KEEPING UP WITH THE CROZIERS

… Scream “Doors!”

The past few days have been idyllic and we took a walk to the edge of the village enjoying all the views of Mount Psiloritis just South of us and the White Mountains in the distance to the West. The hedgerows were bursting with life – marguerites with bright florescent colours, mallow, purple thistles and bugloss whilst the church yard bushes of jasmine and myrtle were breaking into new leaf and blossom. Bees and butterflies were working overtime and we turned to see three beautiful goats trotting up the path towards us trailing their leading ropes and followed by their owner, Andreas pushing a wheelbarrow. He walked at a slow pace and stopped to let the goats eat some of the wayside grass every so often and chatted to us about the wonderful weather. One of the goats was in kid and he was moving them closer to the village. On the other side of the stream we could see flocks of sheep amongst the long sunset shadows in the patchwork of fields opposite.

Villagers' chairs were hauled outside yesterday. The weather had been so good that I joined all the neighbours in our corner of the village sitting on chairs or doorsteps surrounding the small plateia outside the cafeneon. This was the same place where everyone had a ringside seat two years back on the day we bought our kitchen chairs and feeling a bit like an embarrassed Goldilocks,  I had tried various wooden seats sold from the back of a truck amidst a cacophony of banter.  At that time, I had been overcome at being the centre of attention while all the neighbours discussed our purchases but Greeks have no such inhibitions and shouted that we were paying far too much for those chairs!    However, yesterday afternoon was less of a circus; we all chatted quietly, Angelikki topped and tailed her beans, Kosta (recovered from his spell in hospital) brought a table over to us and Alekos with the big, metal, three wheeler diesel truck sheltered behind it when the sun got too hot. His wife sat reading sheets of paper with a towel over her head (honestly)– it must have been a difficult subject so we did not interrupt! Nikos the Wood, was nursing a sore knee and needed a walking stick and we tried to offer him some Ibuleve cream to ease the pain. It was a lovely peaceful moment with good people and we were glad to relax into it.  What a difference a year or two makes.

Over the previous few days, K had been making a screen door to keep insects and creepy crawlies out of our kitchen. We had progressed from various bead curtains, netting and so on to the realisation that nothing but a proper screen door would fit the purpose. The struts of wood had been painted with wood preservative and the basic framework was now in place. I kept looking at it and wondering what the end result was going to be and whether it would spoil the look of our front porch. Would it be another Crozier?* With each stage of the process, neighbours stopped and passed the time of day and asked what Kimon was doing making a 'Sieve' Door and how much it cost. After we had visited the hardware store for extra supplies of brackets, netting and a staple gun, he set about finishing it off and began working out how to set the hinges and hang it in place. After a lot of adjustment, the door was finished and fitted perfectly. True that the brushes kept falling off at the top and needed drilling and fixing, but after a few days, the job was complete. The result was that our vociferous neighbour immediately wanted one and Manolis said he wanted one and Nikos thought that he might like one to keep stray cats out and …. everyone in the little village who had never even thought of it before wanted one! To think that all the experience of our lives led to this moment in time – making 'Scream Doors' for houses in the village! We are not sure the lads at the Wood Factory will be very happy about it and K was not at all keen on going into business. In fact he had enough of Screaming Doors for quite a long while.

Fortunately, we have a lot of outings in the next few days, so we hope that the craze will have worn itself out by next week.

*It occurs to us that the significance of the Crozier trademark has never been fully explained in our blogs, but we will leave that for another day.

Adio-sas

SPRING IN OUR STEP

As the weather has turned warm and dry, I am up on the terrace with the laptop for the first time ever and struggling to see the cursor arrow against the screen reflections. However, it does receive the broadband signal outside – so it is lovely and warm and easily the best place to sit for some input for quiet time and Greek language study.

It is Sunday 25 March – Greek Independence Day. We hear strains of Greek Orthodox chants from the radio next door and the Greek flag and bunting has been in evidence around the town hall and police station in Perama, which is our nearest municipal town. This probably means that the shops will be shut on Monday also. A few minutes ago , the schoolchildren marched back from the village church followed by their teacher chattering excitedly after a service and lots of people have passed the house on their way home from “church parade” carrying cakes which, from where I sat, looked very like bath buns!

We have spent quite a few days with our friend Ian, who owns the restored olive mill at the corner of the village and who has mopped and swept it thoroughly prior to flying back to the UK by way of preparation, as a few people have expressed interest in buying it. We set our alarm for an early start this morning so that we could make him a bacon sandwich and coffee on the way to the bus stop and Heraklion airport from where his flight was leaving.

