“Don’t you ever tell me you’re having a bad hair day,” I said to Yvonne as we passed this rather clever mural on a school wall in the town the other day. It hasn’t got much to do with the theme of this post, but it was such a good shot that it demanded to be taken. No, what the title refers to is the early beginnings of preparations being made for the summer season that will soon be upon us. Usually the Greek business owners whose businesses relate directly to tourism kick everything off immediately after Easter every year. The trouble is, this year Greek Easter (because they do insist on using a method of date calculation that’s at odds with most of the rest of the world) is a whopping five weeks after everyone else’s. In the UK and most of the Western World so-called Easter falls on Sunday March 31st, whereas here in Greece it’ll be Sunday May 5th.

So, in view of that fact, I’m quite sure that many businesses will at least attempt to be open before Easter this year, especially because the package tour companies will already be sending people from colder climes over here to enjoy a stronger sun than they get during spring up in the north. This past few days the weather has indeed been reminding us of what’s to come. In fact, much earlier than is usual, I’ve already strung the sail up over our sun terrace to avoid us being fried by a pretty powerful sun while drinking our morning coffee when the clouds aren’t in the way, which they haven’t been lately. Cue a couple of photos of our house and garden, taken today and during the past week or so…

Above gallery: The first photo is a view down across our modest little lounge taken from the top step of the stairs up to our ‘patari.‘ The next two are scenes from our upper garden. The modest little table and chair set up there in front of the jasmine that I’m training to grow around my mural of an urn and vine is now looking decidedly dapper since we sanded it down and gave it a new lick of paint this past few days. That table and those chairs have been with us for many a long year and are still fulfilling the purpose for which they were manufactured. See, look after your furniture and it’ll look after you. The shot of our parking area with the sea in the distance was taken at the same spot, but looking in the other direction. The shot taken through the window is taken through the mozzie net from the side window of our bedroom, and you can see that the sail is up. I’ve recently added a couple of quick steel sprung-locked links to the four corners of that sail, so it can be taken down or put up in seconds. No need any longer to tie and untie ropes and stuff. My ingenuity amazes me, although I say so myself. All right, I’ll admit it, it was Yvonne’s idea. She’d murder me when she read this if I didn’t come clean. The last shot is taken from the same spot where I photographed the furniture and jasmine, I just rotated a little, that’s all.

This next few show the early signs of preparations for the summer being made…

That second shot above shows a few poles which will be sunk into the beach for straw umbrellas (like the one in the last photo) to be attached. If you’ve ever been here at the start of the season, you’ll know that these posts usually have concrete ‘boots’ on them that are sunk into a hole that’s dug into the sand to a depth of a couple of feet usually. Once they’re set into the sand and it’s filled in around them again, they ain’t going nowhere for a few months. I know, there are those out there who’ll throw their hands up in horror and insist that they can’t stand umbrellas and sunbeds and, owning up for a second time in this post, I used to be one of their number. But it’s all a question of balance. Yes, there are beaches in areas that suffer from ‘overtourism’ where you can hardly see the sand for the umbrellas and beds, they’re that close together. I have to say, I avoid such places like the proverbial plague, like any sane person. But here, I’m glad to say, our beaches, at least those that do have umbrellas, have them few in number and well spaced, so as to afford the user a degree of privacy. As we’ve grown older, we’ve come to appreciate the need to stay in the shade as much as possible, whereas in years gone by we’d simply have plastered sun cream all over ourselves and resorted to draping a large towel over our bodies if it got too unbearable.

I don’t mind admitting that these days I seek continual shade, except for when taking a dip, and to be able to relax on a soft lounger rather than try and get comfy on a rush mat or towel on the floor is a ‘pleasure’ that I’ve been happy to leave behind me this past decade or so. Takes all sorts, I know.

Sales of the new book ‘Moving Islands‘ seem to be going well, I’m relieved to say, and there will be some readers who might be ever so slightly curious about where we live now. So in the above ‘galleries,’ as you’ll have seen, I slipped in a couple of shots of the house and garden, and here below are couple more. The first is the house itself, and the second is the view of the crag behind us at sunrise this morning. I hope you can see it, but the sun’s first rays on the rock face make it look to me like it’s glowing from within, almost as if there were molten lava inside, which, thankfully, there isn’t! The third is a scene I love to see, on the rare occasions when I’m up early enough that is, as the sun’s rays begin to shaft across the mountains to the south of us, between us and Ierapetra Town.

