Where to start with this one, that’s the dilemma. Badgers, broken arms or brazen pussy cats, that’s the problem. It’s been, by the way, the warmest December in Greece for 15 years, according to the meteorologists on Greek TV. As a rule we need a little heating in the house during the evenings from about the end of the first week in December each winter. We very seldom if ever need to have heating on during the daylight hours, since the sun warms the house sufficiently through the windows, but once the sun sets and darkness comes upon us, we usually resort to using a little heating every night, but this year, so far we’ve found ourselves going to bed at the end of an evening four or five times each week while remarking how we’d not needed to heat the house at all in order to be comfy on the sofa.

It’ll all change at the end of next week though, if the weather forecasters are to be believed. Finally a cold air mass is due to sweep down though the Balkans and way out into the Libyan Sea south of us on or around the 9th of the month. If it happens as they predict, then we’ll definitely be cranking up the heating during the evenings. On the local radio station (Radio Lasithi) this morning, the presenter was interviewing a fella who represented the farmers and veg growers of the district and I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing. This is 2024, right? It’s not 1624 or anything like that? Thought so, well, this chap, nice bloke though he sounded to be, was asserting that the rainfall had been woefully inadequate this winter so far and, when the interviewer asked if he was worried about the crops this year and next season’s olive harvest, he replied, “No, well, I’m sure that God will make it rain, once we’ve thrown the crucifixes this weekend. He’ll respond and send us the rain.” 

Honest, I’m not kidding you, and he was deadly serious, and I’ve abbreviated that part of their conversation to the pithy bits, to be honest. Most Hellenophiles will know that the 6th of January is when the Orthodox Church celebrates the so-called ‘Epiphany,’ and a priest throws a crucifix into the sea, leading a bunch of local men to jump into the water to retrieve it. The chap who grabs the cross on the sea bottom and brings it back to the priests gets a special blessing for his trouble. The whole thing has precious little to do with what the gospels say, to be honest, but then what religion in this world ever worried about that problem then? Now, I wouldn’t dream of interrupting them as they go about this annual ritual, but in this scientific age, is it really ‘normal’ for a grown man to believe that this will persuade the Creator to send some rain? Mightn’t the meteorological conditions, the movement of the air masses and the fact of global warming have something to do with the situation, just a tad? Maybe I’m just an old cynic. Answers on a postcard…

Above: The rains may not have been enough so far, but they’ve still produced this wonderful green carpet in the olive groves. Here I’ve photographed them just before sunset.

Now, the heading on this posts includes the expression, ‘On your Marx,’ and I’m sure you’re burning up with curiosity about what that might mean. Oh, go on, indulge me and pretend you are. There are a few small kittens in the neighbourhood at the moment that bear a striking resemblance to our very own Mavkos, who’s a black and white Tom. I say, ‘our very own,’ but he’s still essentially a part-domesticated feral cat really. He never comes into the house and often disappears for days on end. In fact, over the holiday period he’s been missing for a record two and a half weeks. We’re quite convinced that there’s another house in the village where the owners are only in residence now and again. The cat very often does a vanishing act on weekends, which tends to suggest that they’re usually in the village then and that they’ve tempted him away with some puddytat treats that he finds irresistible. To be honest, we don’t mind, as long as he’s happy. It makes us less inclined to worry about him when we go away, which we shall be doing come April/May time without a doubt, around the time of our wedding anniversary. 

It makes sense to us that those other Mavkos-friendly people must have spent a couple of weeks in their house in the village over the Christmas and New year period, which is why he’s made himself scarce around our house. Maybe they give him things to eat that we’d consider bad for him. After all, cats are like kids, they’ll always eat stuff that’s not particularly good for them if it’s offered, whereas we never give him scraps, always good wholesome nutritious cat food. Anyway, one of these probable ‘sons of Mavkos’ had earned the name ‘Groucho’ from us. Look at the photo and see if you can see why…

The ‘get set’ part of this post’s heading refers to the fact that I’ve been very excited lately, because during one of my dead-of-night walks outside, when I haven’t been sleeping, a few nights ago I spotted a badger at very close quarters. During the more than fifty years that I lived in the UK before moving to Greece, I never once got to see a badger in the flesh. The house next door to ours here in the village, and the next one, are the last ones beside ours before the land drops below their terraces to an orchard, and then olive groves. The houses are both empty most of the time and so, during the night I can patrol their verandas while taking some exercise that’ll hopefully help me return to bed to get some sleep. I was standing on the veranda of the last house, just a few metres along from our own, at something like 3.00am, when I noticed in the moonlight some movement below. Not more than ten metres from where I stood. Shining my pocket torch in the direction of the movement, there, to my complete amazement, was an adult badger, slowly stalking its way among the olive trees without a care in the world. It didn’t seem at all fazed by the modest beam from my torch (flashlight, folks), and I watched it for a couple of minutes as it walked off around a tree and up the slope and into the nighttime gloom.

