CROZIERS AND CRUTCHES

Morning sunshine

What a lot of time has passed since the last blog in the series. The cooler weather did come at last and with it the hard work of changing over clothing, washing blankets, and all the roofs to paint, the trees to pollard and garden to trim so that the cuttings can be taken away. The log pile has to be put in place and various brokering undertaken for other neighbours and friends who wanted logs for their fireplaces.

We had a few complaints about not being in touch, but we have had our hands full with hospital scans, nasty injections and other miscellaneous aspects of getting on a bit. Also a few visitors over the summer and autumn.

Trauma Teddies (I have a simple pattern, if you are interested in
having a go!}

The refugee crisis in Greece continues and the weather was getting much colder, so there was a call for help to knit lots of baby woollies which exercised the knitters and crocheters of our group … and just in the midst of that our most expert knitter had to rush back to the UK after hospital tests had detected cancer.

Mrs Crozier took a short pre-Christmas trip to London recently and, having a very early flight opted to stay at an airport hotel in Heraklion to be almost next to the check in desk for the morning. Unfortunately, after dropping off her luggage she took a little walk down to the nearest coffee shop and had a nasty fall on the lethal Cretan pavements injuring her ankle. Knowing that going to A & E in Heraklion was likely to take all night, she did her best with frozen peas, bandages, strapping and Ibuprofen. Also knowing that Greek airlines give the best passenger assistance in the world, called the airline and was wheelchaired through the airports in Crete and in Athens. If passenger assistance was an Olympic sport, Greece would win gold medals every time. Those guys manoeuvre two wheelchairs at a time across Athens Airport from Domestic flights to International and from the gate they use trucks with elevator platforms which gets wheelchairs right to the front door of the plane.

Wheelchair assistance broke down at Gatwick when waiting until all the passengers had left the plane, no one arrived to meet the patient. A well meaning flight assistant used a large pushchair to move Mrs Crozier off the plane and down a corridor to be parked at the bottom of a staircase, outside a lift. And there she stayed, very very cold and alone for quite some time. Shouting “Hello is anyone there?” a few times, and getting more and more desperate as no one was around and even with a mobile where was no one to make contact with except family on the wrong side of passport control. After a very long wait, desperation meant that by turning sideways in the pushchair to hold the brake off and scooting crablike with the good leg, Mrs C made it into the lift and tried to decide which floor to go to. The door opened into one of those long corridors with a walkalator halfway along and Mrs C paddled along the deserted area beside the moving walkway wondering where everyone was. After a long period of scooting, stopping, resting and scooting some more, she came to a hallway at the far end where the passengers from another flight were bursting towards baggage control. By some miracle, one of the electric carts came round the corner with two people in the front and waving her arms, Mrs C asked for help. I guess the predictable jobsworth UK response came back from the driver, “Oh I can't help you, I'm on my training”. (What are you training for if not to help people?) but the accompanying Trainer did (reluctantly) get on her walkie talkie to summon help. Eventually a puzzled person wearing a beanie hat appeared saying that he had been to meet the Norwegian flight but no one had showed up. I noticed that the Norwegian plane was in the next bay down to the Aegean plane … and think there may have been a walkie-talkie mix up. Anyway, I was at long last packed on board the swishing buggy and swept through baggage claim and passport control towards Leo who was beginning to give me up for completely lost.

At A & E the next day, the Xrays showed that the ankle had a break and the lovely Doctor took a photo of the Xrays on the screen to take home on the Ipad and prescribed a large, heavy, black boot covered in velcro strapping. It rather put paid to any ideas Ma Crozier had about achieving much in the UK or Christmas shopping but the Christmas cards got written and posted and she made it to the Stone Revellers Pantomime, which was a great evening after all the hassle. So that was an improvement on last year, when the Christmas cards took two months to arrive and she missed the Panto altogether. She arrived back to Crete a couple of days ago with instructions to get everything checked by an Orthopaedic doctor asap. So Mr and Mrs Crozier have had their wings well and truly clipped with neither of us able to drive for the next few weeks. Watching the pair of us hobble down the street with sticks and crutches is almost comical unless you're doing it! Negotiating our rustic stairs with the boot is a no-no!

