HIBERNATION

The weather had been so lovely and the sun so hot on our trip to Margarites that I asked K to check the back of my head the next day because it felt as if I had got sunburn. After a couple of days this was covered with a rash and our Doctor took one look and said “Shingles”. Fortunately, he was able to prescribe a good anti-viral medication to lessen the effects and I have spent the time since hunkered down at home. The weather became very wet, and the rain on the mountains and nearer foothills has turned to snow = definitely log burner weather. Over all this lies a thick grey shawl of misty cloud which makes everything feel horridly damp and cold to the bones. I have barely put my nose out of doors and unearthed all the thermals.  Locals on the other hand were grateful that their olive trees were getting a really good soaking.

In the village the kafeneons are busy – which is largely due to their efficient heating! At the nearest kafeneon – Kostas and Angeliki's – their small portable log burner, alarmingly with the trade name of 'Napalm 78' has been set up for the winter. They arrange a sheet of metal on the floor, the stove on top (which frequently supports a large saucepan of meaty stew), and a chimney which is attached to the stove, spreading across the room and out of a hole made in the wall.. This seems a bit ad hoc, but gives off a wonderful heat. (UK Planning Authorities would have a fit!). Angeliki strolls over every so often and pulls the small metal ring from the top of the stove with a handle, drops some olive sticks into the aperture and shuts it off again with nonchalant skill. The heat from the efficient little burner is amazing. On days when the kindling is a bit green, the black smoke from the chimney causes a fog which makes you gasp for breath outside the house, but the system works very well on the whole. As the warm weather arrives, the little stove is stowed away again for the summer months when the hole in the wall is plugged with a branch of Rosemary bush.

K likes to get out of the house a bit and pays a visit there every evening at about tea time to have a chat and warm his hands. He never gets home without his pockets being stuffed with oranges and mandarins from their fruit trees or a bag of freshly laid eggs. On my one egg per week diet, this is a little problematic and we can't get through either the eggs or the oranges by ourselves, so we make sure they go to good owners.

At the bigger kafeneon run by Apostoli and Christina, a lot of changes have happened. In the Autumn, the place had a makeover with a new kitchen, toilets and the addition of tables and chairs for simple meals at the back of the building. A new local dance move has developed: the toilets now have up-to-the-minute lighting systems which turn on automatically when you enter and theoretically turn off when you leave. The dance begins when you first wonder who switched the lights off and then realise that you have to somehow activate the motion sensor.  The unsuspecting are frequently left in the dark clapping, swaying and waving their hands about madly and, as a dance, it is much more difficult than Zorba's!

Swiftly moving on ... the biggest impact has been made by a huge cinema screen used for watching football matches on Friday and Saturday evenings. On these nights, the atmosphere gets very noisy and Christina is very busy producing souvlakis for the boisterous soccer fans. In the meantime, an even louder card game is a nightly fixture at the front of the cafe and a lot of shouting accompanies this. We have to remember that this is never a quiet night out, but the customers are a hospitable lot and we frequently go to pay for our drinks, only to find that they have already been covered!

K's quad bike (= “mobility scooter with attitude”) needed to go for mechanical service and because parts needed to come from Athens, he was confined to barracks for 10 days or so. However, it has come back in a much more reliable state - although in wet weather, his movements are still a bit limited and getting into and out of waterproofs takes ages.

Days at home have been confined to spending time reading, knitting and summoning up energy to complete a crocheted blanket. I have been making thick soups, with all the wonderful vegetables available, to keep us warm and satisfied – even a sort of haggis on Burns Night. Filmon gives us a good choice of programmes on TV. Sadly, the two hour difference means that the UK programmes we like start too late at night to keep awake for! I have also to revise for my Greek lessons because there is a test on Friday – eek!

All our letters and parcels from abroad arrived eventually in one fell swoop. This was great and we have enjoyed all the Christmas goodies, albeit in mid-January.  Not great timing for Christmas lights or music but they are early for next year!   We are so grateful to have the ability to use Amazon which delivers quite a number of goods and foodstuffs, such as Marmite, teabags or oatcakes to Crete. The post in December is hopeless and don't get me started on our internet service which cuts out about 20 times each day. However, Kindle keeps us in books  and Amazon can deliver a surprising range of things to make life easier, so long as we don't order at the end of the year.

This is a bit of a dull blog, but I hope it will be more exciting next month because (in fear and trepidation as well as three re-connections to the internet) I have booked flights for New Zealand! Yippee! Oh, and I have just looked outside the door to see the first sunshine in two weeks. Great!

CLASSES AND CLAY

We have been enjoying unbelievably warm days for January recently, which means that we've been out and about as much as possible and making the most of good winter drying days to get rugs and blankets washed after Christmas. We can see plumes of smoke from the terrace coming from the olive groves now because the olives have either been picked or are being picked and the small branches and twigs cleaned from the trees are often made into a big bonfire (which would be completely forbidden during the dry season). Friends have started their marmalade concoctions but I didn't have the heart for it this January as most of mine was made with my Dad in mind.

