It’s a two edged sword really, this having lived in this country for over 19 years now. We’re already three months into our twentieth year here and, what I mean is, we’ve been here so long that we’ve well and truly settled into the rhythm of the seasons, and no time of the year reminds me more of this than this time, November. All around the village and, indeed our house, you hear the sounds of the olive harvest going on in earnest. All the pickup trucks on the road are laden either with empty sacks or crates, diesel generators and long poles with those plastic hair-brushy things on the end for agitating the upper branches of the trees to release the fruit, or laden with crates and sacks full-to-bursting as they make their way to the local mill.

And it is good, it is right. It is the way of life in this region stretching back for millennia. The tools may have changed a little in recent decades but, for the rest of the past stretching back into near eternity, the ‘weapons’ needed to agitate the upper branches were ten-foot-long whips cut from trees or shrubs, then stripped of their side shoots, the only criteria being that they’re bendy so that a) they won’t snap off during the work and b) they’ll do a better job of forcing the olives to separate from the branches and twigs in order to tumble into the nets that have been spread out below, but the task is essentially the same.

Even though the work could almost be described as brutal, the way it scratches your forearms, fatigues virtually every muscle in your body and probably hastens the onset of arthritis in your damp knees, it’s also a joyous time for the local people. Families turn out together, often involving not only those who live in the villages and in closer proximity to the trees, but also their relatives who’ve made a life in the town or city, where they can earn a better living, will take time out to spend a week or three out in the sticks with their relatives who still till the land and live off their home-grown vegetables, all setting to work in unison. Once each family has harvested their trees, and some of them own hundreds, the resulting oil is shared out among the family members and friends and they’ll be well stocked for, hopefully, another year.

Many of our Greek friends who are town dwellers will be absent from their homes from dawn until sundown seven days a week for as much as three or four weeks, and anything else in life that they might normally do, whether it be tending a small urban garden, tackling some small DIY project in the home, or taking the car for a service, goes onto the back burner. Not a few of those whom we might regularly take coffee with once or twice a week will not be available for such socialising until all the olives are safely gathered in, and the oil stored in vats, barrels and bottles somewhere. 

We tend to avoid participating in the olive harvest these days, mainly because we’ve done it  many times in the past and, to be totally honest, we don’t have the appetite for the strenuous exertion that it involves any more. 

That brings me back to why I say that being immersed in the rhythm of the seasons here is a two-edged sword. Yes, we’re in the ‘groove’ as it were, but it’s also a reminder that we’re nigh on two decades older than we were when we drove all the way across Europe in our trusty 15-year-old Mitsubishi L300 long-wheelbase van, full of bright-eyed optimism and anticipation as to what our future life was going to be (see the full story of the journey in my first book, “Feta Compli!”). I have to say, as a positive, that it hasn’t disappointed, oh no. Getting used to the bureaucracy was a real challenge, true, but you adjust. You take it all on board and, in the end, accept the inevitable. You’re going to spend a lot of time walking around the town carrying sheaves of A4 photocopies as you go from government office to government office. But you get it all done in the end, and a lot of other positive things well make up for that.

I was in the Post Office (ELTA) down in the town the other day, a place which, like any branch of any Greek bank, I try to avoid as much as possible since there’s the danger of a large chunk of my time on this earth being chipped away, in order to collect a couple of packages, since the ‘postie’ had left a chit in our mailbox in the village informing us that something had come. All I needed to do was to collect the packages, but as I entered the building I was not surprised at all to see that, of the three ‘stations’ behind the desk in order to service the members of the general public, only one was occupied. The woman behind the glass screen was doing what they all do, talking on her phone (it was tucked between her ear and right shoulder) whilst also staring at her computer screen. Somewhere nearby a printer burst into life and spat out a couple of A4 sheets, whereupon she slowly got up, phone still in place, and sauntered over to collect the printouts, before returning to her chair to proffer them to the elderly couple who were standing at the desk, their fingers resting on yet more pieces of paper that they’d evidently needed to have with them in order to complete whatever transaction it was that they’d come there for.

I was about third in the queue, and there was no sign of anyone else taking up their position behind any of the other two desks, when a bloke entered the building with his wife. They were two behind me, and so knew that they were facing probably half an hour’s wait before finally getting to the desk that was occupied by the woman who was actually serving people. The same scenario began to play out that I’ve seen so many times before. This chap was probably around sixty, and evidently not a particularly patient man. Before a couple of minutes had passed, his dissatisfaction at seeing only one of three serving positions occupied boiled over into a shouting fit.

“Dropi!! Dropi Ellada!!” He said, at a volume loud enough to be heard by pedestrians passing the door outside on the street. It means basically, ‘shame on Greece!’ He went on to postulate (loudly) that this was the reason why Greece was in such a mess financially; it seemed to him that if all the post offices in the land had enough staff to serve the patient public, then all the country’s woes would be behind us. His wife made a few vain attempts to mention that the poor woman behind the desk wasn’t to blame, but he carried on regardless. At least it entertained us all while we waited I suppose. Before I knew it I’d made it to the desk to present my little form in order to collect my parcels before I needed another shave. So at least I could thank this bloke for that.

I didn’t like to mention that Greece’s financial position is much improved this past few years anyway, why rob him of his moment of glory?

So, here we are then, already progressing through our twentieth year as residents of Greece and none the worst for it. Apart from being almost twenty years older that is. Every silver lining has a cloud, I suppose.

In the gallery above: Yvonne and I are increasingly using our ‘Xenona‘ as a reading room. The light’s lovely in there during the morning hours. The veranda and sun deck display our new ‘winter arrangement.’ The new bed I’ve built now has been planted up, and we’re hoping to harvest some juicy strawberries as a result. The chairs and table beside the front door are yet another seating area we can use, in this case especially when the cold wind blows during the winter months, or if it’s raining. When we used to live on Rhodes we seemed to be forever adding to the areas where we had seating in the garden and we’ve still not broken the habit! The tree with the ripening oranges is a common sight at this time of the year, and I have to say it’s joyous to see them. The one of Yvonne leaning over a wall was taken during a late afternoon walk up the road towards Meseleri a few days ago.

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