YAY SUMMER IS HERE! We have had a wonderful week with plenty of things happening in addition to the usual fixtures of Art School on Tuesday and visits to Panormo to do shopping and banking.
We were a bit concerned on Wednesday when Niko, an elderly gentleman called at the door with a 2 ltr bottle of virgin olive oil in each hand and asked us if we could do him a favour. K and I met him last Easter on our way up to the village church for the midnight service of light and he had invited us in for a drink and a chat. It was obvious to us that he was struggling to talk, had lost a lot of weight and was not at all well at the moment. We had previously invited an English guy to supper and so I was busy cooking - but Kimon set off with Niko to his orange orchard because he had oranges that needed to be picked before they went to waste. About 2 hours later they both returned with buckets and bags full of the most beautiful oranges I have seen in a long time. Kimon said that he had had a wonderful time and the orchard was a beautiful place. Stewart, who had been invited to supper, is having a house built quite close to the village and his wife will be over to stay in May but in the meantime he is staying in a small guest flat in a neighbouring village and supervising the build. Just before we sat down to eat a very ordinary supper of cottage pie, we sliced off a portion and put it on a plate for Niko and Kimon took it up to him while it was still hot. He said that Niko was sitting down with an oxygen mask but was grateful for some supper. Next morning, the orange juice we made from oranges straight from the tree was totally out of this world - sensational. It was slightly upsetting that Nikos could not bring back the little supper plate without adding half a dozen eggs on the top of it! We protested but he would have none of it!
Thursday was spent with our friends the Brods who have a flat in a lovely complex in Panormo and arrived in the last ten days or so. We were so grateful to them that they said that we could borrow their broadband for the time being because getting a telephone line is a real battle with the local telephone company OTE. We were expecting an engineer at 8.00 a.m. on Wednesday but nothing happened and we have been telephoning the number given to us every day for three days with no response – so we think we will have to go and bang a few desks next week! Jane O sent me a wonderful Utube film via Email about Bureaucrazy, which summed it up to a Tee.
We woke up this morning to find a 2 ltr bottle of milk on the door step which was the prelude to a magical morning doing Nikos’ egg and produce run with him. We loaded the car with oranges, oil, milk and eggs and he showed us all the back roads winding round the lower hills before the mountains. The car was actually weaving into the panorama we could see from the roof terrace, which was fascinating for us to learn about. We really felt that summer had arrived this morning as we watched the swallows building their nests in the eaves of the houses and puttered along the country lanes. We dropped off lots of produce at his cousin’s widow’s house and then a large bag of eggs at his niece’s. Nikos insisted that we stop off at the Taverna for a glass of beer on our return home.
It was all happening today. Just after lunch, I was up to my eyes in oranges, lemons, peel. pith and pips – a lovely sticky mess it was too – when Kimon returned from the village with a French couple – Jean-Luc and France who had bought a piece of land in 2009 and had just been granted permission to start building their house. So we showed them around our place (Croziers – a Loft) and then went for a walk to see the bulldozer starting to dig their foundations. France has to return to Marseilles to her work next week, but her husband is going to project-manage the building, so it was quite an exciting day for them and they had hoped that the local Priest would bless their land. However, we were not altogether sure that this arrangement worked out too well because we were not of the Orthodox tradition. I gathered that the young Priest who arrived to bless the village Taverna this morning did not want to get into trouble with his Superior by getting involved with us, ‘unorthodox’. (I think that was what it was about – I said a few prayers of my own in any case and I’m sure that God was listening).
After all these perambulations, I returned to my marmalade making as all the fruit had cooled nicely and could be mushed up and strained. I ended up with a wonderful batch, which set beautifully. A FIRST! The label brand is Cretan Orange Grove Marmalade and I am saving some for my Dad who never goes on holiday without asking if there is any marmalade to be had! Either it will wait for my parents’ visit to Crete or I will try to find a way of getting a jar back to the UK in my suitcase … a challenge for any Crozier abroad.
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