First of all, an idea to get a Greek conversation class started in a small village close to us a year ago almost fizzled out when all the events of last summer landed me in hospital and another keen participant lodged in the NHS system in the UK. So we turned over a new leaf and tried to initiate another go at it. A lovely young lady with perfect English and a degree from a Greek University agreed to lead the lessons and we turned up with pens and paper to try and cudgel our brains back to work. Although we had all studied Greek before, we were all glad to do a bit of revision and try to think of examples of words beginning with alpha, beta, yamma, delta and so on. There were just a few of us and it took us way longer than we thought it would, but we are all keen to move on and gain a bit more confidence. Our teacher's father had fashioned a brilliant whiteboard and she took the whole project much more seriously than we had expected. It is clear that Greek schools take work very academically!! The discipline will do us good though and our teacher is very fun loving and good natured.

This week has been a bit of a whirl with things happening every day. On Tuesday, a trip to one of the potteries at Margarites was organised so that we could learn about the history of ceramics and why Margarites is now one of the few villages left in Crete with pottery workshops of any note. We listened to how the clay was collected, where it was worked and how ceramics were fired. We were lucky that the weather was sparkling and warm, but unlucky that DAE (electric company) had dug a pit right across the road at the entry to the village and this meant quite a large diversion to reach the pottery round the corner and up the hill. In the end, we dumped the cars, stepped over the wooden crate covering the abyss and climbed up the steep hill to the pottery shop where Yiorgos and a thermos of coffee awaited us.

We were a motley crew and the first thing was to decide how to organise the day as we had planned to go and see where the local clay was collected but this was a few kilometres away and our cars were not as handy as we had hoped, Discarding this idea, we climbed up the steep road to where old stone buildings lay, largely in massive disrepair, on either side of the road. Until 1969, and the arrival of water and electricity to the village, this is where all the potters of the village had their workshops and kilns. At the same time, the containers which had been used for oil, water, foodstuffs and chimney pots were replaced by metal and plastic alternatives which spelled a very bad time for potters and many workshops were deserted and fell into disrepair. These remains are classified as archaeological places of historical interest – meaning that nobody can do anything with them. This is sad for Yiorgos who, with passionate zeal for the long history of his art form, would like to set up a working museum so that interested people could see the process in action. The circular kilns had been best preserved – a sort of stone beehive shape with two openings. One at ground level to lean into and place the pots on a slotted floor and one at a lower level beneath the floor round the corner where the wood was put into the base of the structure and stoked to keep the temperatures hot for many hours. This design of kiln was used in Minoan times and up to 50 years ago until electric kilns arrived. It was obviously very hard work for the ancient craftsmen. These days designs for ceramics are made very much for the tourist trade where souvenirs need to be transportable.

In the absence of a museum, Yiorgos did the next best thing for us and pointed out where the potters worked and we poked about in the wooded lands at the edge of the fabulous gorge where many of the old stone workshops had stood looking at the cysterns for catching water, sinks hewn out of the rock and admiring all the kilns which we would have probably walked past on our wanderings without recognising. The kilns were once fired with all the wood from around the valley and now with olive branch clippings. Yiorgos explained the firing processes and how different arrangements and inlet of oxygen to the kiln affected the chemical qualities and colour of the finished product. He showed us a clearing in the woods of land belonging to his family thronging with huge ali ba ba pots, shards, jugs and vases lying about in heaps along with roof tiles in large stacks. We all stood round large sinks for cleaning and beginning the initial preparation of the clay from the mountains. The work of collecting and cleaning the clay to remove stones and impurities was a long process and needed infinite patience.

After this we returned to his pottery workshop near the centre of the village and watched him work on the potter's wheel. None of the pieces could be thrown or worked in one day but took several jumps and rests on and off the wheel before completion, each portion a labour of love. Yiorgos' skill was amazing and as a final flourish he produced a most unusual paintbrush with ancient origin. A stick handle with a slick tail of lambswool attached with which he quickly showed how the village signature of a palm frond was done as decoration – all with a masterly flick of the odd looking brush in a matter of seconds. Amazing to watch and to absorb his passion for a craft which could easily die out, without such experts as he. We understand that he does teach at the University and are glad that more people have the benefit of his experience. Sadly, we could not thank him with a lunch at the taverna as he had another appointment, but we hoped that we have found a compromise by putting some money by at the taverna for him and his family to have a meal some time soon.

The welcoming taverna awaited us at the top of the hill with a glowing log fire and the hospitable proprietor had prepared a large selection of meze starters and platters of chicken. All our New Year diets were forgotten about and we feasted royally. It was a memorable day out and we all thought that we would have liked to try our hand on the potters wheel at a future date. Yiorgos had looked a bit apprehensive – and with good cause, I have no doubt!

Kali Chronia!