BEACHCOMBING AND BINOCULARS

I had the chance to use the birthday present given to me by my brother today and went up to the roof terrace to take a good look at the mountain scenery through some super-duper binoculars. It was marvellous Spring weather when it is warmer out of doors than inside and we had breakfast outside upstairs overlooking the olive groves, farms and mountains. The far distant peaks were blue and white with heavy coverings of snow, the nearer hills were dark green with trees profiled along the tops and the nearer slopes folded like patchwork eiderdowns where fields and groves of olives were planted in straight rows which tipped in dozens of different directions. We spied an eagle in the distance and this made us think of getting out the binoculars. They revealed all sorts of treasures I had not seen before like small chapels nestling amongst copses of trees, a man burning charcoal in the valley and a farmer loading produce and supplies in and out of his truck.

I would love to say that the roof terrace is a wonderful place for meditation, Bible study and writing or painting but the proximity of our neighbours with their choice of music, the arrival of one truck after another selling garden produce, general stores, vegetables and fish has caused a bit of a stir at each new arrival and we needed a change of scene.

With the temperature at 17 C and a sky with fair weather clouds of every shape, we drove down to our favourite beach at Panormo and did a bit of beach combing – finding lots of driftwood thrown up by the recent storms along with an unspeakable collection of plastic bags, bottles, crates and other debris all left at the seaweed line along the beach. I don’t think it will be long before we form a beach patrol to gather up all these hazards to the wildlife along the coast in an otherwise idyllic bay.

Panormo was all but deserted, so it made an amazing walk with most of the village and three beaches all to ourselves. We stopped at a small café opposite a formal garden where the elderly play tavoli and chess during the summer months and noticed that they had been trimming the branches of the trees leaving small sticks of wood ideal for kindling. So after we had asked in the café, we took a handful each home with us to get the stove going in the evening along with half a dozen pieces of driftwood.

Today was quite lazy but tomorrow will be full on with a visit to a garden place to order the bamboo terrace roofing which will shade the space outside the kitchen and to choose plants. Then Art School for the morning, off to the telephone office OTE after that to order our telephone line, a visit to the bank and also to the place where you have to register for a tax number – back to Anna’s where I will post the latest blogs and photos and finally dinner back in Kastellos in the evening.

K and I reflected last night that we seem to have been living off the fat of the land since we arrived with gifts of food given to us, a lunch paid for by Anna and Bonzo’s portion of chicken (which has provided two lovely supper dishes), eggs from our lovely neighbours and an invitation to dinner tomorrow. We really will have to think about holding our celebration party before too long in an effort to pay our way!

CIVILISATION FOR A DAY OR TWO Saturday 12th and Sunday 13th March

We woke up this morning feeling a bit like a pair of kippers and the smell of woodsmoke was really strong! However the warmth of the house the evening before made up for this and I set about opening the windows for a little while and mentally preparing myself for a shower in the arctic bathroom.

After a 30 second dash under the hot water and a race to find lots of layers of clothes and went to hang the towels on the line and stopped for a moment to enjoy the sound track. My word, people in large cities would pay good money to buy a CD with this wonderful sound. I called K outside and asked how many sounds he could identify:

Sheep and goats bleating; sparrows chattering, doves cooing, cocks crowing, the odd bark from a distant dog and a lonely bee buzzing away over our new log pile. It was a FANTASTIC start to a sunny Saturday morning and not a train, plane or car anywhere.

We packed up a few bags to take with us because we were spending a few days in Rethymnon. There is an exhibition of students’ work to be held at the art school in the village called Kastellos a short hop up the mountain road from the town. We can also get some important jobs done and visit the bank while we are there.

