Whoppers and Weightwatchers

It was a noisy start to the day as the “I have whoppers straight from the thalassa” fish van obviously had a good catch on the morning tide and roared round to the village at 7.00 am to sell his wares. It was far too early for us and we do wish he would turn his loudspeaker down! One day I will go out and investigate what whoppers actually are … but in the meantime, we live in amused ignorance of the “I have Whoppers and a very Loud Megaphone Fish Truck Ltd”.

Last week, we had friends staying with us which was fun – also slightly alarming as Croziers Aloft is not really geared up for a proper B & B clientèle being one floor short of a bathroom and our friends running an English Tourist Board approved … proper B & B in the UK. However, they were very adaptable, it was a good week and we explored all that our local coastline had to offer in Panormo and Bali. On Tuesday we drove up to Margerites to look at the ceramics and see the potters at work but it was a little quieter than usual. Eleni, our favourite restaurateur, raki maker, post mistress and general good egg treated us to a lovely home-cooked lunch … (I would really like her yemistes - stuffed tomato recipe) … and we wandered around looking for small items which could be packed easily. On Wednesday, we set off for Spilli with a bucket full of empty water bottles to fill up at the lion's head fountains in the centre of the town. The water was deliciously cool and we enjoyed a surreptitious ice cream when no one else was looking! The traders in the town had lots of hand crafted and embroidered items for sale and having lived through the worst winter in Crete for 50 years, I could fully understand why the Cretan folk would need to have such skills and crafts to keep them occupied while holed up away from the winter rains.

Spilli for Icecream.  The bucket was a bit of a giveaway!

On Thursday, we revisited Bali and spent the morning snorkelling around the rocky beach. Half way through the day K disappeared and we kept looking along the beach wondering where he had got to. Eventually, looking the picture of insouciance, he arrived by sea chugging along on a pedalo – fully clothed – and we all had a turn around the bay making a complete hash of steering, all shouting instructions at once and laughing like complete teenagers. If we thought getting ON the pedalo was difficult, this proved nothing like as difficult as GETTING OFF. Needless to say K's shirt and trousers got a good soaking and he had to spend another half an hour buying a dry T shirt before lunch. Still it gave a full morning's amusement to the other people on the beach who assured us they would give us a very wide berth and swim as far away in the opposite direction as possible. This was not easy to achieve either with our erratic efforts at steering! Meanwhile, out to sea, another couple had overturned their kayak and we watched them – slightly alarmed – trying to turn it over and get back in. Discretion being the better part of valour, I ran as fast as I could to the boat hire hut and persuaded the young man to take out a motor boat and rescue them as they were just out of his sight line. Thankfully, we all emerged unscathed from our nautical episodes on Thursday!

Pedalo-ing in Bali

Realising that we were running out of time before our friends had to get their flight home, we squeezed a trip to Camping Elizabeth where we met up with K's sister and made a quick visit to Rethymno in the evening. We just managed to have a quick wander through the old Venetian part of the town and walk around the harbour. We could not believe the week went so quickly and it was all too soon before the hire car had to be returned and K drove our pals back to Heraklion. They had never had as much red wine before and we had never eaten so much ice cream!

The Taverna at Panormo

The 13 May was the Red Cross Coffee and Cake Morning at our friends' Bob and Evvie's house at Maroulas. It is always a fixture of the CIC and about 100 people both Cretan and other English speakers turned up to this fundraiser. I nervously turned up with Apricot Muffins cooked with Cretan flour which never does what I expect it to do – but they all seemed to go!! The financial constraints are beginning to bite in Greece and people do not have so much ready cash, but we still raised over 1000 euros to support the Red Cross medical volunteers with much needed supplies, a portable defibrillator had been located from an English charity and there was still enough to make up food parcels for people in the big cities who had no means of support. It was LOADS of work for Bob and Ev but a wonderful opportunity to meet up and ... MOUNTAINS OF CAKE!!!!!

 There are a lot of people on strict diets this week as a result of everything we had last week!
 A-DI-OS for now.

A Crozier by any other name is Crazier.

