DESKTOP JOURNAL

I didn’t like to complain or anything, but typing on the Laptop presented more than a few problems. Whether the touch control was too light or we pressed a button for a strange setting or something I do not know but every time I went to shift for punctuation or capital letters the cursor would jump up two lines and continue typing the next piece of print in the middle of the previous paragraph. The best way to avoid it was to type with two fingers and it drove us completely wild but things are on the up. We have unpacked our old desk top and – aged as it is – it is so much easier to use so I can touch type again. If some of these blogs seem a bit longwinded, it is because with no phone line, and being a bit off the beaten track, the blog which I can post once or twice per week is the best way I have of keeping in touch with the far flung members of the family.

The weekend was full as we fetched 4 or 5 boxes at a time to unpack and uncovered a few more necessities and hundredfold things that we do not really need at all! However, we have found a lady not too far away who sells second hand furniture and will visit her to see if we can find ourselves a desk, some more shelves or cupboards and – we may have to make the best use we can of that enormous wooden chest after all. The upstairs “Art Studio” has evolved into an office too because we only have one usable table (used formerly when we went camping) and this will have to act as a working surface and desk for the time being.

 On Sunday, some friends of ours from England with a flat in Panormo were arriving in Crete so while Kimon was meeting them and their two friends from Heraklion Airport, I braved the CIC Coach Excursion. These run once per month and I was trying to decide whether they were really my sort of thing or not! I guess I will know a bit more as time goes by.

The changes in the clocks on Sunday caused a few muddles with coach times and flight schedules! Only a bit behind, we set off for the first stop on the trip via Spili which is one of my favourite places to visit – a tiny town very high up lodged between two mountains where wonderful fresh water tumbles down and can be collected at the 25 lion head fountains in the centre of town. The first stop was a lovely monastery where nuns live in a fairly open community and there is an orphanage attached. A wonderful atmosphere permeates the grounds and inner courtyard of the place, which in spite of ancient origins, had been recently rebuilt in a lovely way. We were shocked to learn that an ancient icon on which the monastery had been founded had recently been stolen from the chapel.

We peeped into the textile workshop and saw some finespun fabrics, which could be made into church vestments, table linen and had been beautifully woven with very intricate designs. After this we set off for the Southern Coast of Crete at Agios Galini. A sweet little resort built up the side of the mountain dropping steeply into the sea. The coach took us via Tympaki to Voro a pretty village where we visited a potter in his workshop and then the Museum of Cretan Ethnology – which was right up my street with examples of all kinds of textiles, tools, weaving and household equipment going back several centuries. I was having a good look at the log baskets and other household items thinking how useful they would be in our house! However it was a bit dark and stuffy in there, so we were glad to get outside into the sunshine again.

After a very convivial meal at Taverna oi Belyoi (Taverna of the Belgians), we piled aboard again and went to another beach called Matala where hippies used to live in the 1970s. Right up in the cliffs you could see sand caves and there was an interesting wood carving at the entrance to the town but otherwise, most of us agreed that it was a long way to come for a very unattractive beach! However, it was good for me to get the measure of how long it takes to get from North to South (not too long) and from South to North on the way home (absolutely ages!)

Not much to report other than no telephone line or bamboozle person. I bought the most inexpensive Greek mobile phone today after getting a Greek SIM card to slot into my old UK Nokia phone on Saturday– only to find that it would not work over here. So, today and K and I have spent nearly all day with a dictionary and phrase book trying to work out what all the menus and options mean! Honestly with Spanish or French or Italian you would be able to take an educated guess, but with the Greek alphabet (which we both read out in the street but these options were too techie-specific) it was too hard. We really do need Greek lessons! It took several hours to puzzle out how to change the working language from Greek to English and some of our translations had hilarious results but we got there in the end. I will put our Greek numbers in an Email shortly.

Warm here today, Monday at 21 C but it is still cold at night when the sun has gone down. We have seen many more swallows – so summer must be on its way.

CRASH HELMETS FOR MOTHERS’ DAY

Last Friday (a week ago) we were sitting at a place known by all our friends as “the Blue Chairs” in the old town of Rethymno when K’s Greek mobile … kineto … rang. We were told that we had a delivery of flowers from America but they could not be delivered because we were out. I realised that the address I had given people as being the “reliable” address was Anna’s in Rethymno town centre. The village post tends to be left at one taverna or another waiting for attention and it is an ideal recipe for getting your electricity cut off unless you visit both tavernas regularly! However, the nice lady on the phone told the proprietor of the café (because K could not hear very well) where the flower shop was and would we please go and pick them up. Rather puzzled to hear that it was Mother’s Day and fearing that I had neglected my own poor Mum in the UK, I rushed to check the calendar and was very relieved to see that UK Mothering Sunday was not until the first week in April. I guessed that Mother’s Day must be different in America or Australia and that Kate was on Auzzie time. All sorts of hilarious exchanges on Facebook by one or more guilty parties made us all check our diaries a few times to be sure not to forget - but it was actually Greek Mother’s Day – so Kate had been spot on.

Anyway, I digress from the story of the flowers. An hour later we went to the flower shop – near a BP station – opposite a baker’s shop on the way out of Rethymnon – way along the paralia – etc. We drove to the place appointed which meant negotiating a really horrible road junction with a lot of the road being dug up and at the height of the rush hour and stopped at a plant/garden centre and a rather posher Interflora flower shop but nobody knew anything about the flowers. K walked back down the road for half a mile or so to see if there was another shop while I sat in the car outside the baker’s shop for quite a long time.

There were cars, lorries and motor bikes whizzing in every conceivable direction at breakneck pace and while I was waiting, there were two crashes on the junction. I was so relieved to see K in one piece but he returned empty handed 30 minutes or so later and we decided that we needed to get out of that horrid place. After one or two telephone calls to the nice lady in the flower shop, we scoured Rethymnon on the following Tuesday after Art School still with no success.

