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| Our lovely teacher |
Τη Δευτέρα,
όταν έρθει το φορτηγό ψωμιού όλοι
αγοράζουν ψωμί
[On Monday when the
Bread Van comes we all buy bread]
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| We all buy bread from the Bread Van! |
We all settle down again, hanging our
bags of bread on the back of our chairs and press on with
prepositions.
Ο ταχυδρόμος
είναι εδώ από τις 10.30 το πρωί έως τις
11.30 π.μ.
[The postman is here from 10:30 am
to 11:30 a.m.]
Before long, a car screams to a halt
outside the door and Michali the Post pops his curly head round the
door with a couple of letters for the Taverna family. He stops to
read the board and is interested to read that “I will visit my
friends during my stay in their country”. Ah yes, he nods and sets
off at a break neck pace to his next port of call.
Ο Μανάβης έρχεται στο χωριό τη Δευτέρα
[The Greengrocer comes to the village on Monday]
After twenty minutes or so of
mind-cudgelling Greek grammar, a raucous jangling loud speaker announces
that the greengrocer is outside. We all identify the loud message as
from the expensive greengrocer and not the reasonably priced
greengrocer who calls on Saturdays. Nobody moves and the Van
eventually moves off again without any buyers.
Dimitra gives us homework for next
week:
- On Monday I will go for shopping Τη Δευτέρα θα πάω για ψώνια
- We will eat lamb at Easter Θα τρώμε αρνί το Πάσχα
- The Doctor will be at his office from 9 am to 2 pm Ο γιατρός θα είναι στο γραφείο του από τις 9 π.μ. έως 2 μ.μ.
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| The Usual Suspects: Sirrku, John, Lesley, Carole, George |
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| The waysides are full of flowers |
On
Wednesday, we had planned to go for a nice country walk but Cretan
life got in the way and we ended up doing a beach cleaning expedition
instead. The sun was out, so we off-loaded our raincoats fairly
quickly and evoked some curious looks from passers by as we donned
rubber gloves, a fist full of black sacks and the long picker uppery
thing. It was enough to put you off plastic drinking straws,
take-away coffees and water bottles for life as we tried to clear the
beach and shingle from as much plastic and non-degradeable stuff as
possible. I began to get expert at picking up the hard plastic
bottle tops and bits of lego. There were huge plastic petrol cans
and pieces of rope, old shoes, bits of tyre, drinks cans (which
degrade into really nasty sharp debris) and all manner of detritus
which gets washed up on the shore or blown out of the bins winding up
on the beach. After a couple of hours and 3 enormous bin bags full,
we called it a day and left the final two beaches of Panormo to a
group of youngsters who were in Crete for a week from a Bible College
in York. Not a holiday, obviously. We hope that the turtles who lay
their eggs on Cretan beaches will remain a bit safer as a result. I
am wondering if we need to do a weekly sweep to keep local coastline
tidy!
I was
just sitting down to draw breath when news reached us by telephone of
the death of a dear friend in England who had been battling cancer
for a good while. Oh dear, so glad that I got to see her in Devon
last year. We still keep in our minds the hilarious picture of our
lovely friend foraging for prickly pears on her visit to Crete and of
the ensuing chaos which spread around the kitchen in her wake. We
were gobsmacked by her decision to pack salt cod in her suitcase for
the journey home. We had picnic'd together on the beach I had just finished cleaning. This morning's work seemed somehow symbolic and I have a
tactile wooden cross in my pocket which she gave me recently. There
are loads of events to remember with a smile and some tears.
Sto
kallo, dear friends.