Sadly, we won't be able to comment on what is happening much this festive season as we will be at home, indoors most of the time...I expect you, like us, have watched a lot of TV coverage about Brexit and are still none the wiser! We seem to have daily doses of it for two years and nothing gets any better, only worse. What an unholy mess! PS I visited three Post Offices by taxi in the UK to get forms for an International Driving Licence in case my current UK licence becomes invalid in Greece. Not one of these quite large post offices could supply an application form. This is only one of the problems we are encountering as UK subjects in Europe. The complications could be ghastly … or not. Only time will tell and I'll worry about it when driving becomes an option again!

However, we can wish everybody a very blessed Christmas and happy New Year from wet and windy Crete. Kala Christouyenna!

SLEEPLESS NIGHTS

View from the roof top

Saturday morning has come around again. It is the time of the week for showing our best face to the world at large and I busied myself with brooms, brushes, mops and buckets to make sure that our front door step was clean and respectable enough to show to the local neighbourhood. The houses of the village are quite rustic and in our corner of the village look exactly as houses would have looked in biblical times. Flat roofs, whitewashed, very small windows, very thick walls. However, the cleanliness of the front door steps cannot be neglected. We have our pride!

The old part of the village

The leaves are dropping fast now from the mulberry tree which shades our porch and I had barely finished sweeping up the two or three piles of leaves and hosing away the dust from the front path when more were dropping minute by minute to keep me hard at it. The Cretan winds seem to disperse masses of dust and debris in every nook and cranny, behind flower pots and under gratings and it takes a fair while to gather it all up. As I turn on the hose to wash rivulets of dust away down the hill, I hear Angeliki at the Kafeneon with her brooms and buckets and again another neighbour sets too in our effort to clean our little areas … so all of us - Mrs Mops - are hard at it … a bit like a Mexican wave of water power.

The swallows who nested in various spots down the street seem to have left; this means that we have no protection against flying insects and mosquitoes now except for citronella candles and mosquito coils. Our evening sorties to water the garden always gift us with a fresh crop of midge bites! Ants are still on the prowl and we have been hard put to keep them outside the house this year. However, we have banished any explorers we find in the kitchen or bathroom, squeezed clouds of ant power into likely trails and hope that we can keep the numbers down, come the winter season.

Bali

Now that schools are back, the tourists have changed appearance and there are more older and retired people coming to holiday instead of the families of the high season. It is slightly, but only slightly less busy in the local resort, but the roads have been really clogged this year with more cars and many more lorries bringing supplies for the hoards. Trucks and Coaches block the village on a daily basis. We are guessing that the local business have had a spectacularly good season. We know that they all need the business, but we have been getting increasingly crabby as the days move on. Driving, parking the car and trying to get out and about has been no fun at all. For some obscure reason, our favourite beach lost its sunbed and umbrella licence this year, so now there are sunbeds to be borrowed on the beach and tourists are buying their own umbrellas. The beach has a much more free and easy appearance without the regimented rows of beds and it makes getting into the water much easier .. so we feel for the poor lady who paid for the licence and then lost the business so early in the season. Hopefully she got her money back, but we have our doubts. On balance, we like the beach better now. Rumour has it that another jealous business owner stitched her up, but everyone is characteristically tight lipped about it.

Panormo

Sleep is hard to come by in this heatwave summer and the summer weekend weddings have tried my patience. K and I have always enjoyed cheerful and upbeat Greek music, but the traditional Cretan songs are long, mournful, repetitive and, to be honest, torture! The heat, the flies, the native drums, the Greek weddings …..!

Grape harvest earlier in the year

Crete has still managed to produce wonderful food, in spite of it all. Large quantities of wonderful fruit and vegetables are around and so I began my autumn chutney making this week. I usually wait until the weather is cooler, but needed to use the produce while it was in good shape and stood in blistering heat stirring the bubbling brew and bottling up yesterday. K will approve as he now has a stock to last him through the coming year.

I hope that this has not been too much of a moan about the Summer heat, but we are over it now and waiting for some Autumn coolth, a few showers, the lovely smell of damp earth and a bit more energy in the mornings!

Sto kallo! Go well!

HORRIBLE HEAT WAVES

We wonder if many of our Cretan village neighbours actually know where New Zealand is on the globe but when family make the enormous journey to spend time in Crete, everything else is put on hold for the duration because the time is so precious. We know it will be a year or two before we get to catch up again, so many apologies for the lack of blog. Our oldest daughter, husband and three children have been with us for 10 days and it has been fabulous spending time with them.

