffs, the list goes on. Every night, if I put my head outside the door, I can hear scops owls up in the olive groves on the hillside above the village. I can’t express too strongly how grateful we are to live somewhere that’s so far from industry or urbanisation, too. Sipping our coffees this morning and gazing through the hazy warm sunshine at our neighbour across the valley tending his flock of sheep on the hillside, we could hear what he was saying while he talked on his mobile phone. He must have been almost a kilometre away as the crow flies.

There isn’t anything to report about our immediate neighbours at the moment, and that’s because we’re keeping our distance while we have the lurgy. Since most of them are in their eighties and nineties, they wouldn’t thank us for coughing all over them, least that’s how we see it. Just to close, here are two photos I took during a road trip to the Heraklion area just before I came down with this cold. They were taken very early in the morning, hope you like them…