Eventually, I braved the Greek Yellow Pages and tried to match up Loulouthia (flowers) in the Greek Alphabet with the telephone number on K’s kineto. Kimon rather poo-pooed my efforts (poo means “where” in Greek!) but eventually I actually found it and noted down the address but we were none the wiser. Today – the following Thursday, we went back to the nasty junction and spoke to the lady in THAT Interflora shop who directed us back into Rethymnon to a road we have never visited before opposite a different bakers shop and BP station. Hooray, we finally picked up our plant and carried it back to the car.

On our return we arranged our lovely new plant and, inspired by “House Beautiful” went to pick up half a dozen boxes from storage at the mill and started the unpacking process. As we had been wrapping and packing since 6 Jan and so much has happened since then, it was a bit like being reunited with old friends and/or Christmas with lots lovely home comforts and packaging to dispose of. It was good to stumble across staplers, gardening gloves and tins of sardines but we have 40 more boxes and several suitcases still to go. We will take time over the unpacking – largely because we have a few walls to paint after a very wet winter and we will need time to get sorted. However, my Art Studio (if that doesn’t sound too presumptuous) is coming on in leaps and bounds.

Just as we had found places for everything and I was filing away some instruction books in the new filing box under the kitchen work surface, I stood up and gave myself a second enormous clonk on the head from the corner of the kitchen cupboard.   In the cursing and swearing that followed K (in Greek mode) said that I should get used to the sharp corners and back away from the cupboards because he had knocked his head on them three times now and this is how you learn. My response to all was is not printable!  K advises wearing a bubble wrap hat for working in the kitchen.

After a brief domestic interlude, I moved the filing box and put bubble wrap on all the sharp corners. Yes K is right – it does look naff but it’s either that or crash helmets!  You would think all these blows to the head would knock some sense into us but it is time to end. Any inspired improvements to our kitchen or head attire will, of course, be featured in the new Innovations Catalogue as Crozier Originals, Patent Pending. ©

CAMEL TRAIN AND NOMADS … Wed 23 March 2011

What a busy day today as we prepared for the arrival of the lorry from Nomad with our furniture inside. I started the day off by filling the kettle with Raki and boiling it up to make tea. Alerted by the peculiar smell coming from my tea cup and observing that the milk was curdling as I watched, I realised that the water bottle which I thought was full of water …… you guessed it! The mark II version of Tetley’s best, tasted and smelled much better and we set to work on all the household chores. First, we had to clear out the shed which was completely blocked by a huge wooden chest that Kimon had been restoring and stripping of paint on previous trips. Once the thing was out of the shed I could see how enormous it was and wondered what we would do with it once it was restored as it came up to my chest and took up about half of the front garden. Once the shed was clear, we realised that we had much more wood and kindling hidden in there than we knew about and I set about stacking and sorting it. I gave myself a resounding bang on the head by the corner of a shelf in there and was swearing horribly about sharp corners and other miscellaneous hazards.

After all the marble floors were swept mopped, the telephone rang and we learned that the lorry had arrived and was parked in the village square. We went to meet Mark and Tracey who had come to deliver our furniture. When Mark said that his wife Tracey was with him, initially, my heart sank a bit because I thought that we would need some big strong lads to carry the furniture along the lane or up the stairs. Tracey destroyed all my misconceptions by carting furniture up the road single-handed and carrying full chests of drawers, arm chairs and so on wherever in the house they had to go. She and Mark did an incredible job and we settled all the furniture in the house and stored all the boxes in the Mill to be sorted little by little. It was great to have a look round the Mill now that it had been finished because Rik, our friendly builder had finished it off to a very high spec. – well out of our price bracket. We noticed that a swallow had made a nest in the top of the mill gear machinery which Rik had kept, refurbished and set in the inner courtyard outside the guest suite.

We were so grateful to Mark and Tracey that we took them down to Kostas and Angeliki’s traditional taverna and had a couple of beers to quench everyone’s thirst. We told them that Kostas did hair cuts on the premises as well, but they did not quite believe us until an elderly gentleman came for his short back and sides. Kimon and his mates think it is so great to sit down at Kostas’ for a beer, a dish of olives and nibbles and have a really splendid hair cut while they are there. One of K’s friends dines out on the story and a whole cavalcade of them turn up when they are in Crete, just for the novel experience of it!

Tracey and Mark have lived in Crete for five years and their children settled into the Greek school system very well indeed. We had a good chat about life here and found out that Tracey’s parents and sister have moved out here too. There seem to be a great many Brits who have settled in Crete and we hope that the indigenous population do not mind too much. They both say that they cannot imagine ever leaving Crete and love the life and the people here. We want to write to Nomad to thank them because the whole operation was very slick but we need to find the legs off the arm chairs and the sewing machine before we get over fulsome!!

After they left with a water bottle full of Kostas’ wonderful wine and a shopping bag of potatoes, I spent the rest of the afternoon unpacking one or two baskets and boxes … Yay, I have woolly jumpers, a dressing gown, bath mats, comfy chairs, cushions ….

… I even have the beginnings of an art studio although we haven’t found the boxes of art materials or canvases yet … and I think it will be a while before we have sorted out all our books and boxes before I can make a start. And I now have a desk top computer and printer (when I have unpacked them) so that Kimon can read the blogs before they get posted). It will be a while before we get on line, though. Fortunately the man installing the bamboo canopy (known to us as Mr Bamboozle) did not turn up today -–so we have that pleasure still to come and no fisticuffs outside the front door had everyone had turned up together.

At the moment we have collapsed on our very English three piece suite with soft cushions after the best supper of baked potatoes and chicken salad ever. On Saturday, we had visions of opening our own Cretan version of Spud-u-like (pronounced spood-oo-li-kay a la Victoria Wood) but that is another story. Sufficient to say that we have been giving away shopping bags of potatoes all week and we now have a reasonable number left to supply our small house for several weeks.

ONE SWALLOW DOES NOT A SUMMER MAKE …..