And, to round things off this time around, a few more photos from around the town. The first, of the corner where L’Angolo restaurant is situated (one of our faves), was taken last Saturday, when the weather was definitely more wintry than it is currently. The other two are just corners I liked the look of…

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The above photo is of a building in one of the sidestreets of Ierapetra Old Town. It’s nowhere near as pretty as some ‘old towns’ it’s true, but it’s still surprising what it turns up when you go strolling around looking for something photogenic. What I love about the artwork above is the cat on the upstairs shutters. Takes all sorts, I suppose.

It’s an overcast day today and it’s drizzling outside. It’s what we tend to call a ‘British’ kind of day. It’s still about 17ºC outside and only went down to around 13-14 last night, so we shouldn’t complain really. We’ve just come back from the town, where I had to drop by the EFKA office to renew my health insurance cover. It’s funny how sometimes things go ‘omala’ as the Greeks say, when you least expect them to. That word means ‘smoothly’ by the way. It’s a word you don’t often associate with visits to a Greek government office. Yet that’s exactly how the visit went. Each year in March I need to renew my health cover, and that entails dropping into the EFKA office, filling out a standard form (Yep, you guessed it, an A4 photocopy) and then signing it. It’s only logical, because it’s basically to prove two things, 1. I’m still alive and 2. I haven’t dropped everything and hightailed it back to the UK. The whole process took no more than fifteen minutes and the lady behind the desk is actually not only courteous, but friendly, dare I say.

I don’t like to mention it, but by and large our experience of the staff in government offices here in Greece has led us to the conclusion that the majority of them wish that the public would just go away. Their lives would be a whole lot better if they only had to shift piles of papers around, stare at their computer screens now and then, and sip their iced coffees, then go home. Oh, and nip outside the front of the building for a crafty fag now and then too. Whether it’s the KEP, the Tax Office, or the Police Station, the person that greets you usually gives you the distinct impression that you’re interrupting something and they are keen to make it clear that they don’t want you messing up their day. The lady behind the desk at the EFKA office in Ierapetra obviously missed the training session where staff are taught how to make members of the public feel small and irritating, because, even though she was rubbing the side of her neck when I approached her to wish her a ‘kalo mina‘ and ask about renewing my health cover, she smiled at me. Maybe it’s just my natural charm and charisma, what do you think? (Don’t answer that!) I began by asking her if her neck was hurting, and she replied (with a smile nevertheless) that not only was her neck aching, but most parts of her body. I wished her ‘perastika‘ and mentioned that I’d try not to add to her burden of pain with my request. Chaps, if you want any lessons, you know who to ask.

Winter weather in this part of Greece is quite varied. Yes, we get those bright, sunny, cloudless days that get all the ex-pat bloggers and Facebookers all in a lather about rushing outside and taking lots of photos to show just how great life over here is during the winter, and I am among that number, I must admit. It does rain, however, and sometimes heavily. What’s so encouraging though, is that it never rains for very long. We (as most people do here) have a solar heating panel on the roof to heat our hot water. Most of these systems also have an electric element (immersion heater) inside the ‘boiler’ (as they call the cylinder section) and that’s wired into the main fuse box in the house, on an individually switched fuse, so that it can be switched on to heat the water electrically when needed. When we had our system installed, we opted not to bother with the ‘thermosifono‘ as they call the immersion heater over here, and to rely totally on sunshine to heat our water. As a measure of just how often the sun shines, even on days when it rains, I can honestly say that in an entire winter (December thru March) you could count the number of days on which we go without hot water (and even then it’s still lukewarm) on the fingers of one hand.

When we get ‘British’ days like today, it’s OK, because at least, like I said, we can be confident that the sun will be out again tomorrow. If it isn’t, the day after it will be for sure. Here are the photos for today’s post then, starting with another couple of corners in the Old Town…

Another of my nighttime power walks around the village produced these next few. I took them at around 10.30pm last Sunday evening…

One of our favourite cafés in town is the Cup (I’ve mentioned it numerous times I guess). Not only is their Americano one of the best in town, but they also do our favourite ‘bar’ of all time. It’s produced by a wholly Greek company, called ‘My Greek Taste‘ and they’re very into healthy products. The best in our book is the Tahini Bar (see wrapper in one of the photos below) which is entirely made of healthy ingredients. There’s no sugar or salt and no preservatives. it’s mainly tahini, carob honey and oats. It’s delicious and is fast becoming a must every time we sup a coffee in the Cup.