You will know that it has been a very difficult time for Greece (and many other parts of the world) with record temperatures and bad fires in many places. The Monday when forest fires broke out in Attika, our little house, renowned for being cool in the heat of summer, came to the boil. The floor boards were hot, the carpets were hot, the blinds were down, we had trays of water on the window sills to try and create some coolth and sleep was almost impossible. We hosed down the walls and paths outside the house as well as the garden and stayed under cover as much as possible. There were one or two fires in Crete also, but the helicopters with buckets soon put them out. We can report that some days have been like a blast furnace. We are devastated that so many lives were lost over this period. The local council set up a collection point to send emergency supplies over to the mainland and I took a car load of food, water and basic needs to a little school in Perama who were organising one of the collections. It would be good to have a few civil defence contingency plans in place that we could read up on in case of fire, flood, earthquake, tsunami and so on! In the meantime, we are just doing our best job in keeping outer walls of the house well watered and the surrounding streets dampened down.  

Holidaying with the family was a little restricted and they were happiest in the hotel swimming pool or in the warm sea. We had a few issues with the hotel they had booked, which seemed ridiculously expensive and had banked the entire holiday cost four months in advance of their stay. But when we had first hand experience of the hotel we could see why. Our family would have left before the end if they could have done and found somewhere different but the hostelries are all fully booked. Panormo has been very nearly impassable with so many cars and people staying there. They had to deal with conjunctivitis and ear infections from the swimming pool during their stay;  an unidentified smell coming from the air conditioning vent which could  not be halted, finished off by a horrid journey home with four out of the five of them having sickness and diarrhoea on one or all of the legs home - Athens, Istanbul, Hong Kong and Auckland. The children were wonderful though and trekked with their cases around Europe like real troopers. The difference in temperature will hit them now in Auckland as it is a mere 7 C but I am sure they will be glad to sleep at night!  We were so exhausted on Friday after the trek to the airport that we missed the lunar eclipse completely, but friends achieved really good photos of the red moon in the night sky.  Early this morning here we were woken by a heavy shower of rain and it was so welcome! We have struggled to keep any of our garden pots going amongst so much desiccation!

Over the years we have been here, it seems that the sleepy old village has gradually come back to life and many more people and new buildings are re-energising it.  So we all had a Watermelon Festival a few weeks back and it was an amazing evening organised by the youngsters of the village with barbecue food, music, dancing and tables for 550 people, blocking off the village square! A miracle of organisation which seemed to use boat loads of plastic in the form of bags, plates and cups but I did not actually see any water melon … we may have left too early.  We will keep plugging away at the theme of saving the planet!

Summer Saturday nights have continued to rob us of sleep due to the Cretan weddings which, at full volume from one side of a hill megaphoning the lyra music from midnight until six am on a regular basis. I have now learned which shutters to close and which ear plugs and YouTube meditation music works best to cancel out the hullabaloo! Cretan music is an acquired taste and lovely,  so long as you are in control of hearing it! All night drunken celebrations which deprive you of sleep are the end!!

The largest fruit salad ever!

Waiting for Ice-Cream

I am travelling back to the UK for a week or two, but I hope to have more interesting reports once life is back to normal again! For the time being, I have spent days looking for my pack-away rain jacket, which has completely vanished, just as I will be needing to use it.

Happy Holidays!

BUREAUCRACY FOR BEGINNERS

In case people back home think that we are lazing around a beach or pool with long, cool drinks in our hands and idling all day long, we need to put the story straight. ...And we thought the saga of the IKA book was unparalleled!

K's Greek Driving Licence expired and he started the process to renew it about five weeks ago. We went to the local market town of Perama where the Citizen's Advice Bureau (KEP) gave him a sheet of paper with the list of requirements he had to supply. The whole process cost in excess of 200 euros. He had to go to the Photographer for a large number of photographs – two for the licence and one for each Doctor consulted. There was a list of Doctors and Ophthalmologists he could choose from, two cheques or receipts from the Post Office in different sums of money for different government departments and a labour of Hercules to complete in sizzlingly hot weather on crutches. Each appointment has necessitated a trip to the very busy and hot Rethymnon, parking and taxis to get to different Doctor's Surgeries. Fortunately (or not, ) I had five appointments at the Dentist for root canal surgery, so could assist with lifts most of the time. We feel as if this process has been going on for months. It was only at the last visit to the Dental Surgery that I realised that I had been consulting the wrong Dentist. But, that … is ... another ... story! Two Dentists with identical shaped and arranged surgeries – one on the first floor of the building and one on the second! However, that relieved us of a further 180 euros and I digress!