Lots of people have asked about our Croziers title theme since it is not a family name at all and has little, if any relationship with the dictionary definition. Hereby hangs a bit of a tale which started on family camping holidays at least 20 years ago. Our three children were always a bit scathing about camping at all, the girls all too willing to complain about holidays taken without mod cons. On top of this, their mother embarrassed them completely by recalling all the woodcraft skills learned in the Girl Guides and making tripod stands and washing up racks and successions of awnings on every camping holiday with whatever was available nearby (usually sticks and string). It was too uncool for words. Our children's parents were dinosaurs of the first order.

One memorable holiday we remembered to take good books to read but forgot to take a fly swat and – as the book of choice at the time was about the Battle of Hastings where the combatants went into the fray armed only with their crosiers – this humble option for the front line stuck in my mind. With this in the back of my mind, I had tried to fashion a fly swat out of sticks and string which after a few hours of baffling construction still resembled a prehistoric tennis racket. It was of course completely useless as a fly swat;  the top flew off the handle at each swipe and would have killed a man at a hundred paces. For some weird reason the useless article earned the errant title of “my crozier”. Ever after this, the silly name stuck and was applied to ad hoc, make do and mend, somewhat pragmatic, often Heath Robinson solutions for day to day needs. Such is the stuff of family tradition in the making and since then, all of us try to find new ways to outdo one another by neatly solving problems and thinking outside the box. To constitute the definition of a true Crozier, it has to be creative, fun, cost nothing ... and its usually naff!

As time went on and many items around the family home were mended, redesigned or given a quick, cheap fix for the time being, the children would say – looking skywards - “Hmmmm another Crozier!” Eventually, as they grew old enough to take holidays on their own, we received post cards addressed to the 'Croziers', soon T-shirts were designed with a Crozier trademark and one Christmas after K and I had just moved house, by co-incidence, two of the three children separately had “Croziers” house name plates made for us as memorable and hilarious Christmas gifts. Thus Croziering had become completely detached from its original meaning and had taken on a new life of its own.

Little did we know that in the passage of time my work would bring me into contact with one or two important personages who carried proper Croziers (a large shepherd's crook) as a symbol of office. When the children realised the real meaning of a Crozier, we were a little worried that colleagues would think that I was harbouring ideas above my station with ambitions as a Woman Bishop! Help, Nothing could have been further from the truth!

I had one earnest discussion several years ago with a Clergyman who had previously served as a Royal Naval Chaplain and, as a born raconteur, was interested to hear the background to our Crozier history. He responded that he never did know why Bishops still carried such an anachronistic item around with them until he was standing talking to a Bishop in a cemetery one day while his small son who had accompanied him wandered round the grounds quite happily. Suddenly, the child accidentally fell into an open grave which was deep, wet and very muddy. Quick as a flash, the Bishop lowered his trusty crozier into the grave and hooked out the unhappy child restoring it to his red-faced Dad.

I don't think our children really did “get” the make do and mend thing until the time came for them to have children of their own … and would you guess it … they are beginning to devise a whole new generation of croziered items to deal with the mechanics of household make-do management.

Meanwhile, for K's 60^th birthday last year, his birthday present from me could not have been anything else than a sort of crozier – in Crete called a katsouna – carried by all the shepherds hereabouts and walkers in the mountains.

The top floor of our house in Crete is an open loft and was full of swallows and other birds when we first bought it. After installing windows and having a proper stone staircase built to replace the wooden ladder, we could not decide how to divide it up into separate rooms and needed to live in the house for a while before making any big or expensive decisions about it – therefore, the title for the blog was easy – Croziers – A Loft!   

RAMBLING AND SCRAMBLING

Panormo to Skepasti

We made the most of the beautiful spring weather by planning a walk along what would be called the coastal path in the UK except that here along the North Coast of Crete there is not what you would call a footpath – as such. Still, Brod the Guide for this excursion had done the walk before and we met at Base Camp (the Cafeneon in Panormo outside the Bakers) at 0900 hours on Thursday. After a long glass of water and a metrio (small, semi-sweet Greek coffee in a tiny cup) we set off with our Archeology hats and fibre glass walking poles. I was a bit self-conscious carrying this hikers equipment but we soon found out that we would need them.