After a wonderful Saturday morning and a lovely picnic, Sunday and Monday ended up being very wet, cold and we were back to struggling to get the log burner going again. It did not help that our wood pile had now got completely wet and that we had not had a chance to sort out a good dry covered place to store wood. However, we have a while to think about where to store it so that we have a good stock for any future cold spells and K’s friend Nicko was happy for him to some dry logs from his pile stacked in an empty house down the street.

The good thing is that on Sunday morning, first thing before the rain clouds came our way, we were up on the roof terrace celebrating the sight of the first swallow which we greeted like sailors sighting a pod of dolphins. So, providing the rest of the swift and swallow family make it from Africa, they should be swooping overhead in no time catching all the flying insects and midges.

The past two days have been spent profitably at home trying to do jobs that would otherwise get overlooked together with my 45 minutes per day “Teach Yourself Greek” regime via a CD until we can get language classes sorted out. I have the verbs’ to be’ and ‘to have’ pinned up in the kitchen and keep revising them every today with vocabulary. I have also just finished reading “The Golden Step” by Christopher Somerville, which ought to be compulsory reading for anyone who wants to visit Crete and is interested in the geography of the mountain countryside and the history – ancient and more modern – of Crete. I can thoroughly recommend it.

We now have a telephone line and internet service on order but we have no idea how long it will take for the service to become operational. Our lorry will deliver our furniture and boxes on Wednesday this week and we are short of warm jumpers and dry socks enough to look forward to this now because when the weather is fine, it is so easy to get a line full of washing dry in no time at all, but with this soggy weather we are biding our time! It has been the wettest winter for years.

This is the complicated still life we worked on last week.  As from Tuesday, we will have quite a busy week with Art School on Tuesday, removals on Wednesday, and an airport run for Kimon at the end of the week while I am booked on a CIC Excursion. These are organised by the Cretan International Community and happen once per month but as yet, I am not quite sure where I am going- other than that there was no room for me in the car back from the airport- so I thought that I should take a chance and go out for the day. Let’s hope that the weather improves!

I heard at Art Class that the weather in England is lovely at the moment!! How typical - still wet and soggy here but the life and colour at Art School was great and I had a wonderful morning working on abstract themes from last weeks studies.  I will try to photograph all the works of art next time. 

PAINTING AND PICNICS

There was not a cloud in the sky when we got up this Saturday morning and the weather was much too good to waste. If we had been the UK, the roads would have been full of traffic making for the coast and we were full of enthusiasm – knowing that the coast here is only 5 minutes away. Having packed the picnic bag, fishing rods and paint box we set off for Panormo to see whether the fish were biting. This would be an antidote to Friday when we went all the way to Rethymnon with all the documentation to get our telephone line only to find out that the office was locked shut because OTE were on strike! Fortunately, we were able to do the business at another telephone shop where the staff were much more helpful. It may take 15 days or, if Easter gets in the way, quite a bit longer! Driving back from Rethymnon during the rush hour on Friday night was total bedlam.

The beach and village were absolutely deserted. 70 F is apparently not warm enough to tempt the locals down to the seaside and it is still too early for tourists but we had the loveliest of mornings. Granted we caught no fish – there was not one to be seen, but Kimon had his fishing rod in the water and watched a couple of boats being lowered into the harbour after the winter and after taking about an hour to tie one up, after 10 minutes or so –it’s owner took off around the harbour wall into the open sea. Observing all this, K was in seventh heaven and unwinding nicely.

Meanwhile I had a folding chair half-way along the quay facing back to the village church and so enjoying some quiet time, set about doing a watercolour. The light was just right with full sun light coming from one side and the octagonal dome showing all the gradients of light to perfection. The end result was far from perfect, but I happily spent an hour or two daubing away until it was lunch time.

All this time we had only seen two or three people and it was such a perfect day, I wondered what everyone else was doing on this beautiful morning. Kimon said that we must have looked like a very eccentric couple but we had the peaceful time we needed with the village and beaches almost to ourselves. It was also a frugal day with no expenditure after our recent outlay on a number of necessities for the house, all of which attracted an added 23% tax and this change has taken the Greeks by surprise. The locals in the village swap their eggs, produce and cheese to avoid all this. If you are a vegetarian, you will always have plenty to eat in Crete as fruit and veggies grow in abundance everywhere.

I think we are in a bit of a bubble - this is probably because we have not been following the news and can only catch a fraction of what is happening in the rest of the world. It seems pretty serious from Libya (- not so far away from Crete) and from Japan. I imagine the Greek population is taking everything much more seriously because they can understand all the reports on the TV news. We are doing our best to translate all the breaking news pictures but everything has been very quiet here and watching TV is about as bad as back home with Wall-to-Wall House Do-Up programmes and Swearing Chefs in Restaurant Kitchens. Who watches this stuff?

Life will be less peaceful next week. We have heard that the lorry carrying our goods and chattels has arrived in Crete and will deliver all our stuff. This is a bit of a mixed blessing because we have no idea where we are going to put everything but we have some temporary storage at the Mill. The Olive Mill is a large stone house that our friendly builder has been restoring in the village and we will be able to sort out boxes little by little after the furniture is in place. We also realise that we need to do a bit of painting in the next couple of days in preparation – so this will keep us busy.

[Ha ha – house do up missives – who reads this stuff???!!!  This is the mill, not our house!]

Kimon has been dealing with all the telephone calls but I have a horrible feeling that the men coming to fix the bamboo canopy over the front porch will be here on the same day as the removal men delivering our furniture. This could be interesting/chaotic/manic – if I am right! I foresee lots of shouting, vehicle manoeuvring, gesticulation and worse, come next week. Nearly as entertaining as Swearing Chefs on TV!

RECIPE FOR MAGIC MAN FLU’E POWDER

K has gone down with man flu’ and a nosebleed last night was a bit of a sign that his blood pressure is high and that he has been overdoing the driving, stressing, interpreting, spending lots of money and confronting bureaucrats. Getting chilled in Venice without a proper coat did not help any either. 