K visited the Optician and had his glasses upgraded. Then, the GP Doctor (10 euros) referred him to an Orthopaedic Specialist (10 euros) which we left until the next journey into town; this Specialist referred him to a Neurologist, so we had to make another trip. After a few weeks of travelling backwards and forwards, queuing, and consulting Doctors, we arrived back at KEP with all our papers, fees paid, photos taken; they told us that we had to go back to the GP Doctor for the final sheet of paper. The Neurologist found that both legs had problems and we were beginning to think that the quad bike might have to go into mothballs, but eventually, we emerged from the KEP office on Friday with a one year driving licence and the advice to start with a different GP next time! Each Doctor gave us a sealed envelope to be presented at KEP as part of the process, so it was all a bit unnerving. K and I are completely exhausted and a bit annoyed as we feel sure that none of the locals in our village bother about licences anyway!

In the meantime, we have both been in the wars. Regular plant pot watering outside leaves the porch and terrace tiles wet and slippery so K had his first fall when his feet just shot out from under him and we were struggling hard to get him up again. Then a tangle with his feet as he dismounted the quad bike landed him with a huge bump on the back of the head, which is just beginning to heal. Worn ferules on the crutches slid out from under him and the elbow piece gouged a large chunk out of one arm most recently. Every time we take the car out, we have to clean up residue from the swallows and sparrows who gather on the electric wires above our head and leave the car in a horrible mess. Yesterday, I was adjusting sun shades over the car windows and managed to catch the bridge of my nose with the boot flap … so, maybe we just shouldn't be allowed out at all!

However, we are getting ready for the arrival of visiting children and grandchildren in mid July and gathering beach towels and buckets and spades in readiness. We are sussing out the most interesting beaches, train rides and tavernas to prepare an action packed or sleepy holiday as they choose. I regularly stop off at the Church of the Four Martyrs in Rethymno to light prayer candles for safe travel and a happy holiday as well as all the other requests of the time.

Our regular walks with my energetic walking buddy have continued. We have explored a back track between our village and Panormo through the olive groves and market gardens and will follow this early one morning with K on the quad bike and myself walking, when we have a spell of cooler weather. Last week, we found a lovely unspoiled beach – well off the beaten track with shady seats and a beach bar and … most importantly for us, accessible car parking just at beach level. It is really great that our walks are helping us to find hidden treasures both inland and unexpected coves on the coast. We spent a happy morning in Fodele, where El Greco is reputed to have been born and enjoyed a tour the little village and followed the shady nature walk along the fast flowing river.

Almost by accident, I have joined an on line Group entitled the Upcycled Clothing Collective which seems to have spread round the world via Facebook. There are a good few posts day by day showing what lovely clothes and upholstery/furnishings have been designed by reusing pre loved materials and not buying anything new. I had no idea that donated clothes to Charity Shops commonly end up in land fill so have found it inspirational for ideas although I think that the occasional frock made out of a table cloth looks a bit odd!  I had a go at using natural dyes from eucalyptus and then with tea bags on white cotton to see what would happen. I have a work in progress by way of a quilt sampler. Sewing and embroidery is so much less hot and sticky than knitting this time of year. I had a hilarious interval in the Stationery Shop trying to explain what transfer paper was. The assistant didn't know whether I wanted a pen, paper or an iron by the time I finished my charade. Slow progress is under way

… watch this space.

Crete is HEAVING with people. We have to leave really early to get a place in the car park on our trips to Rethymnon and then pay much more because we have been there longer! People are spilling off the pavements, tour parties are doing the circuits, hire cars are filling the roads and the beaches are chock a block! It must be a good year for Greece, but we will be glad when the hot, crowded season is over and peace reigns again!

Kalo taxidi;  safe travel and happy holidays!

BOTANICA

The week has been a full one with a fair amount of mileage in various directions seeking different destinations in Crete. This has been in-dispersed with clean up operations because the legacy of recent dust storms is still with us and is taking some persistent effort to clear away. However, we are on the last leg of blankets and carpets which have all had to be soundly beaten and washed this year before being rolled up for the summer with moth proof formulas. Panormo, our nearest resort, organised a clean up last Sunday and we donned rubber gloves and black sacks to pick up rubbish from the road verges and alley ways while other groups cleared the rocky harbour edges and the beaches. 