Finally, a couple of shots in the upper garden from yesterday (Thursday 29th Feb) at 11.30am:

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Friday morning February 23rd. Went for a walk in the mountains above the village this morning, it was a simply wonderful day. Across the vast valley from us you could clearly see the snow on the peaks that surround the Lasithi Plateau, but where we were walking it was t-shirt weather. The hills were alive, not with the sound of music, but with birdsong everywhere, including warblers, blackbirds and chiffchaffs. Plus, high above, and even not so high at one point, griffons soared, their beady eyes searching hundreds of feet below for their next meal, no doubt. Their wingspan is truly awesome, and would easily outdo the width of our car’s windscreen by a considerable margin. So, here are the photos from that walk. Hope you like them:

In those last two in the gallery above, you can play ‘spot the wife‘ if you like, because she’s in each of them somewhere. You’ll probably have to click on them to open them in a new window though.

This next one (below) shows the mighty crag that is the sentinel standing above where we live. I have prescribed a faint circle near the top that you’ll see if you look closely, and that’s where a griffon vulture swooped in and landed on its nest a moment before I snapped the shot. I hadn’t taken the camera with me, so I snapped this with my phone, which was why I couldn’t attempt a better zoom shot I’m afraid. The vulture is just about discernible if you look closely enough. I don’t think it’s all that likely that any humans are going to be disturbing their nests on that cliff somehow.

Friday afternoon (late) February 23rd. The next series of shots were taken at around 4.30pm in our garden, and that of our neighbour. This time I took them with the camera, which was why I could zoom in and get some quality close-ups. Hope you like these too…

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The old saying, as I remember, is ‘a new broom sweeps clean.’ The new ‘mayor’ of the village, Manolis (forget his surname TBH) is certainly making his presence felt. Lots of overgrown trees that had overhung the narrow walkways of the village, plus some along the roadside too, have now been heavily pruned to facilitate ease of passage. Great piles of tree clippings that were at first left beside the road have now been taken away and the place looks clean and tidy, one has to admit. Although we were aware of him over the past couple of years (we first met him at his mother Poppi’s place when he came home on his tractor one day while we were having a drink with her in her patio room) we’ve only exchanged the occasional hello, nothing more really.

That all changed this week. Since he was elected he’s swept past on his motor scooter once or twice whilst we’ve been passing the time of day with Maria, our neighbour, and on those occasions we’ve exchanged polite greetings and he’s gone on his way. The day before yesterday, however, we were graced with a personal visit. We both recall that we thought him a little brusque on earlier occasions, and wondered whether he resented us foreigners moving in. Angla’i’a is his aunty, since Poppi is her sister, and yet she’s not all that enamoured with him for some reason. Of course, to have her nephew beat her in the village election and take her place as the village ‘proedros’ can’t have been easy for her, but apparently they’ve not talked much to each other for a couple of decades. Families, eh?

Anyway, we like to speak as we find, and try not to adopt viewpoints about people based purely on the opinion of another. There we were pottering around outside the house when we became aware of a motorcycle zipping up our driveway. No one ever comes up there unless we’ve invited them, as a rule. He swept up to the turning area beside our front door, flipped his stand down and dismounted. Then he came over to us and gave us both a warm handshake. Must admit, at first we were both thinking, ‘what does he want from us then?’

I felt quite ashamed to have thought that way when he told us that he just came to check in with us and explain that he was always there for us if we had any issues needing to be addressed in the village. He’s evidently been made aware of the frequency with which Yvonne cleans up the leaves and street debris on the steep lane outside our garden. He also knew that, at our own expense, we’d bought some ready-to-use pitch and filled in a couple of potholes in our little lane a while back. It seems to have made him quite positive about us, a fact that we were grateful for. 

‘Are you sure there’s nothing you’d like me to get done, or at least look into then?’ He asked, which did prompt me to ask one question. 5 km up the road is the village of Meseleri, and they have no less that three blue dumpster bins, the ones specifically for recycling, whereas our village doesn’t even have one. Why was that, I wanted to know.

“I’m already on it,” he replied, “I’ve asked the council and they say that there are no more blue bins, but they do have some on order. When we get one I’m going to have both it and the green one (for general rubbish disposal) placed in a new ‘bay’ that we’ll have built beside the road, so that they can be parked tidily and be less likely to be blown over when it’s windy.”

Can’t say fairer than that, I suppose, always assuming that it does arrive one day. He’s already put our lane on his ‘to do’ list as regards the few potholes there as well. Things are looking up. Mind you, Angla’i’a, during her years as village mayor, accomplished a lot too, and was always down the council offices getting on their case about something or other.