We trudged up the path past the cemetery and around the cliff amongst a large flock of goats – all with bells donging and clunking. The path was good at this point – well rutted with tracks of 4 x 4 vehicles until we turned into a dip between the coast cliff where the lighthouse is and another lower hill. The terrain was easy with herbs, wild flowers and small rocks on either side. Eventually though we reached the point of no return and planning our assault on bandit country, we telephoned HQ (Brod and Carolynn's house) in case a search party needed to find us!

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At this point the ramble turned into a bit of a scramble and we hair-pinned up amongst rocks and gorse bushes on a very steep slope with a fence along the top. I was using my walking pole to lever me over difficult jumps and puffing slightly, as we reached the fence and tried to decide how to tackle the next field which was entirely enclosed with wire fencing. Unhitching the wires of the fence and slipping through (this was much more of a struggle than it sounds and we were grateful for our walking poles to keep our balance) we mended all the fences as we went and crossed two or three enclosures until we reached a large radio/telephone antennae on the top of the hill. At this point, we sat down on large rocks amongst the butterflies, sipped from our water bottles and soaked up the vista of the mountain ranges, hill farms and patchwork carpets of olive and orange groves before us. The national road looked minuscule and we worked out the various towns and villages in the living map in front of us. The birdsong was uplifting and all around our feet, little crickets jumped in all directions to avoid our boots. If my hands had not been full, I would have been tempted to pick some of the wild oregano growing amongst the rocks. As it was, I took a few photos and slowed down to pull grass seeds, thistle and gorse prickles out of my trainers at regular intervals.

There was only one more gateway to negotiate after this but it was padlocked so another fence unhitching and hitching was required and after this the tracks were easy to follow from here on – all down hill. The height of the cliffs (all volcanic rock) were very high and the little coves over the edge remote, but it was much too high and steep to investigate too closely. We met an Albanian shepherd who asked if all the fences were OK and we assured him that all the fences were sound in our wake!

It was very hot – nearly mid day as we trudged down the back lanes into the village, but the walk (4 miles or so) had been well worth the initial scramble. After a cooling drink in Skepasti, we drove back to HQ in Panormo where Carolynn had made one of her famous soups. I think we will have to collaborate and produce a recipe book entitled Carolynn's Cretan Soupbowl Recipes; it is either the fresh produce, herbs or seasonings, (or C's secret ingredient) that makes them such a winner. Deeee-licious!

DOUBLE 'YOKED' EASTER

CHRISTOS ANESTI! It has been a peculiar sort of week with two Easters a week apart. Our Easter (“Catholic” Easter) was a busy time with a visit to an archaeological site on the Friday and Saturday, staying overnight at a Hotel at Agios Nikolaos. We studied maps and plans via a slide presentation from the Curator at Knossos from the British School of Athens on the Friday night in preparation for a full morning looking at the Minoan Site of Gournia (approx 1450-1500 BC) on Saturday.

After a hearty breakfast, the Group travelled by coach from Ag. Nik. along the coast to Gournia, well supplied with bottles of water and a sizeable crop of “Archaeologist” hats and sunshades because the weather was at last very hot. Turning our plans and maps round and about to fit the puzzles together we tripped up the steep cobbled pavements between the solid looking walls and traced out store rooms, staircases, window ledges and door steps. We could just make out the remains of columns in wider courts, ledges for pots in tiny downstairs rooms, carved out stones and small corners for some kind of divine ritual, the full explanation of which is now lost in the mists of time. However, it was a beautiful place and amongst all the dried up stone walls and porticos, wild flowers blazed, peeped and spread in carpets creating vistas which kept us snapping with our cameras. The explanations about different sorts of graves and burials in caves and house graves was a fitting reminder that it was Easter Weekend and the examples reminded me of photographs I had seen about tombs, caves and burial practices in Jerusalem later in history.

Kimon drove me to the Anglican Church on Easter Sunday and it was lovely to meet up with friends from previous visits and to talk to the Chaplain there who has been in Crete for about the same time as K and I have. He gamely offered to pay a visit to our end of the island later in the year when I can gather all the interested people from hereabout to meet up with him and find out whether there are enough of us to form a small group hereabouts.

