AUTUMN LEAVES

You can tell that Autumn has arrived at our village. The tree outside the house which had been completely pollarded on our arrival in March and burst forth into masses of long green boughs in the Spring to shade the front porch is now beginning to drop brown, dried up leaves on the roadway outside. The vociferous lady in the house next door is complaining loudly if I am not out there each morning with my broom! It seems that sweeping the front of one's house is the epitome of greek housewifely requirements and you are a very slack person if you leave it for a day or two (or even a week, I am ashamed to say) before getting out there with a besom, scoupithia (dustpan) and a garden hose on a daily basis to be able to show your face in society.

It is at these moments when I do not totally embrace village ideals and plead ignorance! However, this morning I was out there before the sun was too hot and doing my housewifely duty like a goodun'.

We tried to get to the beach without a motor today by catching the bus and walking down to the beach at Panormo for a lovely swim at the harbour beach. The way there was all down hill and we had a marvellous swim in lovely warm water. Later, we picked up a few items of shopping and made the long, hot climb back up the hill and flights of steps through the oleanders and tamarisk trees to the national road to wait for the 5.00 p.m. bus. Check out this view from the bus stop!

We had a half hour wait for the bus in blistering heat and a long trudge back up the track from the bus stop to the village, I thought that I did not want to be doing this very often! At some stage, having had to sell our English car, we will have to find some form of transport and sadly we do not have enough grazing land to install a donkey although, the prospect is enticing. However common sense prevails and we know that a donkey wouldn't get us down the road to Perama to pay our household bills.

Talking of bills, we are still doing regular battle with OTE the phone company who gave us a contract price for phone and broadband at 95 euros every two months (which we thought was expensive enough) and now continue to send us bills every two months for over 200 euros. What a total waste of time and petrol/bus fares/temper this all is! Every time they send a bill it provokes four visits to different phone shops and offices with a file of papers and noisy phone call arguments between all the people involved. Then there is the water bill - we are not sure how we seem to have inherited the two years of unpaid water bill from the people who owned the house before us so one way and another, K and I believe that we are going a long way to paying off the national debt from our fast diminishing bank account. There is still an extra tax to be added to the electricity bill in a “house” tax which every home in Greece will have to pay – so austerity measures are beginning to kick in – in a big way. On top of this, a hire car and the cost of petrol to make all the airport runs for recent visitors cost us dearly and we are on super-frugal rations for the next two months to try to balance the books.

It is just as well we had already laid in some stores laid in for the ensuing siege –and  our kindly friend Niko brought us some goodies this morning – olive oil, tomatoes, two kinds of cheese and 4 eggs – what a nice gift!

Greek children returned to school on 15 September and it is good to see the village school full of children and playground noise back again. The roads and beaches are also beginning to empty of the big crowds of tourists and it is getting much quieter and cooler in the mornings and evenings. The mountains and foothills are a lovely shade of pink and grey light at both ends of the day so K and I have just had a quiet after-dinner coffee and Metaxa on the roof where it is starting to get deliciously cool, come sundown. Yes, Autumn is certainly well on its way.