LEARNING GREEK IN 25 YEARS ....

 Monday morning is the time for Greek Class. We rush through our breakfast and early morning chores and pack the bag with books and pencils. Our class is held a mile or two away in a small village Taverna where Dimitra, our teacher sets out her white board and pens and proposes “Prepositions”. This week, we are tackling prepositions of Time but before we start, we all have a cup of coffee or mountain tea and biscuits made with carob, grape juice and pistachio nuts.

Our lovely teacher

We scribble away and practice the sentences on the board in faltering speech trying to stress the correct syllables. From the distance, we hear some music from Greek loudspeakers and a few of us start feeling in our purses for change. Class stops as the Bread Van stops outside the taverna and several of us queue up for a loaf of bread and the driver sticks his head through the door, reads the board and says “Good Morning everyone” in exaggerated English with a cheeky grin! He is very interested as to what we are learning this week!

Τη Δευτέρα, όταν έρθει το φορτηγό ψωμιού όλοι αγοράζουν ψωμί

[On Monday when the Bread Van comes we all buy bread]

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.

The Usual Suspects: Sirrku, John, Lesley, Carole, George

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.