After the idyllic start to the morning a loud mechanical sound fired up very close by and it sounded very much like a bulldozer. K went to investigate. The stone walls in the village are beautifully made but sadly a lot of the old houses are beginning to fall down leaving ruins that would take vast sums of money to renovate. Our friend Rik the Builder has rebuilt the old village mill and it looks wonderful now finished with lovely mountain vistas in all directions. However, the lane to our house had a wall that even I had noticed was beginning to lean rather dangerously and it had been decided to bulldoze down the empty place before it fell on somebody. Thus we had packed up the car but our passage was completely blocked until the work was finished.

Eventually we set off for Rethymnon with a shopping list and another list of all the people we needed to call from Anna’s telephone. She had a good town based telephone and broadband package which allowed unlimited phone calls to worldwide destinations. At 4.30 pm we drove from Rethymnon up the Spilli Road to Kastellos which we have known for many years because it was here that K’s sister Zoe had owned a little house when she lived in Crete in years past. By co-incidence, a new School of Art had opened there and was operating from the School House which had been completely renovated by the Local Municipality and was now being used as a community resource/museum/gallery and now Art School. On one of our first trips to Crete, Zoe had seen the potential of the place and tried to persuade us to buy it and do it up! I was interested to see what the students had been up to and managed to sign up for the next half term of lessons – every Tuesday morning. Several of our friends were attending already and it was good to catch up with a little party and lots of laughs. The couple who bought Zoe’s house (an eminent neuro-surgeon and his wife) also came to look at the exhibition but were sadly only in Crete for a week before going back. They seem to have all sorts of problems with planning permission for the house but Kastellos is very near some Minoan archeological workings and this has an impact in the area for any building work people want to do to their houses.

What Anna’s house made up for in warmth and home comforts, it definitely lacked in delivering a good night’s sleep. All the youngsters coming home from nightclubs in the early hours of the morning seemed to be shouting outside her door for hours and it was like trying to sleep at the end of a megaphone since all the stone alleyways amplified the sound and the people were not lowering their voices in any sense! We decided to return to our village sooner than anticipated.

The sky and sea were blue and flat but the roads were so quiet that I had my first taste of driving in Greece on the way back. We noted that the garden centre where we wanted to get supplies was not open on Sundays and we will have to try again tomorrow. In the meantime, we cleared our small patch of giant size weeds and started off a couple of packs of seeds we had brought with us from England. I also hoped that my Mum’s green fingers would rub off on me as I scattered the seeds from the pepper I was cooking for lunch and planted a few lemon pips to see if we could generate a few plants of our own. As I cleared a little patch in front of out garden wall where some bathroom tiles had appeared from nowhere, I spied our resident toad nestling beneath – bright orange in colour with black spots. We can only surmise that some softhearted local spied him there and found him some temporary cover!

As we were out in the front of the house, our friendly neighbours, Costas and Angeliki had an identical problem with their log burner and chimney so it was not just us townies with fireplace troubles. The model of their log burner is alarmingly called Napalm 78! It was great that K and I could lend them our camping mallet and tall step ladder to help them clear their chimney but they still could not accept even this little help without bringing round 6 more lovely fresh eggs to say ‘Ehfaristo. How sweet is this village? The fire roars and our toes are warm!

HEARTH AND HOME

My mother gives a wonderful description of the day that the Sweep used to call when she was a young school girl. She would arrive home from school and be greeted by her mother swathed from top to toe in headscarves and overalls and the house would be completely encased in dustsheets. The day the Sweep came signified total chaos in what was otherwise an impeccable household routine.

Our attempts to get the log burner going in very cold weather had been somewhat fruitless and we set about emptying out all the unburnt offerings from the day before and having a good sweep up around the fireplace. K found his rubber headed camping mallet and starting tapping the chimney all the way up and particularly around the two elbows just above the stove.

If anyone has read the tale of Lord Peter Wimsey’s Busman’s Honeymoon, they will remember what happened when someone decided to clear a blocked flue at Tallboys by firing a shotgun up the chimney and how he had wisely backed out of the room foreseeing what was going to happen next. With this picture in my mind, and my mother’s chimney sweep tale, I moved as much as I could as far out of range of the chimney as possible and prepared for the worst.