This Sunday, all the young folk of our village were weeding and clearing rubbish from the lanes and verges. 

 On Monday, my walking buddy and I picked a big bouquet of Spring flowers and made little wreaths to hang outside the house. There are a few around the village and these stay there from 1^st May until 21^st June – the Summer solstice - when they are burned. My little wreath has completely dried out already.

Our first road trip out was by bus to the Historical Museum in Heraklion. This is a lovely old Venetian building which has been lovingly restored and converted by the family who own it. As there were about 20 of us in our party, it was, by necessity, a taster tour and most of us wanted to return on our own later and spend time reading more thoroughly and spending time between floors to take it in at depth. I found the WWII displays particularly interesting with many original pencil drawn maps, letters from the dignitaries of Australia and New Zealand, General DeGaulle and other well-known personalities of that era fascinating. It deserved a lot more “sinking in” time and I will go back and pay for the headphones next visit!  Apologies for lack of photographs on this day out.

We had heard lots of enthusiastic reports of a fantastic herb emporium on the South Coast and decided to drive down to the place on Friday. The road south leads through the mountains at Spilli and our convoy threaded its way through masses of tourists, parked cars and delivery trucks before emerging on the route down to Matala. It is a good road, with imposing mountains towering above and beautiful downlands and chalky hills between. The journey was longer than we remembered and we had the crowded market town of Timbaki to negotiate. None of these passages have the space for a by-pass! Emerging relatively unscathed, we found the tiny village where the herb shop was doing a roaring trade and found very little parking space in the centre of the village. Long racks of brightly coloured chilli peppers hung from the rafters at the entrance and the little traditional shop was stacked with shelves and shelves of books, bottles and jars of every shape and size. The smell of herbs and spices was wonderful. Clutching my purchase of Golden Slumbers tea and some herbal tea preparation for arthritis, we had a quick refresher and made our way back along the road to a lovely mountain taverna for a late lunch where goat was on the menu. It was a jolly party, but the journey had been long and the hour late, so I begged everyone's pardon for leaving early and started the long trek home. Quite a long way to go for herbal teas!

This Sunday, our Church group trio made the journey to Kefalas to go to church. The little Anglican Chapel has sadly been without a Vicar for a while and were making preparations for the Churchwardens to fly to Brussels to attend interviews at the Diocese of Europe to find a new Incumbent. Quite a tortuous process! Let's hope there is someone who fits the bill and will be happy to venture forth in Crete.

Knowing that hospice care in Crete is not really available, a good friend who is a retired nurse and I discovered a hospice organisation in Athens which we would like to try and visit in the Autumn to see what might be involved within the Greek way of doing things. We have been thinking about it for a while but what with her hospital treatments and our time away, have been a bit unsuccessful in our attempts to pull anything together as yet, but slowly, slowly – sega, sega (as the Greeks say) we will see what we can find out. The Orthodox Church, the legalities of hospice care, the application of medicines and the practice of Greek families caring for their own will all have an effect on the outcome, but not all people have families to look after them and we need to find out what could be workable.

All the hotels and apartments seemed to be very full – even for so early in the season – and hire cars are at large – which we can tell a mile off. They are the very shiny ones, travelling very slowly in the middle of the road! In Crete, slower moving cars hug the hard shoulder and use it to allow the more speedy animals to overtake more easily! While the tourists are all in shorts, sun dresses and scanty wear, we inhabitants are all still wearing our cardigans! We think that our blood must have thinned since we arrived here.

So, between our outings, we are still trying to get the house and garden cleaned up. We are nearly ready for summer now and looking forward to our daily swim! Happy Holidays!

SCARECROZIERS!

There just haven't been enough hours in the day for all the doings of recent days and weeks. After leaving the little stone house for two months, there was a lot of work to do on our return. Severe storms from the Sahara desert had left red dust in every corner of the house, terrace and garden and the air has been filled with a dusty mist every morning since, which only really clears for an hour or two in the middle of the day. Cretans aren't used to fog! The level of clearing out and sorting winter and summer clothes was a bit overwhelming.  Water is likely to be in short supply also, we hear after such a dry winter.

