We've had lots of trivial things going
on recently and it has been hard to stay in one place long enough to
put anything down for the blog diary. After a couple of weeks of
freezing cold weather, snow and horrible torrents of rain, we were
relieved last weekend that the sun made an appearance again and the
temperatures changed dramatically within a few hours. We kept
emerging from the house in thick layers of woollies only to find that
the temperature in the car was boiling and we had to go back inside
and rethink our layers again. K and I spent last Sunday down on the
harbour wall with a thermos of coffee in Panormo while he fished and
I did some painting. It was a glorious morning.
One of the things that has now become
tricky is getting huge lumps of wood chopped into small enough pieces
to burn more easily on the wood stove. With half a leg out of
commission for balancing purposes, it is just a bit too risky to let
K on the loose with an axe or chain saw. We made an agreement with
Nikos-the-Wood to purchase a new chain saw for him in exchange for
two loads of logs and he seemed to think this was a good deal.
Monday morning was spent at the Store being given a detailed demo by
the man at the agricultural counter while farmers came in and out with
tools which needed fixing, oil cans for filling and driving away
again with trucks full of equipment for the olive picking, which is
very busy this year. We think that world forces have meant that
Cretan olive oil is in high demand in 2015. Every truck in the
village is off at 7.30 a.m. and not back until 4.00 p.m. We have
been given two large water bottles of local oil as Christmas
presents. It tastes wonderful – if only all this beautiful oil would help with
the country's balance of payments!
Then we made the decision to have a
proper Crozier kitchen fitted after an elongated delay and I
unearthed some squared paper and started measuring and drawing.
After marking the fixed points for the windows, doors and immovable
objects, I progressed around the four walls of the old house in
diagrammatic form. Inevitably, the old walls were so aged that when
I got to the final corner of the room to complete the scale drawings,
the edges did not seem to meet properly! Nothing is square, nothing
is straight. I am so glad that I am not a joiner, but presumably
they are used to it by now. Just as we had totted up the expense for
this and needed to think about moving funds about, our son called
from the UK to tell us that the offer for the house in the UK had
been accepted and we needed to get on line fast to tie up loose ends.
Almost synchronised to the second, the laptop developed a peculiar
fault and told me my user profile had changed … (HOW AND BY WHOM?) ...so I could not use it. We needed to take the laptop to a
knowledgeable guy who could twiddle about with it in Safe Mode and
make the necessary alterations. It seems to be cured now. There is
also a General Election in Greece tomorrow and although all the UK
news agencies are “terrified”that Greece will leave the EU, no
one hereabouts thinks that it will happen. We will see.
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| Minoan cup designs - Aren't they beautiful? |
We heard from our friend Gianna on
Monday, that her husband is out of Intensive Care but still quite
poorly. I dropped off a ripple mattress the following morning so
that the dreaded bed sores could be prevented and looked up the
vitamins and food supplements which I had used for K to build him up
and replace all the body weight lost while in hospital. Things are
still quite tense, but Tony has three good nurses looking after him
round the clock and Gianna (who is a marvellous cook) making
wonderful soups and drinks at home and bringing them into the
hospital to feed to him and get him stronger. Tony may soon be taken
to a clinic in Chania for rehabilitation which we heard about last
year. We are still hoping and praying for his complete recovery.
On Friday we paid a second, much more
enlightened visit to the amazing Archaeology Museum in Heraklion.
Explanation and signage had been much improved since my last trip in
the summer and we had the input from Don Eveley, our friend from the
British School of Athens, Archaeologist and former curator of the
school at Knossos. My take on all the myriad of objects, so
beautifully displayed was as irreverent as ever … would you use
that portable clay stove for egg poaching .. how on earth did you get
stored materials from the bottom of that enormous man size pithoi
(terracotta ali baba style pots) .. did you have to suspend a small
child by one leg over the edge with a jug or ladle … how did they
fire such huge pots and what size of kiln would they use?
Fortunately, as a group we had evolved and moved on from using limited brain power worrying about Minoan toilets and sanitation! As we progressed around the museum, the statuary section of the later eras gave us a long pause for thought and I stopped
to take a photo of the bust of Caesar Augustus, simply because I had
heard of him. The bust of Caligula was next to him and in spite of
his reputation, he didn't look so very different from anyone who
might be travelling on the same bus to work. Scary! The facilities
at the museum were excellent and all the guides and people so
welcoming and friendly but after two or three hours our feet were
suffering, so we went for lunch in the busy tourist centre of the
city. I had spent an inordinate amount of time snapping away at the ceramic
designs to see whether I could get some inspiration in the colour
choice for kitchen tiles – What a flibbertigibbet I am!
If anyone has seen the online version
of a small heater made with two inverted clay flower pots, one candle
and lots of metal nuts and bolts to hitch them together, and been
assured that it gives off an impressive level of heat at minimal cost
… look no further. I was intrigued to take a look at all the clay
artefacts displayed so well at the museum and there is one design
that looks as if it would do the same job. It made me want to have a
go at creating one of my own, but there is far too much happening at
the moment for potting 'Minoan' radiators. January is Marmalade
Season. I had forgotten to mention that three people had dropped
off loads of oranges for me to make marmalade and quite a lot of time
has been spent spooning pips out of bubbling marmalade confections and sterilising jam jars.
It is a great way to keep warm!