Emerging from church with joyous Easter hymns, it was hard to remember that all the folk in the village were still in their Holy Week leading up to their Orthodox Easter celebration a week later. Their Holy Week is extremely austere, with no meat eaten at all and the fish van calling every day with its raucous tanoy to persuade one and all to come and buy! The Church bells rang at odd times without rhyme or reason to us. By Friday, the weather was grim and the village church bell tolled non-stop from 7.00 in the morning until 11.00 at night and as I had moved on from Good Friday, I felt curiously disabled by having a foot in two camps simultaneously! However, we joined the procession following a funeral byre made of flowers and candles and walked amongst about 100 people around Panormo, our nearest town, on Friday night. The weather was so wet and windy, all our candles blew out and we lost Kimon very early in the proceedings finding him miraculously by the car once it was all over!!!

After all this gloom on Friday, we expected lots of fireworks at midnight on Saturday night and joyful noise as people returned from church, but sadly, we fell asleep early and missed all the fun (if there was any). I discovered later that the long wait in all the churches is because the Easter light is brought to Greece from Jerusalem by plane and carried around the country by police cars and further light carriers to complete the journey. It is amazing to think that candles are then lit from the church locally and the light of Christ is taken back to every little home to make the sign of the cross with candle smoke under the door lintel after the midnight service. It is a lovely symbol.  The Olympic torch should have no problems - Greeks have obviously been solving the logistics for aeons!

No bells could be heard on Sunday morning as we closed the house and loaded things into the car. Everything was deadly quiet as we left for the South Coast where a large group of us were meeting at a family restaurant with a clay oven for Easter Sunday Lunch (Orthodox style). We ate Easter pastries, cracked our Easter eggs dyed red (Kimon had a 35-er and was declared champion), were presented with ¼ of a lamb to eat each which tumbled out of the clay oven once the door was chipped open. After all the austerity of the very long Orthodox Lent, Greeks are very glad to have a large meat feast on Easter Sunday which is always spent with their family. So our group was a convivial gathering with good friends and we enjoyed it immensely.

The next morning we took a gentle walk around the harbour, the beach path and the local camp site before slogging up the steep cliff path back to the hotel to pack our bags and drive home. We stopped off at Spilli – one of our favourite watering holes where streams tumble down from the mountains through waterfalls and fountains – and sat under the shade of the cool plane trees for elevenses before completing the second half of the journey. The icy cold water melting from the mountain tops was as refreshing as ever and we soaked up the atmosphere glad to enjoy the warm weather and arrival of tourists after the winter.

ALITHOS ANESTI!

KEEPING UP WITH THE CROZIERS

… Scream “Doors!”

The past few days have been idyllic and we took a walk to the edge of the village enjoying all the views of Mount Psiloritis just South of us and the White Mountains in the distance to the West. The hedgerows were bursting with life – marguerites with bright florescent colours, mallow, purple thistles and bugloss whilst the church yard bushes of jasmine and myrtle were breaking into new leaf and blossom. Bees and butterflies were working overtime and we turned to see three beautiful goats trotting up the path towards us trailing their leading ropes and followed by their owner, Andreas pushing a wheelbarrow. He walked at a slow pace and stopped to let the goats eat some of the wayside grass every so often and chatted to us about the wonderful weather. One of the goats was in kid and he was moving them closer to the village. On the other side of the stream we could see flocks of sheep amongst the long sunset shadows in the patchwork of fields opposite.

Villagers' chairs were hauled outside yesterday. The weather had been so good that I joined all the neighbours in our corner of the village sitting on chairs or doorsteps surrounding the small plateia outside the cafeneon. This was the same place where everyone had a ringside seat two years back on the day we bought our kitchen chairs and feeling a bit like an embarrassed Goldilocks,  I had tried various wooden seats sold from the back of a truck amidst a cacophony of banter.  At that time, I had been overcome at being the centre of attention while all the neighbours discussed our purchases but Greeks have no such inhibitions and shouted that we were paying far too much for those chairs!    However, yesterday afternoon was less of a circus; we all chatted quietly, Angelikki topped and tailed her beans, Kosta (recovered from his spell in hospital) brought a table over to us and Alekos with the big, metal, three wheeler diesel truck sheltered behind it when the sun got too hot. His wife sat reading sheets of paper with a towel over her head (honestly)– it must have been a difficult subject so we did not interrupt! Nikos the Wood, was nursing a sore knee and needed a walking stick and we tried to offer him some Ibuleve cream to ease the pain. It was a lovely peaceful moment with good people and we were glad to relax into it.  What a difference a year or two makes.