Talking of Angla’i’a, it was high time we dropped in for coffee anyway, since the last time was way back last year. We’re both conscious of the fact that she probably has a lot less to do now, since she’s handed over the ‘mayoral’ reins as of February 1st to her nephew. So yesterday we strolled down there at around 11.30am, and found George outside using a blunt axe to split some kindling wood for their tzaki. As always, the kitchen door was open and Angla’i’a bade us come inside for an Elliniko. Needless to say she also placed some loukoumades and a few koulourakia on the table too. You never leave their house hungry. She has, it seems, already adjusted to not being mayor any more and seems to be just as busy as ever. Both she and George had been down with Covid a couple of weeks ago, and were laid low for five days or so. Nothing worse than a cold though, she told us. Just as well we hadn’t thought about dropping by sooner though, we thought. 

Her granddaughter ‘Gogo’ is now working as a chef in the hospital in Agios Nikolaos, which explains why we hadn’t seen her around for a while. In fact, what village news there was we were soon apprised of, while we sipped her excellent coffee. Her daughter Maria (you can never have too many Marias, eh?), Gogo’s mum, popped her head in the door to greet us too. She’s warmed immeasurably towards us of late and I was particularly touched when, a couple of weeks ago, after I’d posted a couple of photos of us two on the sea front, she’d replied to my comment, using the expression, “Γειά σας χωριανάκια να’στε καλά!” Which means, ‘Hi there villagers, all the best.’ For her to have called us ‘villagers’ is a compliment indeed, as we’ve only been in the village around four and a half years and, by usual standards, could be considered outsiders, or newcomers, for another couple of decades if we weren’t being accepted. 

Our visit drawing to close, we were given a bag of freshly laid eggs, which Angla’i’a placed on the table for us to pick up, remarking with a grin on the fact that she still wouldn’t run the risk of actually handing them to us (see this post)! She also gave us a bag of fresh oranges, which she said would be excellent ‘juicers.’ I can confirm that they were indeed too.

So, that’s the ‘two visits’ dealt with, but what about this ‘crisis’ then? Well, it’s a very long story, but it appears there’s a major crunch coming to the seafront in Ierapetra, because all of the cafés and restaurants along the waterside apparently have illegal structures out the front, in which the majority of their business is done. Many of these structures are built elaborately using expensive folding glass doors, roofs and awnings, not to mention having electricity installed and some even have bars inside them too. They’ve been there for decades, but the council in its wisdom has decided that they all have to be bulldozed, which will, with no doubt whatsoever, not only wreck the sea front for a couple of years while it’s being re-developed, but also bankrupt most of the restaurants and bars that will be affected. Tomorrow there’s a huge demonstration planned since the bulldozers are apparently poised to begin the destruction any day now. I’ll say more about this in due course. But it’s all rather unsettling, and seems rather self-destructive on the part of the Dimos. We’ll see what develops.

Above: No, it’s not me. I’m afraid I don’t feel like braving the water at this time of year, but you can see that some do. We know a few regulars who swim every day through the winter months. Good for them!

Above: You see all those structures on the right, those with tables and chairs inside and out? Well, if the Dimos has its way they’ll all be bulldozed imminently.

Above: Sadly it looks nothing in the photo, but that moon, being partly obscured by a nighttime cloud, it looked wonderful at the time when we were in the town the other evening.

Above: That little beauty is standing outside Angla’i’a’s front door, and there’s a Poinsettia beside her!

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After more years than I can remember, we’ve recently been back in touch with one of my cousins, and it’s been a pleasure catching up. My mother, born in Bath, UK, was one of ten surviving children. Her mother actually gave birth to thirteen, but three were either stillborn or died shortly after birth. It was like that back in the 1920’s. Of the surviving ten, in which my mother was somewhere around the fifth or sixth to be born, only three now remain, and they are the three youngest, all of which are brothers. One, my uncle Bob, lives in Cyprus and has done so for many decades now. The next one up age-wise is the now-widowed Michael, and he still lives in Keynsham, near Bristol, but is in the early stages of dementia, which has led to one of his two daughters, Sarah, moving in to live with him, along with her husband Stephen. The other is my uncle Pete, who still lives in Bath.

An occasion that both Yvonne and I remember well was back in the late nineties, when we took a couple or three holidays on Skiathos, and – talk about coincidences – we were waiting at a bus stop at the back of the town to catch the bus down the coast to the idyllic beach (well, it still was back then) Vromolimnos when, who should be waiting at the same stop but my uncle Mike, his wife Aileen, and Helen, one of their two daughters. Even back then we only saw my mum’s siblings rarely, so it was an amazing coincidence to bump into them out there on a Greek island. Getting into conversation, we soon learned that Mike and Aileen were addicts of Greece and it was their favourite holiday destination. Sadly we weren’t able to spend a lot of time together as it was their last day before flying back to the UK. It was such a shame that we hadn’t bumped into them earlier.

