Yesterday (Sunday 21st Jan, already one month on from the shortest day), we ended up at the lovely Plaz café on the waterfront having a coffee with a friend, Maria, who lives on the edge of town. Maria’s just over 70 years old, but is extremely young at heart and refuses to give an inch to the aging process. She’s a widow of some years now and takes life by the scruff of the neck. She has two daughters who both have families, but a least typical ya-ya you will never meet. She has a sister, who’s actually a couple of years younger than Maria but always harps on about this or that health problem, and thus Maria has no patience with her. Maria’s attitude is, ‘my glass is most definitely half full, and I count my blessings every day.’ She’s our kind of person.

So, there we were, supping at our freddo espressos, and there was a rather friendly couple, both older than us, sitting at the table next to ours, and it didn’t take long for us to end up talking together, all five of us. They live in Ferma, a village a little to the east of Ierapetra, and seemed to have a similar outlook on life to us three, in that we all ended up agreeing that material things are most definitely not the way to find happiness (oh, yeah, we don’t hang about when it comes to getting to the deeper things of life when in conversation). The husband of that couple was 80-ish and told us that during the pandemic he’d tested positive for a whopping seven months and had spent four of those in hospital with Covid. While he was lying there in a hospital bed, he said he re-evaluated a lot of things, and without a shadow of a doubt concluded that good company, good food and contentment with the basics of life were much more likely to result in happiness than the endless pursuit of yet more ‘stuff.’

What did amuse us though, if ‘amuse’ is the right word, was that both Maria and the couple were soon comparing notes about who was the best eye surgeon to fix your cataracts, whether it was worth getting yet more vaccinations against Coronavirus and a variety of other medical issues, and it got us to observing something about all the Greeks whom we have come to know and love. It’s this: once you get past 65, the main topic of conversation usually becomes the prostate, diabetes, aches and pains, and a host of other ailments that usually require one to consult an ‘ologist,’ of which there is no shortage in any self-respecting Greek town. Walk down any side street in Greece and you’ll see a plethora of signs advertising that here practices an oncologist, a neurologist, a cardiologist, a dermatologist, a gynecologist and the list goes on, and on …and on. Add to that the extensive selection of ‘icians’ too and you get the impression that most Greeks are in fact hypochondriacs. It’s true I tell you!

I’ve mentioned many times in my writings that no self-respecting Greek kitchen is without a blood pressure machine and a drawer or cupboard packed to the gills with drugs, and it’s a fact. How often do Greek housewives spend a contented morning sitting around supping coffee in someone’s kitchen while all checking their blood pressure in turn, almost hoping that they’ll have a need to make an appointment before they succumb to some dreadful health issue or other? The answer is, very often.

So, even though we enjoyed the company yesterday morning, we made a mental resolve while driving home never to become like so many of our Greek contemporaries and give in to conversations that are dominated by everyone comparing their health issues, and which doctors or specialists they recommend you consult to get yourself sorted out. NO, we’re going to keep it to other stuff, like the latest band I’m maybe into, or the plans we have for a spring break, maybe swapping recipes, that kind of stuff. If you want to be an older person who still gets on with younger folk, take my tip, don’t introduce your health issues to the conversation if your company are all mainly under fifty years of age. There, that’s my lifestyle tip for the week!

Photo time then…

Above: What do you make of those vapour trails then? We spotted these above the house the other day and couldn’t work out what had made them. Any ideas?

Above: This, sadly, is an all-too-familiar sight at this time of the year. We can’t abide wastage and when you see a beautiful orange tree surrounded by neglected ‘fallers’ it’s very irritating. So many of us would love to have fresh fruit straight from the tree, so when someone leaves a lovely tree like that unharvested, it’s hard to look at, it really is.

Above: We so rarely get the chance to have a photo taken of the both of us together that we asked Maria to do the honours before we parted company. I know, you’ll say, “what about a selfie then?” Well, to be honest we neither of us like selfies all that much. Who wants to be counting the hairs in my nostrils? That’s what I want to know.

Above: This image shows the Venetian fort at the entrance to the harbour at the other end of the town beach. It’s the same as the photo at the top of this post, except that one was taken using the zoom on my neat, if slightly aging, little Canon digital camera, a gift from my brother-in-law Martin a few years ago. I’ve recently bought a couple of new rechargeable batteries for it on eBay, and now it has a new lease of life, I’m glad to say. My phone takes OK photos, but a real zoom is always better than a digital one when it comes to bringing scenery ‘closer in,’ as it were.

Below: Last but not least, I couldn’t resist yet more photos of our hibiscus in pots on our sun terrace, since they’re an absolute ‘picture’ right now…

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