Mousmoulia is what they’re called in Greek, and in English they’re loquats. You can see Loquat trees all over the place here and it’s about now when they’re laden with plum-sized fruits that are somewhere between yellow and orange in colour. Inside they have a largish sized kernel, again, probably similar in size to the pip in a plum, although their flesh doesn’t resemble plums all that much in any other respect. Apparently they originated in China, but now they’re grown in all kinds of diverse parts of the globe. Clinging to the surface of the kernel’s ‘chamber’ is a kind of opaque membrane that often stays with the fruit’s flesh when you extract the pip. Before you can eat the fruit it’s best to remove that membrane, as it’s kind of tough to chew, even though it looks like a thin layer of ‘mica,’ which anyone who’s into electronics will be able to explain. I used to be a partner in a small electronics company and we used to use ‘mica’ washers in the production of the product. That’s the only reason why I’m aware of the stuff.

They taste a little weird for my liking and, to be honest, I can live without them. The only trouble is, in villages like ours the trees are currently laden with the fruit and the locals will simply eat them raw, or use them to make a kind of marmalade. I’m told that the leaves of the tree can also be used to make a herbal tea, although I don’t think I’ve met anyone here who bothers with that. By far the most often consumed teas here are Chamomile and ‘chai vounou,’ or ‘mountain tea,’ which is made from a specific plant that grows higher up the mountain slopes and is considered to be exceedingly good for the health. Here you’ll often be offered a choice of the two if you ask for tea when being entertained. It’s far more likely that your host will offer you those than what we Brits would call ‘proper tea,’ or even Earl Grey. If you wander around the local branch of Lidl (for those outside of Europe, a supermarket chain originating in Germany) here in Greece, you’ll see mountain tea in see-through cellophane packets on sale alongside all the other teas in their range. We prefer to buy it from the local dried herb shop, but the mountain tea in Lidl is nevertheless a Greek product.

Anyway, we have a very prolific mousmoulia tree in George’s plot just below our veranda and, although the land belongs to him, he tells us to pick and eat the fruit of the few trees he has planted there, since he rarely comes to the village these days. There are also lemons, figs, almonds and mandarins down there, so it’s a handy little food source as the seasons roll around.

The thing is, even though we’re not into mousmoulia, we know that our near neighbours have eaten them since they were born and thus will always have a use for them. They, however, don’t have access to George’s plot, and so, as I gazed down at the fruit-laden tree a few days go, I resolved to go down there, pick all the soft, ripe fruit and give them to Maria and her mum Evangelia across the lane from us. In times past Evangelia would regularly shuffle over there with a bucket to collect both the fruit (always leaving some for us too) as well as fists-full of horta, a staple in her diet, as is the case with so many elderly Greeks of her generation. It’s been explained many times I know, but the habit of picking and eating horta, which is a plant whose leaves resemble the dandelion, is thought to have originated during the Second World War, when the occupying Nazis seconded virtually all of the fresh fruit and vegetables from the locals to feed their soldiers. Without horta, even more thousands of Greeks would have starved than did so. Evangelia cannot now gain entry to George’s plot since his son was up here a few months ago and decided to put a padlock and chain on the gate. I have a way of getting in, but it would be well beyond Evangelia’s physical abilities to do so, sadly.

Thus, rather than see all those ripe fruit fade and wither on the tree, I picked a big bagful of them and left them outside Evangelia’s door when she was taking her siesta. That, it seemed to the both of us, was the best solution and it would mean that all that fruit wouldn’t go to waste, since in no way did we want it.

That was one day last week. Only a day or two later, as I’d risen early because my body refused to stay asleep beyond around 6.30am, I was sitting at the kitchen table bashing away on my laptop’s keyboard, taking the occasional sip from a comforting mug of Earl Grey tea, when a shadow passed in front of the window above the kitchen sink, directly to my left. Fortunately I was wearing my dressing gown. Had it been another few weeks time, I may well have been sitting there starkers, as that’s the usual way we wander around the house during the summer days, as it’s simply too hot to wear anything. It must have now been around 8.30am; still quite early, although, of course completely light outside.

Thinking it might have been the cat (although quite how he’d have managed to get up as high as the window would have been a mystery) I turned to see what was happening. Staring straight in through the open window, through the mozzie screen, was the face of sixty-something Christina, from a little further up the hill, she who had made us a batch of cakes and biscuits after we’d taken a few minutes to pass the time with her in the olive groves when she’d been feeling a little like an outcast. My initial reaction was to shout ‘What the hell are you doing snooping around like that woman?!’

It goes without saying that I didn’t do that, though. After a few milliseconds while I gathered my thoughts, I gave her a sweet smile (even though I was immensely irritated to have been interrupted) while she pointed to something lower than the window sill, where we have a bench which I use to fiddle around with various DIY and gardening stuff, and whispered, “Gianni, I’ve just come back from the horafi, and I thought you might like these, OK? I’ll leave them here for you. Give my love to Maria.” And she was gone like a twilight spectre in the dawn.

‘OK,’ I thought, although she’d frightened the living daylights out of me, ‘I guess she was just being thoughtful. She probably hadn’t expected anyone to be up but, since I was, she’d let me know that there was something out there for us.’ Once I’d given her a few minutes to beat a retreat, I opened the front door and took a look at what she’d left for us.

There, on the bench, was a big bag full of mousmoulia.

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Last May, as we took a week’s break in Sitia (which we’re doing again this year, next week in fact) we’d been rather taken by a flowering plant that was growing in many of the displays along the walkways of the town, especially around the cafés on the harbour front. On our return home we sought the plant out in a local garden centre and bought a couple of small seedlings to plant in our upper bed. It’s a perennial that flowers for at least a month from about now onwards, and we loved the delicate pinky-white flowers. Well, those two tiny seedlings grew very vigorously during the succeeding months, and now, well, look…

It’s exciting to see from those photos that there are loads of buds still to come out. Isn’t it a great addition to the colour palate up there though?

Last Saturday Yvonne (Maria) had a hairdresser’s appointment. so I took myself off to take some photos of the nooks and crannies around the old town. The results are below. Hope you like this selection…

That corner bakery just across from the church (photo no. 2) took me back to the days when we used to take holidays in the Greek islands. Don’t you just adore that early morning stroll along from your rooms to the local bakery (always assuming you’re not staying in one of those huge faceless A.I. hotels, of course) to pick up a loaf or two for the lunch that day? As you approach the bakery that divine smell of Greek bread baking in the oven meets your nostrils well before you get to the door and you feel like eating half the stock in the shop, right? Well, as I drew near to that corner the familiar aroma took me back to wonderful past times when we’d holidayed in such places as Poros island, Kefalonia, Symi, Skiathos, Samos, Naxos and others. There are few smells as evocative of a Greek holiday in some small accommodation among the locals as that.

Finally, at 8.00pm last Saturday, we rather liked the shape of a cloud over the hill to our east, so I snapped this shot of it…

Look after yourselves.

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And here’s the link to the new short story “Outage.”