Fast forward to this past few weeks, and the other daughter, Sarah has been exchanging loads of WhatsApp messages with me, during which I discovered that her mum and dad had decided that their favourite island was Crete, would you believe. She also says that hubby Stephen maintains that he even prefers the laid-back life on Crete to his experience of travelling across California when he was a younger man.

Now, when someone tells me that they love Crete, it’s no exaggeration to say that they usually then go on about Chania, Rethymnon, or those rather frenetic resorts on the north coast just east of Heraklion. OK, so there are those too who centre their Cretan experience around Agios Nikolaos and Elounda, but mostly, they’ve never heard of Ierapetra, or, if they have, they still haven’t been down this way (not a few think it begins with an ‘L’ too!). Mike and his family, however, have indeed been here, and Sarah even told me something about this area that I didn’t yet know, and it’s that there is a butterfly gorge up near Orino, a remote village that we’ve visited on a couple of occasions, because we have friends whose roots are there. Our Greek friends haven’t even mentioned it to us. Orino is an amazingly remote place. It’s not all that far from the coast road between Ierapetra and Makry Gialos, but the climb is twisty-turny in the extreme, and the road passes through some pretty spectacular scenery during the ascent. Orino is so high that the climate is totally different from that of the coastal strip only about ten km below. Anyway, suffice it to say that we now have added an excursion to our list of things to do, and that’s to investigate Butterfly Gorge before the hotter months of the summer are upon us.

Sarah told me a rather amusing, if not altogether unsurprising, experience that she and her family had while dining out with a couple of Cretans whom they’d met while staying on the island when the girls were both teenagers. She still remembers their names, which were Nikos and Stelios. The latter was actually the mayor of the village where they were staying, and it seems that they’d passed a rather boozy lunch (well, boozy as regards her dad and the two Greeks I assume, since she and Helen were as yet still in their mid-teens at the time, and mum Aileen probably abstained in the hope of keeping a mental note of how to get them all back to their accommodation). As the meal came toward its ending and the only thing left to do was to finish off the Retsina and Ouzo (probably Metaxa too I’d imagine), Mayor Stelios took quite a shine to Sarah and offered to take her off of her parents’ hands, since he was in need of a wife at the time. 

Sarah says he put a fairly serious proposal of marriage to her father, and that, owing to his rather woozy mental condition at the time, she thought he might even take the man up on it. Fortunately (or otherwise, she says the jury’s still out on that one) Michael declined and she eventually flew home with her mum and dad at the end of the holiday.

Now, you may be thinking, ‘Oh yes, we’ve all been there. They don’t mean these things to be taken seriously, they’re just mucking about.’ Well, I hear where you’re coming from but, if you have any knowledge of Greek rural and island customs from ancient times, this was often how men found their wives in local communities. The match was very often made between families, with little input from the couple themselves, and the first discussions frequently took place over a shared lunch. You may be surprised to hear that we have many friends both here and on Rhodes, who were married back in the sixties, seventies and eighties, and their marriages were made with just such an arrangement, the bride very often still being in her mid-teens. More often than not the bridegroom is quite a lot older than the bride, and he’s been around a bit, done his military service, maybe travelled the world in the merchant navy, before coming back to his home village and wanting to marry a nice fecund young filly, fact. So I’d not be at all surprised if Stelios were deadly serious. Probably thought it was worth a try in the very least. I explored this scenario in my novel ‘Eve of Deconstruction,’ by the way.

Cousin Sarah closed her WhatsApp message to me with the words, “Dad, who was nevertheless rather inebriated, found the good sense to politely decline, otherwise I may well have been a neighbour of yours.”

Photo time… No, wait, just one more little ‘aside’ first. We were supping coffee in Likoudies with my long-time ‘coffee friend’ Taki today, when the discussion came around to the farmers and their ‘tractor’ protests. You’ve probably seen that the French farmers are protesting by blocking the motorways (again) with their farm machinery, and, guess what, the Greek farmers are at it too. Takis mentioned that he’d also watched a TV news report where tomato growers threw tons of fresh tomatoes all over the road, making a mess too thick for ordinary cars to pass through. Apparently, pepper farmers took a leaf from the tomato growers’ book and did the same. Takis said, face as straight as he could keep it, “Let me know when the Banks’ employees do something similar, and I’ll be there to help with the clean-up.”

OK, now to this post’s batch of photos…

Above: Just a few ‘moody’ shots from around the village, both in daylight and after dark.

Above: A few more from walks around the hills near home.

Above: Oranges that are still not quite ready to pick. But don’t they look inviting? Plus, an aeonium in our upper garden is flowering, isn’t it grand? Finally, some shots below taken by my young friend Giannis Tzavas in Kato Horio last Sunday…

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Friday Feb 2nd, 3.30am.