Bearing this in mind, we decided to spend a lazy day at home to unwind today and so, this could turn out to be a bit of a boring blog. In addition, the sky was overcast all day, although the temperature was very warm, spits and spots of rain have had us nipping in and out of doors to catch the warmth but to avoid getting books and washing more damp than necessary. However, we can report that the solar water heater does provide lovely hot water even when it is not that sunny which is one of those recommendations that you hear in the advertisements in the UK about solar heating, but never quite believe.

In the course of domestic pottering this morning. I made some discoveries and did an inventory of the learning curve of the last 10 days living the good life.

Taking pity on K who was up a ladder painting the frame for the bamboo canopy and not exactly suffering in silence, I reckoned that it was my turn to clean out the log burning stove this morning. This meant raking all the ash into the bottom ash tray and sorting out the larger lumps of charcoal which did not slip through the grate easily. It was a bit of a Harry Potter moment when with my head inside the stove, I could hear a long distance sound of the village activities picked up outside by the tee shaped chimney pot on the roof - then down the stove pipe, boosted by the acoustics of the large iron stove. It was a bit like a huge telephone. K and I listened for a minute or two and thought that we should have had some ‘magic flue powder’ in our pockets to be transported elsewhere.

We have also discovered in our first two weeks of being “retired” and spending more time together than we ever have before that it will take a bit of time to work out what our new roles are. We keep duplicating each others’ efforts by trying to start things which the other has just done and wondering where things are that we are searching for in cupboards, when they have just been removed and are being used for the job you were just planning to do. At the moment this is quite funny, but I have memories of my in laws having “His” and “Hers” tool kits because they were never able to share things like hammers, pliers and screwdrivers! (K is welcome to these, but lay off my knitting bag and sewing machine, OK?)

Words I have learned so far:

aftoh – this or that

loulouthia – flowers

katalaveno – understand

poli crio – very cold

zesty – hot

paboutsia – shoes, pantoflez – slippers, caltzes – socks (the travelling shoe shop came round yesterday in a truck with loud speaker)

xartopatchetta – paper tissues (needed for man flu)

(My score at Scrabble 321 – K 181 – he is not happy)

We made a little trip out in the car at lunchtime to Perama which gave me the opportunity to drive on the right when the road was quiet without incident. Later on this evening, our neighbour Costas (there are 3 people named Adonis and 2 named Costas in the village which is really confusing) but this is the Costas married to Angeliki. He looked at the lemon tree we bought yesterday and said that we needed to cut it almost down to the bottom. We wondered about this but to prove a point he gave Kimon a bag of oranges, lemons and clementines picked straight from their trees. I can’t begin to describe their flavour – just marvellous. Kimon said that he would let Costas have one or two of his lemons in a year or two from our tree, which made everyone laugh. Not sure why …?

Anyway, I have made Mamma’s anti-biotic chicken broth with lots of lemon and garlic on the stove top and lovely fresh fruit salad with loads of Vit C but K is still suffering loudly and in need of TLC. Kalinichta ! x

COLOUR AND PERSPECTIVE – 16 March 2011

We had our first grapple with Cretan bureaucracy today and yesterday as we walked along to OTE to try and sort out a telephone line. We had heard that this was not as straightforward as we might think and were prepared for some insistence on our part. We had our passports, photocopies of our passports, tax number and money, a utility bill – so what more could they ask of us? More apparently! We need to know the full name and address and telephone number of another resident in the village who has an OTE telephone line because they would not be able to trace it unless they had this. They apparently did not have directories, listings or records of these things themselves and we would have to pay them a lot of money to do all the leg work ourselves. Hhhhmmm! Kimon expected this but I was annoyed. Today I had to go to another grey marble building with flags outside to get my tax number. There was a whole roomful of people queuing and of course just as we thought that we would have our turn a young man pushed in front of us because he believed that he was the most important person on earth! Actually all we needed was a form. I had my passport and a photocopy of my passport but in the end someone in the queue gave us a piece of paper and we couldn’t be bothered to waste any more time and decided to get some help to make sure that we could translate the questions in Greek properly. No doubt when we return, they will require information about my maternal great-grandmother’s shoe size and a copy of Kimon’s junior school 100 yard swimming certificate but we will get there in the end.

Yesterday was fun. We drove past a garden centre on the way to Art School and organised to get a bamboo canopy made and fitted for the area over the front porch area. It is a bit pricey, but it will be made to last and we found some plants and pots at the same time. Demitri, the garden centre owner saw us coming and thought that his Christmas and Birthday had all come at once. He asked us to let all our English friends know about his business … I am trying not to wonder too hard why he was so keen on we Eenglish!!

As for Art School, the subject matter was a bit demanding. We were shown some paintings by Matisse and noted his use of colour and involvement with the patterns and designs within his subjects. We then had a complicated line of objects to try to pin down through a large stamp sized view finder and were asked to do two small pictures – one in portrait and one in landscape before tackling a larger piece. The trouble was that it was all a riot of colour and we had to use black and white – either carbon pencil or charcoal which was a bit frustrating. I was out of practice and not pleased with my final effort, but there were some lovely drawings from the group. (Note to self: must do some practice)

We had been invited to Zoe’s house in the evening – although it belonged to a charming couple called Peter and Janet now – and they had transformed it since we had last seen the house 5 or 6 years ago by swapping the downstairs and upstairs rooms and renovating all the outhouses to be stand-alone en suite guest rooms. Our friendly builder (who lives in the same village) had landscaped the garden and it looked wonderful. We had a wonderfully convivial evening with lots of good conversation and laughs with a lovely meal of home grown goodies. As it was late when the party broke up, we stayed overnight at Anna’s and returned home later in the morning after we had completed our list of things to do in Rethymnon in the morning i.e. bank, tax number, odds and ends needed from the 1 euro shop etc etc.