In the meantime, K is constructing a screen door for downstairs from wood which Ian has given us and we have benefited from a large box of books and other household comforts left behind! We have a couple of airport runs this week to meet friends as they begin to arrive for the summer season and slowly, slowly the tourist season will begin to start up for Easter and beyond.

It has been amazing to see how fast the plants have got under way around the house with the jasmine and vines sprouting new growth almost in front of our eyes. While Spring is sprunging, we are also having new ideas and thoughts about having a kitchen fitted so that we can be much more organised for future mountain winters. The addition of a wood burning stove (containing a small oven) is a strong possibility and we will need to decide on materials since construction wood is imported and very expensive.

We also had a bit of anxiety over loud vibrations coming from the front wheel of the car but a kind mechanic took it for a test drive, then jacked it up a bit and pointed to the tyres. He told us to replace the front two tyres and to come back if the noise was still there. He sent us to his pal with the tyre place who ordered the tyres and fitted them yesterday. Result: No noise at all, magic! K was particularly impressed as if the mechanic had taken the normal intake of breath … Pppphhhh ….. it's a wheel bearing and will cost x00 euros to mend, he would have accepted it. We like Greek mechanics who are so obliging and don't rip people off. We have found that tradesmen like mechanics, hairdressers and restaurateurs only want to charge a reasonable amount for their services and we have been pleasantly surprised. Once we find someone who charges reasonable rates, we always return to them – so it works!

The snow caps on the highest mountains remain glistening in the sunshine, but we are beginning to lose the snow covering on the lower foothills and there are a few lines of grey rock showing. Birdsong is very loud, donkeys are braying from the upper hill farms and the dogs are barking as walkers roam out and about for a festive holiday. In the house opposite, pairs of pigeons are trying to impress each other on window sills and are billing and cooing with romantic ardour. One sounds as if it is saying “Look at Yoouu, look at you!” and its pair is saying ” Kimon Koloures, kimon koloures” (which is the name of a Greek politician). This is all OK so long as they keep to their own window sills and away from ours and stop leaving presents on our windscreen! We are planting up some large window boxes with geraniums and souvlaki sticks to try to keep them away. Pigeons do take a lot of clearing up after.

We have not yet got to the stage of changing over our winter and summer clothing as there is still a nip in the air and the flocks hereabout are still on the lower slopes for their winter grazing, but the next few weeks will see the step ladder being fully utilised while whitewashing and lots of general house maintenance takes place. K and I will have our work cut out!

Adio-sas!

DUVET DAYS

At last, even though it has been raining for a few days, we feel as if we are reaching the end of winter. Officially, Cretan summertime is due to begin on 21 March but we can feel that the temperature of the house is beginning to warm up and we have shed one or two layers of thick jumpers! However, 'flu has hit the village with a vengeance and our vociferous neighbour has been coughing and sneezing for a good few days now. We have been making mugs of honey, raki and lemon to treat our snuffly head colds and yesterday, we heard that Angelikki and Kostas from the kafeneon are both in hospital in Iraklion, so we are praying that they make a quick recovery. There is a chair in front of the door of the cafeneon and their chimney pot which usually belches out thick smoke signals each day has stopped messaging. The weather was so nasty yesterday that I went back to bed with a book to keep warm with two duvets and stayed there. Roll on summer!

As we have now been here for one year, it seemed a good idea to do an inventory of things done and still to do, which reads a bit like a School Report. (Marks out of 10)

Our Ancient Flat Roof has been fixed and recovered twice but, frustratingly, is still letting in water in mysterious ways and we have been asking everyone we know about their solutions for leaks. These seem to be par for the course in Greece. The trouble with ancient roofs is usually that the crack or hole outside is nowhere near the drips which happen inside. It's very tempting to turn all the beds into four posters with plastic covers and keep everything wrapped up and dry during the winter; we can't wait for the summer sun to dry everything up for us. 5/10

On fine and not-so-fine days, Kimon was able to paint the pergola on roof terrace with teak oil while I tackled two old outdoor chairs re-weaving them with new fibre and which look well-croziered (= naff) but have been saved from landfill for another year or two. Similarly, a thrown-away bamboo table missing its top was rescued from the tip and a new table top fitted. We have done a bit for the planet and if we could only find a new use for old plastic water bottles and carrier bags, we would be able to have some impact on the ecology of the landscape! I had an idea for opening out water bottles to construct light-weight roofing for the woodpile, but Kimon got fed up with the collection of plastic which was accumulating in the kitchen! 9/10

Inside the house, our fire lighting skills have improved over the winter with daily practice (K did this more than I did!) and we have become adept at starting cooked dishes on the cooker and then transferring them to the top of the wood burner to conserve energy! However, we have needed to use our heaters and air pumps a lot this winter, so we are in fear of the electricity bill when it gets here. 8/10