Our lovely neighbours were glad to see us back and refused to believe that K had caught such an enormous fish while out on the boat in the New Zealand. I'm not sure that they have an accurate idea of where exactly NZ is because it is a world away from their world as farmers and smallholders. However, our friends at the kafenion were delighted with New Zealand chocolate and didn't complain that it wasn't English! Offerings of oranges, eggs and potatoes were very welcome on our return. Sparrows had been making merry in our absence by trying to burrow out holes in our insulated porch roof and I had to improvise way of blocking their entrance and making a makeshift Scarecrow to keep them away! All the scraps of polystyrene from the roof insulation added to the mayhem.  What a mess!

Easter was confusing because Greek Easter was one week after Catholic Easter and all my UK family were surprised to be wished a happy Easter one week after it had actually happened. We had a big meal at the Taverna in Achlade, which was fun. We smashed the red coloured eggs, conker style; had some lovely appetizers followed by the choice of nicely roasted lamb or chicken. K and I were still in a time warp from our journey home, so we did not make Easter services locally. However, I did manage to visit the Four Martyrs Church in Rethymno to light some prayer candles.  In response to the two I lit before our long journey, it seemed right to light two more for our safe return and lovely holiday. This weekend, I eventually managed to get to the Anglican Church in Kefalas and it was good to catch up with the church family over there after a long break. 

Last Monday we had booked a treat on our walking day. The taverna at Kastellos Armenoi organises and conducts foraging walks and the early Spring is a perfect time to learn about green sprouting stuff. We constantly see Greek ladies (the older ones) out with their plastic bags and little knives returning home with “horta” - spring greens a bit like spinach. We wondered whether we could learn what was edible and what was not by paying to go on a special walk. Arriving up at the village, which is much higher in altitude and has different trees and plants from the coast, we had a marvellous day out. We sat down to breakfast of local yoghurt and fabulous honey, followed by small, sweet cheese pastries and a Greek coffee. Then came the raki (strong alcohol) – a bit early for us but … in for a penny, in for a pound and we felt like WWII resistance fighters or Andartes downing our rakis before adjusting our backpacks and setting off!

The day was fabulous with bright blue skies and just a little cloud to prevent it being too hot. Vassilis' dogs scampered alongside us we ambled along and visited the little church at the top of the hill.  Here we lit candles first thing before starting off and stopped for a few moments to gaze at the expanse of countryside stretched out before us. We visited a marvellous cottage which a craftsman (not at home) was restoring by hand. Its dear little workshop had a pane of glass inserted in the roof to make it lighter and two large terracotta urns – one on top of the other – for a chimney pot. All sorts of scrap pieces had been upcycled to make garden furniture and ornaments. We wished that we could have met him because the overall effect was charming. After this, we crossed a lot of oak woodland and copses until we reached Vassili's farm and said hello to the chickens, geese, goats and pigs. At this point we had to intervene to stop the larger of the dogs worrying a lone goat but Vassilis got her under control and we set off deeper into the woods. It was a paradise for dogs … well it was paradise, really.  My wood-collecting walking buddy was blown over by the amount of logs and wood lying about from dead trees but we were too far from civilisation to go collecting today! We uncovered an enormous mushroom, though - and an artichoke plus a handful of oranges. As we walked along Vassilis would dive into the hedgerows, walls and bushes finding oregano, marjoram, thyme and rosemary – all growing in abundance and showed us how to identify the young wild asparagus tips which we found so hard to see, but became experts quite quickly. Arriving back at the Taverna with armfuls of greens and herbs, we washed and sorted everything and Vassilis and his wife set to in making a wonderful meal. Hummus with chick peas and fresh olive oil, mixed salad with avocado, scrumped artichoke and herbs, asparagus omelette and pork cooked with fresh herbs and horta. Followed by more raki, and sliced fresh fruit. All delicious and great fun. We would like to go again at a different time of year to see what can be found. Building on our new experience, on our weekly walk this week, we easily spotted loads of asparagus tips and were surprised to see that there were so many of the plants in the hedgerows! We just hadn't noticed them before.

The early part of the week was taken up with Doctor's appointments and check ups, which seem to take days at a time and swallow any spare time we have these days. Tomorrow we have to go to Cosmote, the telephone company to negotiate a better deal on our telephone and broadband. We hope it won't be too gruesome as Thursday is market day in Rethymno and always really busy.  

Christos anesti! Alithos anesti!

I LEFT MY SLIPPERS IN SINGAPORE!