Another of those nights when I don’t sleep so good, so I get up, throw on some rough old togs, and set out to do a circuit of the village. I don’t like not sleeping but, having said that, I rather like having the whole village to myself at such an hour. Usually, the only other creatures I encounter on my power-walk circuit are cats and bats. I may occasionally hear dogs barking, but never see them. Tonight, however, with a very bright waning moon bathing everything in a silvery light, I don’t have too much use for my little pocket LED torch. 

As I reach the last few minutes of the circuit, I climb the lane from the road, pass the house to my right where Dimitri lives with his mother Maria and, when I get almost directly opposite the blind lane to my left leading past Evangelia’s front door (and also, in the interests of accuracy, her lounge and bathroom doors, since the layout of her ancient village house necessitates going outside in order to pass from one room to another), I turn right up the even steeper access drive up to our house. It’s now when I need the torch, because all of our veranda lights are switched off after we retire to bed, and there’s a fairly substantial olive tree keeping the moonlight at bay at the lower end of the thirty metres or so of the drive.

As I almost reach the top of the drive, and next door’s trellis, bordering on their front patio and French Windows, is directly ahead, with a gap of around 30 inches between the panels where one day they intend to fit a so-far non-existent gate, I see two small glowing circles. It’s a creature staring at me, and its eyes are reflecting the torchlight, exactly as cat’s eyes on the road are designed to do. So I decide at first that it’s one of the neighbourhood cats, but I’m wrong. As I get closer, all the while ascending the steep drive, but now at a very slow pace in the hope of not startling the animal too much, I see that the eyes are a little too large for a cat and not the right shape anyway. I can also begin to make out a white area around the face, with a distinctive patch of black, somewhat like a pair of sunglasses, as it covers the area of the eyes and between. 

It’s a polecat, an adult, and it’s still allowing me to approach it. In my excitement I completely forget that I have my phone in my jacket pocket, and it takes pretty good nighttime shots. I get to within eight feet of the animal before it decides to turn around and face the other way, affording me a good look at its body, thus confirming my verdict that it’s an adult polecat. It turns its head back to give me one last dismissing glance, then trots off along the terrace, not hurrying at all, and is lost to my sight. ‘Flippin’ Heneroonies,’ I think to myself, ‘have we seen some wildlife lately!’ Twice I’ve encountered a badger at close quarters, and now a polecat strolls through ours and next door’s verandas. We’ve also seen hares, hedgehogs and voles, not to mention the colony of Griffon Vultures that inhabits the impressive crag that stands sentinel behind the village, frequently protecting us from the North winds and enabling us to sit outside for our morning coffee even on cold winter days, if the sun’s out.

Friday February 2nd. 10.30am

It’s the first truly beautiful day in almost a week. From Sunday 28th January through to Thursday 1st Feb, we’ve experience arguably the coldest, wettest spell of weather that we’ve seen in well over 18 years in the southern Aegean. Walking around the village, when the rains permitted it that is, there were no possibilities of chats or invitations to sit for an Elliniko simply because everyone’s doors have been tightly closed against the cold and the wet. For four or five days our daytime temperatures struggled to reach double figures, plus it’s either been raining steadily or showering unpredictably, thus making any idea of a country walk an extremely risky business too. Every flue has been belching smoke from the fires or stoves within, and the idea of keeping a window open for more than a few minutes has not been a good one.

Usually, here in this part of Greece during the winter months (and I’d include Rhodes and the southern Dodecanese in this summation) you get average temperatures in the upper teens most days. When the sun shines without interruption, you can often see the thermometer creeping over 20 by a degree or two. It’s lovely, and ideal for gardening or taking long country walks. If it rains it usually follows a three-day cycle: Day 1: clouds build up, Day 2: it rains, or showers several times and then, Day 3: the clouds clear. For four or five days this time though, it stayed very cold and the rains just kept coming. Today, true to the TV forecasts, a warm air mass has finally reached us and the weather’s returning to what we’d call ‘normal.’ We’re strapping on our hiking boots and heading for the hills that we can see from our veranda. The summit where we’re planning to sup coffee from our flasks and eat a little dark chocolate to go with it is somewhere we realise that we haven’t reached on foot for three years, yikes! From there, looking east-north east, we can see the peaks surrounding the Lasithi Plateau, and they’re all snowcapped. They remind us very much of the views we had when visiting friends in Snowmass, near Aspen Colorado a couple of decades ago. Hope you like the photos…

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6pm, Saturday January 20th:

I’ve just been outside for a last stroll around as the last light fades. It’s already a month after the shortest day and the daylight hours are lengthening noticeably, something I always find immensely exciting and encouraging. As I checked that the redstarts who spend the hours of darkness perched and sleeping on the wooden beams on the wall of the house next door were indeed in residence (see this post), I heard my first blackbird of the year. In the UK blackbirds usually begin to sing in February, and if it’s been a hard winter that’ll be later in the month. I’ve noticed it before, but here they start several weeks earlier, and I’ve just heard the first one serenading the dusk. They’ll go on singing until August, when they stop until the following year. As long as you can hear a blackbird singing, you have the best months of the year still ahead of you.

