Just when we thought we’d had done with all the bureaucracy, we seemed to get hit from all sides by it this past few weeks. But first, I must tell you about ‘budgie jabbing.’ I must stress that no small colourful birds are in any way hurt by this practice (although, when I come to think of it, it must be a small possibility, when you learn what actually takes place), and it took me a few moments to work out what it actually was when a contestant on a Greek TV game show recently stated that it was one of their hobbies.

It’s quite entertaining actually, to listen to Greeks talking on TV quiz shows and the like. The amount of English words and phrases that are now incorporated into everyday Greek is myriad. One that recently caught my attention was this hobby of ‘budgie jabbing.’ Let me explain.

So there was Christos Ferentinos ( I know, not a very Greek-sounding name, but then my surname doesn’t sound all that English either, does it? He’s from Ioannina by the way, and he is Greek born and bred, although maybe he has some antecedents from Italy or something. I’m from Bath, in Somerset, and goodness only know where my surname originated), Greece’s very own Bruce Forsyth (although there is absolutely no resemblance physically), since he’s currently hosting what is probably about his fifth different game show, (having started out as a presenter in the 1990’s), introducing a new player on the game ‘Still Standing,’ and the contestant says that among his hobbies is this ‘budgie jabbing.’ We looked at each other in some degree of mystification; then, as the Christos began to describe what actually goes on when someone apparently ‘jabs a budgie,’ the penny dropped. ‘Budgie jabbing’ is the way a Greek pronounces bungie jumping. Ah, right, so a great wave of relief flowed over us as it dawned on us that they weren’t actually involved in some cruel sport which entails thrusting sharp objects through the bars of a small defenceless bird’s cage. Phew.

Blimey, looking back at that last paragraph, I do believe that I may have broken my own record for sentence length. I’m a dab hand at digressing and shoving loads of explanatory comments inside brackets into my sentences, as I’m sure most of you out there in internet land will know (or indeed, if you’ve read any of my non-fiction books – see, I’ve just done it again), but that sentence beginning, “So there was…” And ending with “…among his hobbies is this ‘budgie jabbing” probably merits phoning that famous record book which is sponsored by a very tasty Irish stout.

Moving swiftly on: bureaucracy, great isn’t it? We’ve only just had to renew our UK passports, which I discussed at some length in this post, and all in all the experience wasn’t too bad at all. We have both now received them by the way, and the process was relatively painless. Then, out of the blue, I received an email from the Greek government telling me that, owing to the fact that my E-9 was late in being submitted back in 2020 when we were completing the paperwork (which took an age, see my book ‘Moving Islands’) for the purchase of our house, there was a fine of around €100 to pay. 

WHAT? I mean, WHAT??? Five years down the line from having gone through the extremely trying bureaucratic process of completing the purchase of our modest little property, the government decides that they’ll hit me with a fine for some document that they say was submitted outside of the permitted time frame for submitting said document? For starters, I had no idea what an E-9 was, or indeed is. The email was quite long and written in the kind of language that someone like me, even though fluent in conversational Greek, struggled to comprehend, owing to the long-winded jargon being employed, and so I thought the best course of action first of all would be to go see our accountant. After all, perhaps this was all a mix-up, even some kind of scam. So off we trotted to see Manoli, in the hope that he’d tell us that it was indeed all a big mistake and that we didn’t need to pay up.

No such luck. After he’d gone into my account on the government web site, Manolis swirled his huge computer screen around so that I could see all the lines and numbers on it, then, pointing to various numbers and sentences, he said, “Yes, you do need to pay it Mr. John, sorry about that. For some reason you didn’t submit your E-9 in time. If you were buying your house now then it wouldn’t be a problem, because they’ve now lengthened the time limit to a year. Back in 2020 it was only three months.” Not that this helped in any way, because I was still none the wiser as to what this mysterious E-9 actually was. We’d gone to all the offices that we’d been told to go to, visited all the people we were told to visit, signed this paper and that paper, handed over wads of readies left, right and centre, and now, here we were, five years down the line, and the government decides they want another €100+ from us. 

The only slight silver lining was that all I had to do was to pay up and the whole thing would be forgotten and never raised again (Oh yeah? We’ll see, I guess). Although it did appear to be genuinely from the government, and, using the app (myAAD) downloaded to my iPad, I could pay up very conveniently and quickly, I couldn’t help thinking that the government here must have some department somewhere whose staff are dedicated to finding new ways to get expats living here to cough up, yet again.

And that’s not all; I’ve just had to renew my Greek driving licence, which I’ll talk about in the next post, because I’ve just noticed how long this one’s getting (the post, not the driving licence) and I risk my readership losing the will to live. 

Oh, and at the end of this month I need to drop by the EFKA office to renew my health insurance, which I have to do annually. At least that doesn’t cost me anything, thank goodness. 

Guess what, this past couple of months, each time I log into my Greek bank to do some online banking, I get a warning box telling me that my details on the government website need updating and would I ‘click here’ to get it done. I click on the provided link, have to input my details in order to go into my personal account with the government here, then find that I’m unable to make any changes. Not that I want to anyway, because nothing has changed at all, but the bank/government don’t seem to think so. I’m logged into my account with the Greek government, but where it says I can edit my personal details, there’s no active link. And I go round in circles. Looks like another visit to the accountant may be on the cards, eh? I’m def going to avoid a visit to the bank itself if at all possible, because I don’t have a month to spare, or the camping equipment I’d need to take with me for such a visit.

Mind you, as we sat in the Plaz café this morning, staring out across the sea and listening to the lively chat of people around us getting on with their social lives, we still decided that, all the hassle notwithstanding, we’d rather be here than anywhere else in the world.

Time for some photos…

First of all, the video at the top of this post was taken during a walk we did on Feb 12th at 3.30pm. The shepherd (one of Maria’s boys, who live in the house below ours) was driving his flock towards the village, which happens quite often during winter time. They move them from one pasture to another, sometimes involving coming right through the village. The reason why I shot the vid was because we’re suckers for the baby lambs. Hope you liked them too.

Above: This was taken from near enough where I was standing when shooting the video of the sheep. It shows the old bridge on the original road from Ierapetra to the village. The modern road is just visible passing through the trees above. The village is only a hundred metres or so to the left of shot.

Above: The view from the indoor section of the Plaz café on the waterfront, taken yesterday (Feb 14th) at around 11.30am. We had been sitting outside, but a rain shower drove everyone indoors for a while.

Above: Three more shots of the promenade taken after we’d left the Plaz. The third one is at the Waikiki Bar, a couple of hundred metres from the Plaz. And, last of all, a couple of archive photos:

Above: This beautiful young deer was grazing just a few metres from the lane leading up to our previous home at Kiotari on Rhodes. We do miss seeing the deer, as they used to wander right past our front gate when we lived there. I only hope they’re finding enough to eat since the great fire of July 2023 devastated vast areas of vegetation and forest. This was taken from my driving seat in the car.

Above: From 23rd April 2018, when we spent three weeks on Patmos.

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