Over the previous few days, K had been making a screen door to keep insects and creepy crawlies out of our kitchen. We had progressed from various bead curtains, netting and so on to the realisation that nothing but a proper screen door would fit the purpose. The struts of wood had been painted with wood preservative and the basic framework was now in place. I kept looking at it and wondering what the end result was going to be and whether it would spoil the look of our front porch. Would it be another Crozier?* With each stage of the process, neighbours stopped and passed the time of day and asked what Kimon was doing making a 'Sieve' Door and how much it cost. After we had visited the hardware store for extra supplies of brackets, netting and a staple gun, he set about finishing it off and began working out how to set the hinges and hang it in place. After a lot of adjustment, the door was finished and fitted perfectly. True that the brushes kept falling off at the top and needed drilling and fixing, but after a few days, the job was complete. The result was that our vociferous neighbour immediately wanted one and Manolis said he wanted one and Nikos thought that he might like one to keep stray cats out and …. everyone in the little village who had never even thought of it before wanted one! To think that all the experience of our lives led to this moment in time – making 'Scream Doors' for houses in the village! We are not sure the lads at the Wood Factory will be very happy about it and K was not at all keen on going into business. In fact he had enough of Screaming Doors for quite a long while.

Fortunately, we have a lot of outings in the next few days, so we hope that the craze will have worn itself out by next week.

*It occurs to us that the significance of the Crozier trademark has never been fully explained in our blogs, but we will leave that for another day.

Adio-sas

SPRING IN OUR STEP

As the weather has turned warm and dry, I am up on the terrace with the laptop for the first time ever and struggling to see the cursor arrow against the screen reflections. However, it does receive the broadband signal outside – so it is lovely and warm and easily the best place to sit for some input for quiet time and Greek language study.

It is Sunday 25 March – Greek Independence Day. We hear strains of Greek Orthodox chants from the radio next door and the Greek flag and bunting has been in evidence around the town hall and police station in Perama, which is our nearest municipal town. This probably means that the shops will be shut on Monday also. A few minutes ago , the schoolchildren marched back from the village church followed by their teacher chattering excitedly after a service and lots of people have passed the house on their way home from “church parade” carrying cakes which, from where I sat, looked very like bath buns!

We have spent quite a few days with our friend Ian, who owns the restored olive mill at the corner of the village and who has mopped and swept it thoroughly prior to flying back to the UK by way of preparation, as a few people have expressed interest in buying it. We set our alarm for an early start this morning so that we could make him a bacon sandwich and coffee on the way to the bus stop and Heraklion airport from where his flight was leaving.

In the meantime, K is constructing a screen door for downstairs from wood which Ian has given us and we have benefited from a large box of books and other household comforts left behind! We have a couple of airport runs this week to meet friends as they begin to arrive for the summer season and slowly, slowly the tourist season will begin to start up for Easter and beyond.

It has been amazing to see how fast the plants have got under way around the house with the jasmine and vines sprouting new growth almost in front of our eyes. While Spring is sprunging, we are also having new ideas and thoughts about having a kitchen fitted so that we can be much more organised for future mountain winters. The addition of a wood burning stove (containing a small oven) is a strong possibility and we will need to decide on materials since construction wood is imported and very expensive.

We also had a bit of anxiety over loud vibrations coming from the front wheel of the car but a kind mechanic took it for a test drive, then jacked it up a bit and pointed to the tyres. He told us to replace the front two tyres and to come back if the noise was still there. He sent us to his pal with the tyre place who ordered the tyres and fitted them yesterday. Result: No noise at all, magic! K was particularly impressed as if the mechanic had taken the normal intake of breath … Pppphhhh ….. it's a wheel bearing and will cost x00 euros to mend, he would have accepted it. We like Greek mechanics who are so obliging and don't rip people off. We have found that tradesmen like mechanics, hairdressers and restaurateurs only want to charge a reasonable amount for their services and we have been pleasantly surprised. Once we find someone who charges reasonable rates, we always return to them – so it works!