And the weather was HOT today – warm enough to take off my body warmer and enjoy some sunshine! When we got back to the house, we planted up a few pots for the garden and terrace. Kimon has protected them from local cats with souvlaki sticks!

BEACHCOMBING AND BINOCULARS

I had the chance to use the birthday present given to me by my brother today and went up to the roof terrace to take a good look at the mountain scenery through some super-duper binoculars. It was marvellous Spring weather when it is warmer out of doors than inside and we had breakfast outside upstairs overlooking the olive groves, farms and mountains. The far distant peaks were blue and white with heavy coverings of snow, the nearer hills were dark green with trees profiled along the tops and the nearer slopes folded like patchwork eiderdowns where fields and groves of olives were planted in straight rows which tipped in dozens of different directions. We spied an eagle in the distance and this made us think of getting out the binoculars. They revealed all sorts of treasures I had not seen before like small chapels nestling amongst copses of trees, a man burning charcoal in the valley and a farmer loading produce and supplies in and out of his truck.

I would love to say that the roof terrace is a wonderful place for meditation, Bible study and writing or painting but the proximity of our neighbours with their choice of music, the arrival of one truck after another selling garden produce, general stores, vegetables and fish has caused a bit of a stir at each new arrival and we needed a change of scene.

With the temperature at 17 C and a sky with fair weather clouds of every shape, we drove down to our favourite beach at Panormo and did a bit of beach combing – finding lots of driftwood thrown up by the recent storms along with an unspeakable collection of plastic bags, bottles, crates and other debris all left at the seaweed line along the beach. I don’t think it will be long before we form a beach patrol to gather up all these hazards to the wildlife along the coast in an otherwise idyllic bay.

Panormo was all but deserted, so it made an amazing walk with most of the village and three beaches all to ourselves. We stopped at a small café opposite a formal garden where the elderly play tavoli and chess during the summer months and noticed that they had been trimming the branches of the trees leaving small sticks of wood ideal for kindling. So after we had asked in the café, we took a handful each home with us to get the stove going in the evening along with half a dozen pieces of driftwood.

Today was quite lazy but tomorrow will be full on with a visit to a garden place to order the bamboo terrace roofing which will shade the space outside the kitchen and to choose plants. Then Art School for the morning, off to the telephone office OTE after that to order our telephone line, a visit to the bank and also to the place where you have to register for a tax number – back to Anna’s where I will post the latest blogs and photos and finally dinner back in Kastellos in the evening.

K and I reflected last night that we seem to have been living off the fat of the land since we arrived with gifts of food given to us, a lunch paid for by Anna and Bonzo’s portion of chicken (which has provided two lovely supper dishes), eggs from our lovely neighbours and an invitation to dinner tomorrow. We really will have to think about holding our celebration party before too long in an effort to pay our way!

CIVILISATION FOR A DAY OR TWO Saturday 12th and Sunday 13th March

We woke up this morning feeling a bit like a pair of kippers and the smell of woodsmoke was really strong! However the warmth of the house the evening before made up for this and I set about opening the windows for a little while and mentally preparing myself for a shower in the arctic bathroom.

After a 30 second dash under the hot water and a race to find lots of layers of clothes and went to hang the towels on the line and stopped for a moment to enjoy the sound track. My word, people in large cities would pay good money to buy a CD with this wonderful sound. I called K outside and asked how many sounds he could identify:

Sheep and goats bleating; sparrows chattering, doves cooing, cocks crowing, the odd bark from a distant dog and a lonely bee buzzing away over our new log pile. It was a FANTASTIC start to a sunny Saturday morning and not a train, plane or car anywhere.

We packed up a few bags to take with us because we were spending a few days in Rethymnon. There is an exhibition of students’ work to be held at the art school in the village called Kastellos a short hop up the mountain road from the town. We can also get some important jobs done and visit the bank while we are there.

After the idyllic start to the morning a loud mechanical sound fired up very close by and it sounded very much like a bulldozer. K went to investigate. The stone walls in the village are beautifully made but sadly a lot of the old houses are beginning to fall down leaving ruins that would take vast sums of money to renovate. Our friend Rik the Builder has rebuilt the old village mill and it looks wonderful now finished with lovely mountain vistas in all directions. However, the lane to our house had a wall that even I had noticed was beginning to lean rather dangerously and it had been decided to bulldoze down the empty place before it fell on somebody. Thus we had packed up the car but our passage was completely blocked until the work was finished.

Eventually we set off for Rethymnon with a shopping list and another list of all the people we needed to call from Anna’s telephone. She had a good town based telephone and broadband package which allowed unlimited phone calls to worldwide destinations. At 4.30 pm we drove from Rethymnon up the Spilli Road to Kastellos which we have known for many years because it was here that K’s sister Zoe had owned a little house when she lived in Crete in years past. By co-incidence, a new School of Art had opened there and was operating from the School House which had been completely renovated by the Local Municipality and was now being used as a community resource/museum/gallery and now Art School. On one of our first trips to Crete, Zoe had seen the potential of the place and tried to persuade us to buy it and do it up! I was interested to see what the students had been up to and managed to sign up for the next half term of lessons – every Tuesday morning. Several of our friends were attending already and it was good to catch up with a little party and lots of laughs. The couple who bought Zoe’s house (an eminent neuro-surgeon and his wife) also came to look at the exhibition but were sadly only in Crete for a week before going back. They seem to have all sorts of problems with planning permission for the house but Kastellos is very near some Minoan archeological workings and this has an impact in the area for any building work people want to do to their houses.

What Anna’s house made up for in warmth and home comforts, it definitely lacked in delivering a good night’s sleep. All the youngsters coming home from nightclubs in the early hours of the morning seemed to be shouting outside her door for hours and it was like trying to sleep at the end of a megaphone since all the stone alleyways amplified the sound and the people were not lowering their voices in any sense! We decided to return to our village sooner than anticipated.