I saw another badger a couple of nights ago too. This time I saw it from our very own sun terrace at around 1.30am. As per usual, I was out prowling around the garden, looking for feline interlopers and hoping to catch the sound of an owl or watch some bats, when, as I stood at the wooden rail of the sun deck, ten feet above our steeply rising drive below, I saw some movement immediately below where I was standing. Shining my tiny torch down and expecting to see a cat, I was ecstatic to see that it was a full-grown badger ambling up our drive. It then turned right into the undergrowth of George’s little triangle of wasteland just across the lane. It’s where we keep our compost heap and my wife occasionally has a small bonfire to burn household waste that we don’t want to end up in landfill. I knew that it would be in vain, but nevertheless dashed into the house to grab my phone or the digital camera, hoping to snap a photo this time but, alas, by the time I got back out there Mr Brock was nowhere to be seen. I would so love to snap a photo of one some time, so I’ll keep on the lookout.

11.00am, 26th January. Neighbours, everybody needs good neighbours… 

There were weeds that needed extracting from the path around the gate from our lower garden into the lane leading up through the village, so this morning we knuckled down to get it done. The best way to get these kinds of weeds out from among the crazy paving of the path and the steps outside the gate is with a small penknife, a dustpan and brush and a lot of determination. The only thing you have to be careful of, is not to run the knife the wrong way along the narrow gaps in the cement and stones that make up the path, as in, along with the direction in which the knife springs shut. You have to run it against the knife’s spring mechanism, otherwise you risk seriously maiming a finger or two. It’s a golden opportunity, though, when working around the gate, to interact with a neighbour or three, even four. Our house is actually ideally positioned so that, if we so choose, we can spend an entire day without being within sight of another human being. On the other hand, should we decide that it would be nice to enjoy a little social intercourse, then working in the lane or the lower garden affords us the opportunity to do so.

Today we hit the jackpot. Maria, across from us, had recently seriously hurt her left hand, as mentioned in this post and, as we beavered away removing weeds, she emerged from her mother Evangelia’s house and came out to say hello. Her left hand, once so heavily bandaged you couldn’t even see the fingers and thumb, was now kind of strapped up with a few elasticated – well – straps. She asked how Yvonne’s shoulder was doing and we asked how she was doing and there followed that mutual exchange of injury comparisons that we humans seem to so often engage in. She says her injury involved a break in one or more of the bones in her wrist and that it could take a couple of years to heal completely. Bad news for someone who has to work in a hotel in Agios Nikolaos during the tourist season. She says that if she can’t manage to work then she may well have to see what help she can get from the government. Contrary to what many would have you believe, there is actually some money available to people with long term injuries of chronic health issues who are still of a working age.

Shortly after she went her way, Giorgos from the house behind ours scooted down the hill on his Honda 90. He’s become even more affable of late, I think maybe because he’s finally realised that we can indeed have a conversation with him. I think he felt that we didn’t speak the lingo, or at least not well enough, in times past and so kept our verbal exchanges to a minimum. Now he’s always happy to stop while passing and do something else that we all tend to do, and that’s to state the obvious. “Getting some weeds out, eh?” He enquired amiably. How do you respond to such a question, and do so without sounding unfriendly? I knew, and it came to me in a flash, so I answered, “εννοειτε,” which translates literally as ‘obviously,’ although people tend to use it where we Brits would say, ‘you bet,’ or ‘you’ve got it,’ and thus it’s not taken as offensive. 

It’s a fact about human relations that neighbours invariably talk about complete trivia for a few moments, but whilst doing so cement a closer relationship each time they do. It’s more the fact that each side of the chat there’s someone who wants to transmit the feeling that they’re happy to have the other as a nearby resident, that they accept them warmly, and thus the community spirit is further strengthened. Blimey I do sound philosophical today, don’t I?