As for decorating, everything we painted last Spring is now bubbling or flaking again and we will be busy as soon as the warm weather is here – we realise the walls of this house will be a Firth of Forth Bridge project and need to know what the magic compound was that they used to finish the job in Scotland! On the plus side, K's new drain pipe from the terrace is working well and we no longer have a paddling pool in wet weather    6/10

Time and space for Art & Crafts is such a bonus. The opportunity to draw, paint and sculpt this year has been great. Number of jumpers knitted = 4, shoulder bags woven = 2 and a floor rug is in the making. It is a joy to have a big kitchen to spend time with recipe books. Edmunds 'Sure to Rise' Cookbook from NZ has been truly tried and tested and cooking here is not without it's challenges. Adapting to Greek flour which is low in gluten content has resulted in some peculiar looking cakes with the appearance of bread puddings. Our biggest problem has been knowing what to do with gifts of food when in the middle of cooking a large meal and the gifted object will not squeeze into the freeze box. Such abundance means cooking two dinners simultaneously! Developing new dishes with unrecognisable cuts of meat, cooking up orange recipes after the 4^th batch of marmalade in six months and learning to cook without standard UK store cupboard staples has been a challenge but is more than made up by the mounds of fresh food and herbs, prolific in the gardens, fields and hedgerows. 7/10

Our ideas about gardening are currently restricted to a tiny patch of earth at the front of the house over which enormous effort has been exercised to keep cats off rather than actually getting plants established. However, we have one lemon tree and a vine planted and scores of pots and window boxes planned (for which we have to find a supply of local earth and sharp souvlaki sticks to deter erstwhile cats). We have managed to find sacks of potting compost but Cretan plants do not thrive in this and yesterday found us with a large bucket and trowel collecting earth (with permission) from a friend's building plot and picking up lots of pieces of broken pallet wood which we could then chop up for kindling. In short, it is not the pretty garden patch we envisaged … yet!   5/10

Driving in Crete is not for the faint-hearted either. Once you have got your head around the different regulations applying to Cretan cars, the driving standards are not at all good and although there are driving tests and strict rules (to be ignored), most young people jump in a car to drive to their own driving test having been driving solo for some time! Kimon is doing very well; Merope is only driving local roads and NEVER in Rethymnon or big towns! Cretan drivers are scary on the road and even worse at parking. At Lidl's this morning, the doorway was blocked by several cars ranged higgledy piggledy on white “do not park” hatchings leading us to believe that if the driver had been able to take the car inside and drive round the aisles, he would have done so!          6/10

My Greek language proficiency has been a bit disappointing although Kimon has always been fluent. However, I am up to Lesson 5 in the Greek Tutorial and things are slowly beginning to fall into place. Complex written things such as bills, instructions on boxes and phone messages are still too hard for both of us. Our Greek mobiles bleep to give us messages frequently - possibly offering free minutes to the initiated - but are totally incomprehensible to us! I imagined that I would have heaps of quiet time for study and reading in retirement and I am not surprised that our Cretan neighbours do not have the time or inclination to read much or to sit still for very long. We have found it much more difficult in winter time to curl up with a book. Too cold and dark to sit still inside - warmer and lighter but too wet to sit outside! The car would be the most comfortable place but our neighbours might think us a bit strange. No change there then! 4/10

We did achieve telephone and broadband in 3 months (which is more of a prize than you would think) and continued over the year telephoning, skyping, Emailing and playing Words with Friends (Scrabble with far-flung children) via the internet. We were only able to do this after the wonderful gift to us of an I-pod before we left the UK, and the tuition given by each of the children on the amazing Apps which have been invaluable ... books, music, maps, messages … This blog would never have been illustrated without the great little camera we always have handy. Sorry we cannot take a photo of it!  The discovery of Radio 4 on the internet has been a real life-line for news, entertainment and even offers Lent Talks from afar. 8/10

So … An interesting and positive year where we have enjoyed ourselves and survived (so far) under the current restrictions of the Greek economy. The sun still shines, the rain still rains (and how ...), birds sing and the plants still grow here in the village. We have made lots of new friends and swapped all our goodies with each other – eggs, oranges and oil are in abundance. The raucous tannoy of the fish van announces its arrival most days – so there must still be some fish in the sea!

Adieu and Roll on Summer - we do have lots of time to think about all our family/friends and surround them all with our thoughts and prayer from a distance. In the words of our teachers from way back we are quite sure we "could have done better" but we are still trying!!!!

(Average over the year = 64% calculated via I-pod)

(pai sto kalo)  (go to the good)