The sky and sea were blue and flat but the roads were so quiet that I had my first taste of driving in Greece on the way back. We noted that the garden centre where we wanted to get supplies was not open on Sundays and we will have to try again tomorrow. In the meantime, we cleared our small patch of giant size weeds and started off a couple of packs of seeds we had brought with us from England. I also hoped that my Mum’s green fingers would rub off on me as I scattered the seeds from the pepper I was cooking for lunch and planted a few lemon pips to see if we could generate a few plants of our own. As I cleared a little patch in front of out garden wall where some bathroom tiles had appeared from nowhere, I spied our resident toad nestling beneath – bright orange in colour with black spots. We can only surmise that some softhearted local spied him there and found him some temporary cover!

As we were out in the front of the house, our friendly neighbours, Costas and Angeliki had an identical problem with their log burner and chimney so it was not just us townies with fireplace troubles. The model of their log burner is alarmingly called Napalm 78! It was great that K and I could lend them our camping mallet and tall step ladder to help them clear their chimney but they still could not accept even this little help without bringing round 6 more lovely fresh eggs to say ‘Ehfaristo. How sweet is this village? The fire roars and our toes are warm!

HEARTH AND HOME

My mother gives a wonderful description of the day that the Sweep used to call when she was a young school girl. She would arrive home from school and be greeted by her mother swathed from top to toe in headscarves and overalls and the house would be completely encased in dustsheets. The day the Sweep came signified total chaos in what was otherwise an impeccable household routine.

Our attempts to get the log burner going in very cold weather had been somewhat fruitless and we set about emptying out all the unburnt offerings from the day before and having a good sweep up around the fireplace. K found his rubber headed camping mallet and starting tapping the chimney all the way up and particularly around the two elbows just above the stove.

If anyone has read the tale of Lord Peter Wimsey’s Busman’s Honeymoon, they will remember what happened when someone decided to clear a blocked flue at Tallboys by firing a shotgun up the chimney and how he had wisely backed out of the room foreseeing what was going to happen next. With this picture in my mind, and my mother’s chimney sweep tale, I moved as much as I could as far out of range of the chimney as possible and prepared for the worst.

Eventually, persistent hammering forced the joints in the stove pipe apart and we had several large polythene bags poised with their necks wide open to catch whatever emerged. Fortunately it was mostly damp soot and clinker which we were able to scoop out of the bend in the pipe and sweep up without too much hassle. This seemed much too easy, but we pressed all the metal joints back together again and swept the floor. This was as much as we could do before we waited for Anna to arrive as we would be driving her to the airport for her afternoon flight to Athens

The drive the airport on the main E75 road snaked along for 40 miles or so between the mountains and the sea. It was good to see the normal dark aqua colour of the sea instead of the stormy waves from a few days back. The air was cold but the sun shone and it was good to see all the olive groves and sheep grazing on the lower slopes of the mountain chain which runs from East to West of Crete. Anna treated to us to a late lunch at a Café Grill she knows quite close to the airport and the waiter brought plates of food containing enough on each to feed a family of five. Kimon and I promptly invented our dog called “Bonzo” and requested a “packetto” for our dog to put in all the remaining chicken which we could not manage. What with this and the contents of Anna’s fridge we will not need to foodshop for a week.

We returned to the house to re-engage with the stove project. In case of leaks in the pipework, we had heard that locals used bread dough to plug any gaps – so I set about making a loaf of bread from ingredients I had in the house from our previous holiday trip. Without scales or a recipe book I managed to make a better loaf of bread than usual and had kept back a small lump of dough on hand for an emergency seal.

After a little hesitation, we gingerly set the fire again and had another go. We checked all the joints in the chimney and went outside to see if smoke was coming out of the chimney pot. I can’t begin to tell you how welcome it was to see such a good blaze and a steady plume of smoke from the tee shaped chimney stack outside. We had a ridiculously great sense of achievement and our long delayed pipe and slippers evening had arrived at last with the heavenly smell of freshly baked bread in the house in the background. Our pyjamas and slippers were warming gently, we had a warm drink to hand and we watched the glowing embers in the back of the stove with songs from the Eagles playing gently in the background.

Yes, it was a good day.

LIGHTING THE FIRE – Thursday 10 March

 The day started well today as the sun came out and with a blue sky and white fluffy clouds, we felt a bit more optimistic. We made a plan to set off for Perama again to try and sort out a telephone line and price up a few options.

Earlier in the morning, K had taken on the Log Burner, emptied the ash pan, which was full of rusty water and stuck the insulating rope into the door of the wood stove with the tube of cement supplied by the hardware store (fingers crossed)! Whenever we ask questions about these sorts of things in the village, we know we will get a battery of conflicting advice and the vehement discussion, arm waving and loud argument which will last all night and probably go on for another week. Some locals offered to deliver some logs so with a bit of luck we hoped to have a warm fire in the house as evening fell and were thankful for such good friends.

We found a kind of garden centre/agricultural supply place and took a quick drive around Roumeli, which we had heard was the place where lots of ‘Eenglishe’ had bought houses. It was very high up with steep roads and tracks with newbuild houses on a fairly large and ornate scale – so the views over the olive groves, fields and the sea were spectacular but I would not like to have to drive up those narrow, unfenced roads on a regular basis as it looked a bit dodgy to me. The scenery on the road today was wonderful and the mountains have more snow than I have ever seen before. Even the road verges are bathed in yellow flowers and I notice that there are buds on a lot of trees. We kept spying fallen trees and twigs for kindling but thought it would be too damp to be worth gathering. Another year we would be more organised.

We arrived home with some pots, window boxes and a large bag of potting compost which I plan to plant up as soon as possible because this little house definitely needs some plant cover!

(Artistic licence needed for our little house plus lots of plants!)

In the afternoon, some friends of Kimon dropped off the wettest load of logs we have ever seen and K was cross because he would have to store them for next year for them to be dry enough to use. I can hear him tossing them onto the roof of the shed and muttering to himself outside!