Next to pass, trundling down the hill on his quad bike (engine off, to conserve fuel) is the diminutive Dimitri, the ever happy chappy who lives with his mum Maria below us. He it is, too, who delivers our olive oil when we have a need. The last time we needed some oil, I gave the large 5 litre plastic bottle that we use to have it transported to us to Maria, and she assured us that Dimitri would be up with it directly. Usually, if we give them the bottle, within a day Dimitri can be heard charging up our drive on his quad to deliver it. This time, though, three days went by and no oil. We began to worry. Were they maybe running low on their own supply and didn’t know quite how to explain to us that they could no longer supply us with oil? Were they embarrassed to ask us for a little more cash, owing to what’s happened with the retail price of olive oil this past year or so? We do pay them for our oil, as it’s only right to do so, but what we pay them is a trifle in comparison with what you pay in the stores these days. A couple more days passed in which we didn’t get the opportunity to tell them that, if they had a problem, not to worry, we’d not be offended if they could no longer help us. 

You’ll understand what a heel I felt when, finally cornering Dimitri on a day when it was spitting with rain, and he was gathering logs in his arms to take into the house to feed their stove, I asked him, “Is there a problem with supplying us with oil? If so, you only have to say. Or if you want to up the price, we won’t be offended.”

“No, no no!” He replied, “Everything’s fine. I’ve been unwell, I’ve spent a few days with a bad cold and I didn’t want to give it to you. I’ll be up tonight, OK?”

“Are you sure, because if you want us to give you a little more cash, we can…”

“No! Gianni! No, there’s no need to pay us more, the usual will be fine, honestly. Look, it’s no trouble whatsoever, you can always ask us for oil, and we’ll always have some for you, OK? And let’s not hear any more about paying us more for it.”

True to his word, when we got up from our siesta that very afternoon, there was a bottle filled to the very brim with home-produced extra virgin oil waiting on the bench outside our front door. I immediately charged down to their house with the cash, plus a few extra Euros anyway, since we couldn’t believe how little they usually ask us for. When Dimitri answered the door, I thrust the money at him, at which he said, “There’s no need to worry about being so quick, Gianni, we know you’re not going to leave the country!” Then, noticing how much was now in is hand, he peeled off the extra money and tried to give it back to me. This time it was my turn to insist. “No, keep it. If you like, treat it as a tip, you can have a couple of coffees on us!” He acquiesced, but only reluctantly. 

Photo time…

Above: Cormorants and gulls on the rocks near the town beach, making use of my nifty little Canon’s zoom.

Above (2): The sea front at the Waikiki bar last Tuesday, January 23rd.

Above: A couple of shots of the ‘kourabietha’ (although not enough snow to make it look the part), again with my camera’s zoom. And, finally, a few shots in the village, late afternoon Wednesday 24th…

Actually, the last one above, of the pot in the niche in the wall, is our driveway.

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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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Here is another crop of photos taken during the past week or two. Hope you like them…

Above gallery: Just a few more from our Pachi Ammos walk in December.

Above: I don’t think I’ve seen such a complete and vivid rainbow, and apparently at such close quarters, ever in my life. This was on the road out to Gra Ligia, and I just pulled over, stood on my door sill, and shot it. That’s why the roof of the car is in the below foreground!

Above gallery: In and around the vicinity of the house, just a few days ago.

Above: Part of our lounge, seen from the top of the stairs up to the ‘patari.’

Above: I took these on Sunday morning (Jan 14th), as we were leaving the village to go into town. The ‘kourabietha‘ finally has snow on it.

Above: Every night now, for the past week and more, a couple of Black Redstarts have been using the porch that wraps around the front of the house next door as their sleeping platform overnight. They’re there as soon as the sun goes down, and they take off at sunrise. While they’re sleeping I can take photos with the flash and they barely move, perhaps half-opening their eyes when the light flashes for a millisecond, that’s all.

Above gallery: Finally, from a walk we did on Monday 15th, which took us about two hours. I almost stepped on the tortoise before Yvonne alerted me to its presence. Sadly it wouldn’t poke its head out for me to take its portrait, which is why it looks ‘headless’ in these shots. In the first photo, Yvonne’s sitting on one of the stone picnic tables that Angla’i’a organised, whilst still mayor, to be installed under the pine trees at the bend in the road a few yards south of the village. There are several, and they encourage passing tourists to stop a while when driving past in their hire cars during the summer. We think they certainly enhance the area.

I’m glad to be able to report that Yvonne’s shoulder injury is much improved. She has full movement back again in her arm, although the shoulder blade still hurts, especially if you happen to touch it, or if she raises the arm for too long. I also still have to help her put a pair of socks on. The really good news, though, is that she’s back to fully functioning ‘cooking’ mode in the kitchen!! Only joking sweetie (can’t be too careful, after all, she reads this stuff!).

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