Eventually, persistent hammering forced the joints in the stove pipe apart and we had several large polythene bags poised with their necks wide open to catch whatever emerged. Fortunately it was mostly damp soot and clinker which we were able to scoop out of the bend in the pipe and sweep up without too much hassle. This seemed much too easy, but we pressed all the metal joints back together again and swept the floor. This was as much as we could do before we waited for Anna to arrive as we would be driving her to the airport for her afternoon flight to Athens

The drive the airport on the main E75 road snaked along for 40 miles or so between the mountains and the sea. It was good to see the normal dark aqua colour of the sea instead of the stormy waves from a few days back. The air was cold but the sun shone and it was good to see all the olive groves and sheep grazing on the lower slopes of the mountain chain which runs from East to West of Crete. Anna treated to us to a late lunch at a Café Grill she knows quite close to the airport and the waiter brought plates of food containing enough on each to feed a family of five. Kimon and I promptly invented our dog called “Bonzo” and requested a “packetto” for our dog to put in all the remaining chicken which we could not manage. What with this and the contents of Anna’s fridge we will not need to foodshop for a week.

We returned to the house to re-engage with the stove project. In case of leaks in the pipework, we had heard that locals used bread dough to plug any gaps – so I set about making a loaf of bread from ingredients I had in the house from our previous holiday trip. Without scales or a recipe book I managed to make a better loaf of bread than usual and had kept back a small lump of dough on hand for an emergency seal.

After a little hesitation, we gingerly set the fire again and had another go. We checked all the joints in the chimney and went outside to see if smoke was coming out of the chimney pot. I can’t begin to tell you how welcome it was to see such a good blaze and a steady plume of smoke from the tee shaped chimney stack outside. We had a ridiculously great sense of achievement and our long delayed pipe and slippers evening had arrived at last with the heavenly smell of freshly baked bread in the house in the background. Our pyjamas and slippers were warming gently, we had a warm drink to hand and we watched the glowing embers in the back of the stove with songs from the Eagles playing gently in the background.

Yes, it was a good day.

LIGHTING THE FIRE – Thursday 10 March

 The day started well today as the sun came out and with a blue sky and white fluffy clouds, we felt a bit more optimistic. We made a plan to set off for Perama again to try and sort out a telephone line and price up a few options.

Earlier in the morning, K had taken on the Log Burner, emptied the ash pan, which was full of rusty water and stuck the insulating rope into the door of the wood stove with the tube of cement supplied by the hardware store (fingers crossed)! Whenever we ask questions about these sorts of things in the village, we know we will get a battery of conflicting advice and the vehement discussion, arm waving and loud argument which will last all night and probably go on for another week. Some locals offered to deliver some logs so with a bit of luck we hoped to have a warm fire in the house as evening fell and were thankful for such good friends.

We found a kind of garden centre/agricultural supply place and took a quick drive around Roumeli, which we had heard was the place where lots of ‘Eenglishe’ had bought houses. It was very high up with steep roads and tracks with newbuild houses on a fairly large and ornate scale – so the views over the olive groves, fields and the sea were spectacular but I would not like to have to drive up those narrow, unfenced roads on a regular basis as it looked a bit dodgy to me. The scenery on the road today was wonderful and the mountains have more snow than I have ever seen before. Even the road verges are bathed in yellow flowers and I notice that there are buds on a lot of trees. We kept spying fallen trees and twigs for kindling but thought it would be too damp to be worth gathering. Another year we would be more organised.

We arrived home with some pots, window boxes and a large bag of potting compost which I plan to plant up as soon as possible because this little house definitely needs some plant cover!

(Artistic licence needed for our little house plus lots of plants!)

In the afternoon, some friends of Kimon dropped off the wettest load of logs we have ever seen and K was cross because he would have to store them for next year for them to be dry enough to use. I can hear him tossing them onto the roof of the shed and muttering to himself outside!