However, we have still not sussed out the phone situation as the options are hard enough to work out in English, but doubly difficult in Greek and we do not want to get tied into a contract which works out to be more costly than we can afford. We have two more places to visit yet before we can make a decision.

I had almost primed myself for a disappointment but you never know. I had covered two easy chairs with warm tartan rugs in readiness for a restful evening in front of our own roaring fire. After selecting some dry wood and kindling K set about lighting the enormous stove. It gave off a good blaze straight away and he shut the door expectantly. Almost immediately, thick grey smoke started billowing out all around the door and the bottom of the chimney. A quick inspection confirmed our worst fears: the chimney was blocked and would need to be cleared before we could enjoy a pipe and slippers evening or even relative comfort chez nous. K’s sister is spending a week or two in Athens and has offered to let us stay at her house in Rethymno if we would like - a very tempting proposition until the weather gets a bit warmer.

I reluctantly retired to the kitchen to serve up some very hot and filling pasta to warm us up as the sun went down. We may have to spend the evening at Christina’s taverna again but a glass of the roughest raki will soon warm us through. Yassou!

CANDLE POWER AND PASS THE RAKI

We drove to Rethymnon on Tuesday taking advantage of a break in the clouds but as we bumped along the main road we could see that the level of the sea was very high, the waves were cloudy white and quite a gale was blowing onto the shore. We stopped along the sea front and looked at the scene – so different from the height of summer with calm deep blue seas, shops and hotels all the way along thronging with people and goods for sale but now completely empty and looking rather miserable. The palm trees were bent over double under the force of the gale and we were glad to find a parking space and a cosy spot in Anna’s snug dining room. We chatted over lunch and met up with our friendly builder later as he turned up after a day out working in this horrible weather. He reported that the port had been closed as the sea was breaking over the sea wall and flooding the port car park; he had seen a small car floating about beyond the police blockade to stop anyone from venturing in there.

We drove home quickly to make sure that we were indoors before dark but we had an evening of power failures – one after another – and Kimon looked at the fuse box and checked the trip switch on the meter which kept turning the power off every half an hour or so. This was really miserable – particularly as the log burner was not yet operational and we were depending upon electricity more than usual. I pronounced that getting the log burner going was top priority!!! We decided after the next power cut off that we would walk down to the village taverna and soak up a bit of their warmth and woodsmoke – so bundled up in every layer we could find, we set off and had a coffee with the locals. Christina, the owner made me very welcome and we had a chat about what had happened since I was last in Crete. As we talked I saw the footage from the Greek news on an enormous flat screen TV which showed Athens brought to a complete standstill by heavy falls of snow. It felt like complete “déjà vu” of all that had been happening in the UK earlier in the winter. Christina said that snow did not happen very often in Greece (last fall 15 years ago) and when it did everything came to a halt.

Well, you can guess what I said!

In the meantime, a friendly guy at the other side of the room beckoned K into the car and they went to attack the electricity meter and trip switch with Cretan gusto. “You push it like a very nervous man” he explained and K began to get the knack after that.

Christina asked me why we had chosen to live in the village and we explained the background. We had looked at three houses. The best was this one and when we visited the village, the local people had been so very warm and welcoming. She said that it was a good village, very convenient for towns, travel, beaches – not too high in the mountains and not too close to the water. After this conversation, she disappeared for a moment or so and returned with a bunch of narcissi to take back to the house. They smelled wonderful and were a perfect reminder that although the winter was harsher than usual, Spring was just around the corner.

Alarmingly, we are also expected to have a party. The idea of catering for an entire village with haphazard stove facilities and a diet of fish only (during Lent) would exercise even the most competent of chefs (which does not include me) and I am hoping that they will be prepared to wait until after Easter. The elderly lady next door said that it would be good to have wine and ice cream. We could easily manage that!

K and I wobbled back to the house and dealt with two more power blackouts and decided that having a hot drink and going to bed would be the best option. I put every blanket, poncho, coat and woollie we had with us on the bed and was fast asleep in no time. There had been a general power cut in the early hours of the morning and the power was still off when we got up on Wednesday. Kimon said that there was a bit of snow on the car, ice on the tiles outside the front door and a dark, depressing sky full of angry clouds. K unearthed the picnic stove which he had optimistically packed for our journey and we boiled up a kettle of water for morning tea, grimly taking an inventory of what we could have for breakfast. I ended up having sesame bread, yoghourt and jam with scalding hot tea and K settled for breakfast sausage with some Dijon mustard bought on route which was hot enough to burn holes in your mouth.

I learned a new phrase today. “Poli Crio”. Every time I said Kalimera to anyone, they responded “Poli crio” with a lot of crossed arm grappling motions. Easy to work out – it means “It’s VERY COLD”. I’m amazed at my progress and wonder if learning Greek will be easier than I thought.

After ages sorting out bags, trying to find things and fossicking around, we drove to Perama – about 5 miles away to find a good hardware shop and bought all sorts of manly things like masonry nails, a step ladder, cement for the log burner (acrylic?) and fire lighters. I had noticed loads of trees down by the side of the road and thought longingly of a roaring log fire in the “Jackie” but we were not quite there yet. I can see that the Summer will have arrived before we get the remedial work done and find a source a good dry logs. Any expert advice on log burners will be gratefully received. How to fix the insulating rope which is set into the door of the stove (any particular cement?) and how to ensure that the chimney which goes up through the ceiling and floor upstairs does not set fire to the floor boards and thus the house on fire. Sensibly, K is a bit cautious but I bet our NZ friends will have all the answers! Enough for today; I have to go and run about for a bit to get warm.

MRS MOP

We have not made much mention of the little house in Crete because it is a little hard to describe and any photos – taken from the other side of the alleyway do not do it justice. However, we are cooped up inside today because the cold and wet weather which has been chasing us across Europe has caught up with Crete again today and it is blowing a hoolie outside!

