Giannis is probably in his early fifties, and is beginning to lose the battle when it comes to belt size around the waist. He’s also well on the way to needing to rub sun cream on his bonce too, since the hairs that he has left on top are of sufficient scarcity that he’s taken to doing what so many men do these days who are going bald, and that’s having the barber do a ‘No. 1’ all over. If you’re not familiar with the No. 1 in hairdressing/barbershop terms, try googling it.

He moved with his second wife Marina to Ierapetra a year or so after we did and they rent a flat on the seafront, with a gorgeous view from above of the tamarisk trees and the cafés and tavernas that sit beneath them along that stretch of the town’s coastline. It didn’t take us long to notice that whenever we go for a coffee and a swim on the beach during the summer months, Giannis invariably turns up, sits under an umbrella on a director’s chair that he’s carried down to the beach with him from the bar area, and begins fiddling with his mobile phone, much like a teenager. He doesn’t usually use a sun-bed, preferring as he does to sit upright on a canvas and wood director’s chair. The café staff don’t seem to mind and, in fact, all the local Greeks anyway have the habit of rearranging sun-beds and chairs as and how they like to, while they’re passing their hour or two on the beach and drinking their iced coffees and generally having ‘parea’ of a weekday morning.

We became friends with Gianni not all that long after he moved into the area, and regularly exchange a few words of greeting when either he or us are heading for the shower after a dip in the sea. Although while seated on the beach he’s seemingly preoccupied by his phone, he nevertheless still takes a moment to have a cooling dip every now and then.

One day I received a ‘friend’ request from Gianni on Facebook. As you do, I took a look at his main profile before deciding whether to accept, and saw that his profile photo was one of him standing in front of a pile of coloured plastic crates that are all stacked in front of a wall and brimming with fresh tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. It’s very evidently taken in a warehouse or trade market premises of some sort. There are hundreds of crates stacked several deep along the wall behind him. It thus seemed fairly obvious to me that the photo had some connection to Gianni’s work.

Next time I saw him on the beach, and sure enough he had no sooner got himself seated on his chair under an umbrella than he’d got his phone out and was studying it intensely, I thought I’d ask him if his profile pic was indeed taken at his place of work. Although it had to be a former place of work, I surmised, since these days he’s seldom missing from the beach from 11 until 1.00pm on weekdays. Had he retired early? Had he lost his job? I was curious to see the mystery solved.

I didn’t want to offend him, but I wanted to get to the bottom of why he was so preoccupied with his phone while on the beach. It seemed that he didn’t simply go to the beach to enjoy a spot of relaxation and a cooling swim, no, there was something else going on. I asked him, tactfully, “So, Gianni, do you have the Kindle app on your phone then?”

“No, I don’t read a lot of books,” he replied.

“Ah, right. Maybe you catch up on the news on your phone, is that it?”

“Nope.”

By now I knew that he knew that he was stringing me along. He was well aware that I was curious as to why he spent so much time on that phone, and was seeing if I’d be able to wring it out of him. 

“Oh, and you’re not talking to friends or relatives from where you lived before, is that it?”

“No, I’m working, if you really want to know.”

“You’re working? Really? What is it that you do then?” I thought I may as well go for the jugular since he’d thrown me a line.

“I’m a fruit and veg broker. Basically I negotiate a price to buy a crop of peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, whatever, from the farmer, then sell the shipment on to a retailer, or maybe a hotel chain. I’ve been working from home for a few years now, which is why we could make the move here to Ierapetra. We were fed up with the city (Athens), and thought that this might be a much nicer place to live, better quality of life, that sort of thing.”

“Right, I get it now. So that’s what you’re doing on the phone all the time.”

“That’s what I’m doing on the phone all the time. I prefer to come down here to do it, because Marina my wife is vacuuming, washing, cooking, cleaning, all that stuff, at home and I can’t concentrate on the job. So I grab an iced coffee and start work down here on the beach under a parasol. Plus I can take a dip when I feel like it.”

“Wow. So the beach is like, your office, eh?”

“Yup, good way to think of it.”

“Not a bad way to make your living then, Gianni. Plus I suppose with all the thermokipia around here there are plenty of farmers who are keen to shift their produce. Why do they need you though?”

“Because it’s a lot easier for them to sell an entire truckload or harvest in one go than to sell a little here, a little there. I take the whole thing off their hands for a price we both agree on, then I find customers at the other end to sell the stuff on to. I’ve become quite good at it over the years, even though I say so myself.”

With that he said it was time he took a dip. The temperature was stroking 38ºC and there were beads of sweat along his brow. I took my cue from him and did likewise. Now each time we see each other, I say, “another boring day at the office then, Gianni?”

Giannis smiles.

•

I’ve been meaning to make some observations for some time now about the very ‘inward-looking’ TV news bulletins on the major TV channels here in Greece. All the channels, without exception, broadcast hour-long news on a nightly basis. The thing is, though, much of the content of these so-called ‘international’ bulletins is home-grown. My theory is (and I think I also discussed this in one of the ‘Ramblings From Rhodes’ books) that they simply don’t have the budget to garner news reports from all around the world, and so they pack their 60 minutes with extended reports about why people are heading to the beach in July and August (shock horror!). While the rest of the world is teetering on the edge of a major conflagration owing to Russia apparently having a crazed megalomaniac (allegedly) at the helm this past twenty years or so, or people in some other country are dying of famine due to extended droughts, Maybe somewhere in South America extreme weather conditions have brought about some major landslides, China’s rattling its sabres about Taiwan, and so on and so on, here in Greece people see twenty minutes and often more of their hour-long ‘international’ news report showing video loops over and over again of lots of girls’ flesh as the reporter, logo-festooned microphone in hand, strolls the water’s edge on some beach or other trying to find something original to say about the fact that it’s summer again, and it gets very hot.

If I had a Pound for every beach babe sprawled on a sunbed who’s had a TV reporter shove a microphone up her nose while the camera shoots liberal footage of her cleavage, while she opines ever-so seriously about the fact that she simply had to head for the beach when she finished work at 1.30pm, because it’s just so hot, I’d be a very rich man. News alert!! It’s July in Greece! It’s hot. OK, OK, I hear you. There’s a heatwave afflicting us at the moment. True, but, even though climate change is happening, nobody with a brain argues about that, the fact is that we do get temperatures around the 40 mark every summer here is not exactly a surprise. The world is going down the tubes, but watch Greek TV news and you get the distinct impression that what really matters is how many of the young beautiful people are heading for the beach today.

Above: Another ‘international’ TV News programme about what really matters in the world. The caption reads, in all seriousness, “The sea temperature is around 29 and rising.” Gulp.

Actually, I wonder if Giannis has a second reason why he likes to do his business on the beach?

•

Actually, since it is so hot at the moment, here are a few photos taken up on the Lasithi Plateau back in March, to help you feel a little cooler…

Click HERE to go to my Amazon Author Page. You can browse all my written works right there.