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. ©
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