However, we have still not sussed out the phone situation as the options are hard enough to work out in English, but doubly difficult in Greek and we do not want to get tied into a contract which works out to be more costly than we can afford. We have two more places to visit yet before we can make a decision.

I had almost primed myself for a disappointment but you never know. I had covered two easy chairs with warm tartan rugs in readiness for a restful evening in front of our own roaring fire. After selecting some dry wood and kindling K set about lighting the enormous stove. It gave off a good blaze straight away and he shut the door expectantly. Almost immediately, thick grey smoke started billowing out all around the door and the bottom of the chimney. A quick inspection confirmed our worst fears: the chimney was blocked and would need to be cleared before we could enjoy a pipe and slippers evening or even relative comfort chez nous. K’s sister is spending a week or two in Athens and has offered to let us stay at her house in Rethymno if we would like - a very tempting proposition until the weather gets a bit warmer.

I reluctantly retired to the kitchen to serve up some very hot and filling pasta to warm us up as the sun went down. We may have to spend the evening at Christina’s taverna again but a glass of the roughest raki will soon warm us through. Yassou!

CANDLE POWER AND PASS THE RAKI

We drove to Rethymnon on Tuesday taking advantage of a break in the clouds but as we bumped along the main road we could see that the level of the sea was very high, the waves were cloudy white and quite a gale was blowing onto the shore. We stopped along the sea front and looked at the scene – so different from the height of summer with calm deep blue seas, shops and hotels all the way along thronging with people and goods for sale but now completely empty and looking rather miserable. The palm trees were bent over double under the force of the gale and we were glad to find a parking space and a cosy spot in Anna’s snug dining room. We chatted over lunch and met up with our friendly builder later as he turned up after a day out working in this horrible weather. He reported that the port had been closed as the sea was breaking over the sea wall and flooding the port car park; he had seen a small car floating about beyond the police blockade to stop anyone from venturing in there.

We drove home quickly to make sure that we were indoors before dark but we had an evening of power failures – one after another – and Kimon looked at the fuse box and checked the trip switch on the meter which kept turning the power off every half an hour or so. This was really miserable – particularly as the log burner was not yet operational and we were depending upon electricity more than usual. I pronounced that getting the log burner going was top priority!!! We decided after the next power cut off that we would walk down to the village taverna and soak up a bit of their warmth and woodsmoke – so bundled up in every layer we could find, we set off and had a coffee with the locals. Christina, the owner made me very welcome and we had a chat about what had happened since I was last in Crete. As we talked I saw the footage from the Greek news on an enormous flat screen TV which showed Athens brought to a complete standstill by heavy falls of snow. It felt like complete “déjà vu” of all that had been happening in the UK earlier in the winter. Christina said that snow did not happen very often in Greece (last fall 15 years ago) and when it did everything came to a halt.

Well, you can guess what I said!

In the meantime, a friendly guy at the other side of the room beckoned K into the car and they went to attack the electricity meter and trip switch with Cretan gusto. “You push it like a very nervous man” he explained and K began to get the knack after that.

Christina asked me why we had chosen to live in the village and we explained the background. We had looked at three houses. The best was this one and when we visited the village, the local people had been so very warm and welcoming. She said that it was a good village, very convenient for towns, travel, beaches – not too high in the mountains and not too close to the water. After this conversation, she disappeared for a moment or so and returned with a bunch of narcissi to take back to the house. They smelled wonderful and were a perfect reminder that although the winter was harsher than usual, Spring was just around the corner.

Alarmingly, we are also expected to have a party. The idea of catering for an entire village with haphazard stove facilities and a diet of fish only (during Lent) would exercise even the most competent of chefs (which does not include me) and I am hoping that they will be prepared to wait until after Easter. The elderly lady next door said that it would be good to have wine and ice cream. We could easily manage that!