View over Rangitoto

The Croziers have returned to Crete after a couple of months on the other side of the world. The north shore of New Zealand is definitely a world away from sleepy Crete, but it was a wonderful adventure and Pa Crozier looks very fit on his return having left in rather poor shape after the fall at home and a chesty cough caught on the journey.

First of all, we need to record our thanks and admiration for the Passenger Assistance offered by Olympic Airways (Heraklion and Athens), Emirates (Athens, Dubai and Singapore) and Air New Zealand who took care of Mr Crozier providing wheelchair assistance at all these airports. We can hardly believe that we made it right across the world and back with such good care and the only damage was a cracked suitcase on arrival at Heraklion. Nothing went missing at all! Hats off to all those people because it worked!

Dubai mosque

Our first two day stopover in Dubai was interesting. Somehow we had managed to book a super luxurious apartment with two bathrooms, fully fitted kitchen, two TVs in a sitting room and bedroom with air conditioned super-duperness! We were awakened by a call to prayer from the Mosque next door and enjoyed the Dubai sunrise. Sadly though, the free self-serve breakfast was held in the worst possible design of dining room I have ever experienced with no thought given to the dynamics of 200 people needing to get plates of food and cups of coffee from one side of a scrum to another. It was like eating in the middle of a market place and having to fetch trays of food for K (who cannot manage this with crutches) and then repeat the process for myself was exhausting. We will never get used to chicken sausages either! A bottle of wine and four beers from room service set us back over £100 – so we decided not to go there on the way back. We took a taxi ride across the city to a new build shopping mall .. a bit like Arabian Nights meets Bluewater and after having a cup of coffee at Costa(packet), we jumped in the taxi and returned again! Not very adventurous unless you like shopping but we knew we had no space in our suitcases!

Gardens by the Bay, Singapore

We looked forward to Singapore – thinking that it would be a little more relaxed only to find that we had booked a hotel with a very small room. The two twin beds were in a sort of corridor – one on the left, the other on the right with a flight of steps in the middle. There was no window, no bedside tables, no wardrobe and it cost us a lot of money. This is the place that I left my slippers under the bed but nothing would induce us to book the same place for the journey home even to retrieve my slippers! We were too far away from shops and cafes but were surrounded by “Spas” and 24 hour massage parlours! We took a taxi to the Gardens by the Bay and tried to get a feel for the city. Masses of skyscrapers, amazing plant life and trees in the steamy heat, and shopping malls everywhere. I took a walk around the neighbourhood to investigate Silk and Carpet shops and to look at beautiful Mosques but sadly Raffles was surrounded by hoardings and I didn't manage to taste a Singapore Sling. We were amused that every taxi driver in Singapore asked us how old we were!

Singapore Botanical Gardens - fabulous

Our arrival in Auckland was lovely. The grandchildren had prepared banners, flowers and all sorts of goodies to welcome us. The weather was atrocious and about three or four cyclones passed over or near Auckland during our visit. Parts of South Island were badly flooded and under emergency status. Fortunately, in Auckland there was plenty of sunshine in between.

Walkway around the East Coast Bays

We stayed in Mairangi Bay. All the bars and coffee shops were buzzing. Men were doing deals, joggers and dogwalkers dropped by for marvellous Brunches. Kiwis certainly do the big breakfast thing with panache serving fabulous breakfast dishes (some healthy, some not so healthy) but they all came to the table with appealing style and we have a lot of dieting to do as a result!

I did school pick-ups, swimming galas, reading books, birthday parties, trampolining and walking! The children are wonderfully healthy, engaging and interesting. We revisited places I had been to on my first visits to NZ which had changed from open countryside to completely new towns in the meantime. The houses are LUXURIOUS, cars are LUXURIOUS, people lived in great locations in the most beautiful surroundings. The cost of living is horrendous! We know that our pension would never go anywhere! However, all our plans went well. Pa Crozier went fishing a couple of times, we ate fish and chips a lot, ate curries a lot, ate eggs benedict a lot and generally had a jolly time while drinking in all the lovely countryside and seaside places.

For the journey home, we were not quite so much innocents abroad. We recommend the Ibis Hotel on Bencoolen in Singapore and the Airport Premier Inn in Dubai which were comfortable and had everything at hand with pleasant service. I eventually tasted the Singapore Sling, which was interesting but nothing like as good as Cretan fresh orange juice!

After taking in all these palaces to the gods of materialism mid journey, it was great to return to our little home in Crete. Look what was waiting for us!