We met up with Kimon’s sister Anna yesterday after we had emerged from a sleepy cacoon late and flopped about unpacking suitcases and taking our time over unloading the car. The only sounds we could hear on waking up were birds singing and a few bleatings from goats or sheep nearby. All our neighbours were mighty interested to see all the “pragmata” which emerged from our car. Heaven knows how they will react when the lorry arrives. K and I are rapidly discussing new cupboards and shelves needed for the kitchen and bookcases required for the living room to accommodate all this stuff. 47 box loads plus miscellaneous bits of furniture. All I really need is a woolly jumper at this moment in time but I have unearthed a few cotton tee shirts from the bedroom cupboard and have layered them with a light weight poncho over the top. K and I look a real sight for sore eyes. Our lovely friend, Angeliki came to the house with her apron bulging with 6 lovely fresh laid eggs as a welcome to Crete present. I hope the novelty tins of English tea I brought with me are a reasonable offering in return.

As all the shops were shut, Anna advised that one or two tavernas might be open in Panormo and we jumped in the car to see what we could find open. Wonders that the Aphrodite Supermarket was open and we could buy a stock of necessities for the larder. They gave us a loyalty membership card – just like Tesco – except the benefits were on display on the shelves – more pragmata, but still! There were lovely large beef tomatoes, bread, cheeses, potatoes and onions – so in spite of it being a bank holiday, we would still have all we needed. I had packed at least 3 large packs of English Tea and a few other flavours to bring with us and K had packed an enormous jar of Marmite and several packs of Oxo cubes requested by friends.

A welcome light at the Italian Restaurant beckoned us in and we were delighted to find a wood stove burning and lovely food and wine on the menu. We pondered whether we would have to order something fishy or not but they did not seem to be bothered and were happy to see some customers on such a foul day. (You can tell by these posts that our reducing diet has not yet begun – but we will have to go native during Lent and try to lose some of this journey weight … starting tomorrow). We felt much more cheerful as we drove home with a lovely hot meal inside us but the rain had not stopped all day and snow had been forecast for the day following.

The next morning we were woken by the sound of pouring water, dripping water and strong winds but fortunately no snow … yet! Worryingly, we had noticed two damp patches on the upstairs floor of the house which would need the attention of our friendly builder. (Hopefully still under guarantee as it was only finished last year. Hey ho, we will see! ) We can’t wait for the weather to improve because it is really dark inside the house with all the doors and windows shut which is not a problem in the heat of the summer but it’s bit dingy while the weather is like this.

K and I have a list of jobs to do. We need to fix the door of the log burner as the insulating rope-like material on the door needs attention and we also need to know where to get hold of some logs to burn.

We have to find the telephone company and work out the best deal for telephone calls and broadband as there are several to choose from. And after cleaning the house we left in the UK from top to bottom – there are cupboards to clean out and window sills to rescue from cobwebs, sand, cement dust here too so I am away with my bucket and mop for a while. A woman’s work is never done!

MATCHSTICKS FOR THE LAST LEG

This title sounds a bit like a Blue Peter project but refers to the final leg of the journey from Heraklion to the little stone house on the way to Rethymnon.

We were a bit put out by Minoan Lines as they had arbitrarily rescheduled the ferry bookingswe had made without giving us very much information and frankly made marmalade of our 60^th birthday celebration trip. We only stayed on top of the game by our own efforts in making contact and trying to sort out things in various places and varying languages. Our ferry boat tickets from Piraeus had been made for an overnight crossing boarding at 9.30 p.m. but we had received a very confused message to tell us back along the road in Italy that the ferry from Piraeus had been postponed and that we had to sail at 4.00 p.m. instead. After phone calls, faxes, messages and visits, we gathered that our time in Venice had been cut short and we had to rush our drive from Patras to Piraeus to fit a different schedule. Finally, when we had lugged all our luggage up from the car 4 floors to our cabin for the last crossing, we belatedly found out that having raced to get an earlier ferry that it was not an overnight but a high speed ferry which disgorged us in Iraklion at 11.00 pm at night. This was just the sort of news that Kimon did not want to hear as he was very tired and the thought of driving through the mountains late at night when he was whacked out already was almost too much to think about.

However, I did get time to get hooked on to the Internet with my Forthnet Card and posted 3 blogs which had been hanging about and waiting for the right connections! The crossing was a bit choppy but we had a light meal, strong coffee and a one-hour rest on our bunks before bundling all our bags down 4 flights back to the car deck again.

All the Greek drivers were in their cars with the engines revving and lights on long before the ship had docked. As we moved down the ramp we were met by knots of buses, taxis and people thronging in all directions as they made their way home after Carnival. The added bonus of arriving the weekend that we chose was that ”Clean Monday” followed the celebrations of the weekend and all the shops were closed. Everyone would now be fasting until Easter. This did not bode well for our first breakfast in Crete but for the time being our eyes were glued to the road looking for a road sign to either Rethymnon or Chania. Part of the festivities of Carnival had obviously been to graffiti over all the road signs so that they were very nearly unreadable. More by luck than by judgement, we found that we were on the right road and heading around lots of mountain bends in the pitch dark. However an hour or so later we pulled off the road into our village and parked with several prayers of thanksgiving and sighs of relief. The village was in complete darkness and so we unloaded as many wheelie cases as we could manage and crept quietly along the alleyways to the house. K’s stirling efforts behind the wheel were truly heroic and he did deserve a medal after such a marathon.

We woke up late in the day on “Clean Monday” and set about sweeping and cleaning all the accumulated dust and leaves of six months from the house and courtyard. K went to see if the little store was open down the road but, no, it was a bank holiday and we made the most of the stock of provisions we had brought from England or stowed away on the journey. We were told later that in Crete, Clean Monday was the day for eating fish and flying kites! We will need to unravel that mysterious combination at a later date.

PS All the Greek weather forecasts predict snow in the next day or two!!!!!