K and I wobbled back to the house and dealt with two more power blackouts and decided that having a hot drink and going to bed would be the best option. I put every blanket, poncho, coat and woollie we had with us on the bed and was fast asleep in no time. There had been a general power cut in the early hours of the morning and the power was still off when we got up on Wednesday. Kimon said that there was a bit of snow on the car, ice on the tiles outside the front door and a dark, depressing sky full of angry clouds. K unearthed the picnic stove which he had optimistically packed for our journey and we boiled up a kettle of water for morning tea, grimly taking an inventory of what we could have for breakfast. I ended up having sesame bread, yoghourt and jam with scalding hot tea and K settled for breakfast sausage with some Dijon mustard bought on route which was hot enough to burn holes in your mouth.

I learned a new phrase today. “Poli Crio”. Every time I said Kalimera to anyone, they responded “Poli crio” with a lot of crossed arm grappling motions. Easy to work out – it means “It’s VERY COLD”. I’m amazed at my progress and wonder if learning Greek will be easier than I thought.

After ages sorting out bags, trying to find things and fossicking around, we drove to Perama – about 5 miles away to find a good hardware shop and bought all sorts of manly things like masonry nails, a step ladder, cement for the log burner (acrylic?) and fire lighters. I had noticed loads of trees down by the side of the road and thought longingly of a roaring log fire in the “Jackie” but we were not quite there yet. I can see that the Summer will have arrived before we get the remedial work done and find a source a good dry logs. Any expert advice on log burners will be gratefully received. How to fix the insulating rope which is set into the door of the stove (any particular cement?) and how to ensure that the chimney which goes up through the ceiling and floor upstairs does not set fire to the floor boards and thus the house on fire. Sensibly, K is a bit cautious but I bet our NZ friends will have all the answers! Enough for today; I have to go and run about for a bit to get warm.

MRS MOP

We have not made much mention of the little house in Crete because it is a little hard to describe and any photos – taken from the other side of the alleyway do not do it justice. However, we are cooped up inside today because the cold and wet weather which has been chasing us across Europe has caught up with Crete again today and it is blowing a hoolie outside!

We met up with Kimon’s sister Anna yesterday after we had emerged from a sleepy cacoon late and flopped about unpacking suitcases and taking our time over unloading the car. The only sounds we could hear on waking up were birds singing and a few bleatings from goats or sheep nearby. All our neighbours were mighty interested to see all the “pragmata” which emerged from our car. Heaven knows how they will react when the lorry arrives. K and I are rapidly discussing new cupboards and shelves needed for the kitchen and bookcases required for the living room to accommodate all this stuff. 47 box loads plus miscellaneous bits of furniture. All I really need is a woolly jumper at this moment in time but I have unearthed a few cotton tee shirts from the bedroom cupboard and have layered them with a light weight poncho over the top. K and I look a real sight for sore eyes. Our lovely friend, Angeliki came to the house with her apron bulging with 6 lovely fresh laid eggs as a welcome to Crete present. I hope the novelty tins of English tea I brought with me are a reasonable offering in return.

As all the shops were shut, Anna advised that one or two tavernas might be open in Panormo and we jumped in the car to see what we could find open. Wonders that the Aphrodite Supermarket was open and we could buy a stock of necessities for the larder. They gave us a loyalty membership card – just like Tesco – except the benefits were on display on the shelves – more pragmata, but still! There were lovely large beef tomatoes, bread, cheeses, potatoes and onions – so in spite of it being a bank holiday, we would still have all we needed. I had packed at least 3 large packs of English Tea and a few other flavours to bring with us and K had packed an enormous jar of Marmite and several packs of Oxo cubes requested by friends.

A welcome light at the Italian Restaurant beckoned us in and we were delighted to find a wood stove burning and lovely food and wine on the menu. We pondered whether we would have to order something fishy or not but they did not seem to be bothered and were happy to see some customers on such a foul day. (You can tell by these posts that our reducing diet has not yet begun – but we will have to go native during Lent and try to lose some of this journey weight … starting tomorrow). We felt much more cheerful as we drove home with a lovely hot meal inside us but the rain had not stopped all day and snow had been forecast for the day following.