Flowers, potatoes, oranges, lemons and eggs!

I wanted to post many more lovely photos with this blog from my new camera, but each photo has taken about half an hour to upload, so I will have to do some homework on photo storage files.

YULE BLOG

The blog has been a bit quiet over the festive period due to partying and dashing about, but also Mr Crozier collided with a dehumidifier in the middle of the night and had a bad fall a day or two before Christmas which cramped our style a bit and meant that we had to stay at home. A couple of weeks and a lot of moaning and groaning later, Mr Crozier is back in the land of the living again and ready for some adventures with our far-flung family abroad. We are encased in bubble wrap in the meantime – just in case anything else happens!

Christmas and the lead up weeks were just beautiful in Crete. We watched, enthralled, all the snowscapes from the USA and the UK, while looking outside at the pristine snow covered mountains sparkling in the bright skies around us. I made lots of country walks with my energetic friend-come-personal trainer and she managed to collect huge quantities of driftwood from beaches and abandoned olive trimmings from the hedgerows. These keep her stove going without any charge, for the first part of winter at least. A few days ago, I parked the car in the quayside with K enjoying the sunshine glinting on the sea and took to the beaches on either side of him with large sacks to collect washed up plastic flotsam and jetsam. A truly ghastly prospect, right in front of our eyes, with plastic water bottles being the worst culprits. Thankfully, Greece has brought in new laws this January so that we all need to take shopping bags or be charged at the supermarket for the plastic bags which they had been doling out with wild abandon at every shopping place and stunning other travellers from Europe by placing plastic bagged items into their shopping bags! Aaghh! Hopefully, the message will catch on and give people a chance to think about the use of plastic and cut down a bit. I would love to sponsor kids to design enticingly large and attractive beach bins so that they will be tempted to throw away their rubbish, just to see how an animal's mouth will open or how things would tip away a bit like a marble run. Just a thought!

Just for fun,  I took some photos of our big day out! Guess where we are? Comfy leather sofas, wall mounted TV, coffee machine, coffee table loaded with New Year cakes and bowls of sweets? A new, winter taverna or home from home?  See if you can get a close up of the Christmas decorations ... it will give you a clue!

This is the MOT testing station where we needed to take the car this week.   It is so comfy there, its a bit like a nice day out!

The New Year break was a bit more gloomy, with heavy rain and thunderstorms, which cooled down the atmosphere a lot and made us bring out the stewpots and stoke up the log burner. I have been learning how to make socks at the Makers Group which is now meeting in temporary winter quarters and almost next door to the wool shop in Rethymno, so it is an ill wind that brings nobody any good with it! Remember NOT to order a cappuccino, though … Mountain tea is a better option.

We kept warm on wet and gloomy New Year's Eve making marmalade and spreading sticky mess all around the kitchen. We have lots of boxes to tick and chores to complete before leaving Crete for a few weeks. The dodgy electricity supply means that the freezer needs to be emptied and turned off. This action results in some strange and eclectic meals, but the first one was a raging success. Some swordfish steaks defrosted and oven-baked with the first home made chips I have eaten in years! Today will be prosaic veggie pasta bake and we look forward to a variety of ready made dishes – left over from previous cook days. A rummage round the freezer uncovered all the black bananas from the summer which ripened all too quickly and we will be making banana bread later. A box load of home made pickles and treats made superb Christmas presents from friends nearby. The post hasn't arrived yet with parcels that K ordered ages ago for Christmas but we should know this by now!

Crete is resting and very nearly in hibernation. It was the busiest summer for many years so all the workers are exhausted. However, there is a movement to make Crete a winter destination also with more flights via Ryan Air. Certainly this winter has been fabulous so far and would have given anyone a welcome boost of fresh air and sunshine - but people who own and work businesses here would be reluctant to do it year round as the winter months are set aside for harvesting the olives and other building and refurbishment work.

Intrepid CIC members organised a swim on New Year's Day in Rethymnon and there is, of course the annual blessing by the Orthodox Priest at the harbour ceremony at Epiphany as he casts the Cross into the water to be retrieved by young lads who dive in after it. The winner is rewarded by a year of blessing – as the tradition goes. Otherwise, the port and harbour are deliciously quiet and nice to walk around to enjoy sunrises and sunsets as well as wonderful walks though the glowing abundance of the orange orchards and the olive groves which have only recently given up their treasure!

Chronia Pola! Happy New Year!