Needless, to say, every night since then I’ve gone out there when I’ve been awake in the small hours and tried to see another one, or even the same one, hoping that it’s a creature of habit, but no luck so far. I say, ‘no luck,’ but that’s not exactly wholly the case. At another time while I stood there sweeping the olive grove below with my torch beam, I heard a sound coming from probably 30 metres away and up a slight incline. It sounded to me like one of those squeaky rubber toys that people buy for their dog to play with. You, know, the type that squeak when the dog squeezes it between its teeth. I had no idea what it could be and, after some consideration, ruled out it being a bird, so I rushed back to the house to open YouTube, where I typed into the search box ‘sound of badger cubs,’ or something like that. Guess what, I turned up a brief video of a few badger cubs play-fighting and the sound was not just similar to what I’d heard, it was exactly what I‘d heard. That means, if I’m not mistaken, that somewhere in the olive grove not more than fifty metres from our house, there’s a badger set. I’ll carry on my patrols in the hope that I’ll get another sighting, but even if I don’t I’m still thrilled.

And so to the ‘sling it’ reference. A couple of weeks ago Yvonne slipped on the steps down from our upper garden and fell on her back against the lower platform and the bottom two steps. She let out such a howl that I knew that she’d done something bad to her back. I ran outside to see her trying to get up off the floor, her bucket of weeds and a couple of gardening tools strewn all over the place. If it had simply been a rough fall, she’d have recovered fairly quickly, but after a quarter of an hour or so she was still wailing in agony and so I said, ‘Get in the car, you’re going to the hospital.’

It’s a good job we did that, because (and what a blessing it is that Ierapetra’s hospital is only ten minutes away) once we got her in there and a couple of medics and a doctor examined her, they took a couple of x-rays and told her that she’d fractured her shoulder blade. She was also coming out in a couple of nasty bruises on the lower back and the doctor, when he’d finished with her, put her arm in a sling for a couple of weeks and told her to not use the right hand. When she asked him, “How am I going to do the cooking?” He replied, “Your husband will have to do it, won’t he.” As we were leaving the hospital, Yvonne said that she got the distinct impression that the doctor didn’t quite believe her explanation about how she got the injury that she did. He seemed to struggle to believe that she’d have fallen on her back, preferring to suggest that she’d have fallen on her front if she’d slipped, as she’d explained, on the outdoor steps. No wonder he stared sideways at me as I helped her on with her zip-up top before we left the accident and emergency department. I resolved to have a photo of the steps in question ready on my phone to show him when we return to see how the injury has healed. 

Above: The offending steps.

Two days ago, as we walked on to the sea front to find a table for a morning coffee, none other than Mihalis and his wife Soula (Mihalis features heavily in the new book ‘Moving Islands’) were already there and bade us join them. Yvonne sat down next to Soula, who preceded to tell her that they’d just come from the hospital because she’d done something to her shoulder and had to go for an x-ray too. If it wasn’t for the fact that it was the other arm, the injury would have been near identical. Talk about coincidence. But there’s more.

Maria, she who lives across the lane from us and upstairs from her mother Evangelia, came out of her front door with her wrist bandaged up as we sat on our terrace the day before yesterday. I went over to ask what had happened and she told me that she’d gone to slam her car door and inadvertently slammed it against her outstretched fingers on the other hand. Needless to say we offered to help if she needed anything, knowing sadly that the likelihood was very slim. The next day, I saw her again and this time her left hand was completely bandaged up, so much so that the fingers and thumbs were completely encased and you couldn’t even see them. She also had her arm in a sling. Three women within the space of one week with their arms in slings. The Accident and Emergency section at the local hospital must be thinking that there’s a violent bloke on the loose.

I just hope they don’t put two and two together, make six and come after me! 

And so to a few recent shots that I hope you’ll like…

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