The next morning we were woken by the sound of pouring water, dripping water and strong winds but fortunately no snow … yet! Worryingly, we had noticed two damp patches on the upstairs floor of the house which would need the attention of our friendly builder. (Hopefully still under guarantee as it was only finished last year. Hey ho, we will see! ) We can’t wait for the weather to improve because it is really dark inside the house with all the doors and windows shut which is not a problem in the heat of the summer but it’s bit dingy while the weather is like this.

K and I have a list of jobs to do. We need to fix the door of the log burner as the insulating rope-like material on the door needs attention and we also need to know where to get hold of some logs to burn.

We have to find the telephone company and work out the best deal for telephone calls and broadband as there are several to choose from. And after cleaning the house we left in the UK from top to bottom – there are cupboards to clean out and window sills to rescue from cobwebs, sand, cement dust here too so I am away with my bucket and mop for a while. A woman’s work is never done!

MATCHSTICKS FOR THE LAST LEG

This title sounds a bit like a Blue Peter project but refers to the final leg of the journey from Heraklion to the little stone house on the way to Rethymnon.

We were a bit put out by Minoan Lines as they had arbitrarily rescheduled the ferry bookingswe had made without giving us very much information and frankly made marmalade of our 60^th birthday celebration trip. We only stayed on top of the game by our own efforts in making contact and trying to sort out things in various places and varying languages. Our ferry boat tickets from Piraeus had been made for an overnight crossing boarding at 9.30 p.m. but we had received a very confused message to tell us back along the road in Italy that the ferry from Piraeus had been postponed and that we had to sail at 4.00 p.m. instead. After phone calls, faxes, messages and visits, we gathered that our time in Venice had been cut short and we had to rush our drive from Patras to Piraeus to fit a different schedule. Finally, when we had lugged all our luggage up from the car 4 floors to our cabin for the last crossing, we belatedly found out that having raced to get an earlier ferry that it was not an overnight but a high speed ferry which disgorged us in Iraklion at 11.00 pm at night. This was just the sort of news that Kimon did not want to hear as he was very tired and the thought of driving through the mountains late at night when he was whacked out already was almost too much to think about.

However, I did get time to get hooked on to the Internet with my Forthnet Card and posted 3 blogs which had been hanging about and waiting for the right connections! The crossing was a bit choppy but we had a light meal, strong coffee and a one-hour rest on our bunks before bundling all our bags down 4 flights back to the car deck again.

All the Greek drivers were in their cars with the engines revving and lights on long before the ship had docked. As we moved down the ramp we were met by knots of buses, taxis and people thronging in all directions as they made their way home after Carnival. The added bonus of arriving the weekend that we chose was that ”Clean Monday” followed the celebrations of the weekend and all the shops were closed. Everyone would now be fasting until Easter. This did not bode well for our first breakfast in Crete but for the time being our eyes were glued to the road looking for a road sign to either Rethymnon or Chania. Part of the festivities of Carnival had obviously been to graffiti over all the road signs so that they were very nearly unreadable. More by luck than by judgement, we found that we were on the right road and heading around lots of mountain bends in the pitch dark. However an hour or so later we pulled off the road into our village and parked with several prayers of thanksgiving and sighs of relief. The village was in complete darkness and so we unloaded as many wheelie cases as we could manage and crept quietly along the alleyways to the house. K’s stirling efforts behind the wheel were truly heroic and he did deserve a medal after such a marathon.

We woke up late in the day on “Clean Monday” and set about sweeping and cleaning all the accumulated dust and leaves of six months from the house and courtyard. K went to see if the little store was open down the road but, no, it was a bank holiday and we made the most of the stock of provisions we had brought from England or stowed away on the journey. We were told later that in Crete, Clean Monday was the day for eating fish and flying kites! We will need to unravel that mysterious combination at a later date.

PS All the Greek weather forecasts predict snow in the next day or two!!!!!