The snow caps on the highest mountains remain glistening in the sunshine, but we are beginning to lose the snow covering on the lower foothills and there are a few lines of grey rock showing. Birdsong is very loud, donkeys are braying from the upper hill farms and the dogs are barking as walkers roam out and about for a festive holiday. In the house opposite, pairs of pigeons are trying to impress each other on window sills and are billing and cooing with romantic ardour. One sounds as if it is saying “Look at Yoouu, look at you!” and its pair is saying ” Kimon Koloures, kimon koloures” (which is the name of a Greek politician). This is all OK so long as they keep to their own window sills and away from ours and stop leaving presents on our windscreen! We are planting up some large window boxes with geraniums and souvlaki sticks to try to keep them away. Pigeons do take a lot of clearing up after.

We have not yet got to the stage of changing over our winter and summer clothing as there is still a nip in the air and the flocks hereabout are still on the lower slopes for their winter grazing, but the next few weeks will see the step ladder being fully utilised while whitewashing and lots of general house maintenance takes place. K and I will have our work cut out!

Adio-sas!

DUVET DAYS

At last, even though it has been raining for a few days, we feel as if we are reaching the end of winter. Officially, Cretan summertime is due to begin on 21 March but we can feel that the temperature of the house is beginning to warm up and we have shed one or two layers of thick jumpers! However, 'flu has hit the village with a vengeance and our vociferous neighbour has been coughing and sneezing for a good few days now. We have been making mugs of honey, raki and lemon to treat our snuffly head colds and yesterday, we heard that Angelikki and Kostas from the kafeneon are both in hospital in Iraklion, so we are praying that they make a quick recovery. There is a chair in front of the door of the cafeneon and their chimney pot which usually belches out thick smoke signals each day has stopped messaging. The weather was so nasty yesterday that I went back to bed with a book to keep warm with two duvets and stayed there. Roll on summer!

As we have now been here for one year, it seemed a good idea to do an inventory of things done and still to do, which reads a bit like a School Report. (Marks out of 10)

Our Ancient Flat Roof has been fixed and recovered twice but, frustratingly, is still letting in water in mysterious ways and we have been asking everyone we know about their solutions for leaks. These seem to be par for the course in Greece. The trouble with ancient roofs is usually that the crack or hole outside is nowhere near the drips which happen inside. It's very tempting to turn all the beds into four posters with plastic covers and keep everything wrapped up and dry during the winter; we can't wait for the summer sun to dry everything up for us. 5/10

On fine and not-so-fine days, Kimon was able to paint the pergola on roof terrace with teak oil while I tackled two old outdoor chairs re-weaving them with new fibre and which look well-croziered (= naff) but have been saved from landfill for another year or two. Similarly, a thrown-away bamboo table missing its top was rescued from the tip and a new table top fitted. We have done a bit for the planet and if we could only find a new use for old plastic water bottles and carrier bags, we would be able to have some impact on the ecology of the landscape! I had an idea for opening out water bottles to construct light-weight roofing for the woodpile, but Kimon got fed up with the collection of plastic which was accumulating in the kitchen! 9/10

Inside the house, our fire lighting skills have improved over the winter with daily practice (K did this more than I did!) and we have become adept at starting cooked dishes on the cooker and then transferring them to the top of the wood burner to conserve energy! However, we have needed to use our heaters and air pumps a lot this winter, so we are in fear of the electricity bill when it gets here. 8/10

As for decorating, everything we painted last Spring is now bubbling or flaking again and we will be busy as soon as the warm weather is here – we realise the walls of this house will be a Firth of Forth Bridge project and need to know what the magic compound was that they used to finish the job in Scotland! On the plus side, K's new drain pipe from the terrace is working well and we no longer have a paddling pool in wet weather    6/10

Time and space for Art & Crafts is such a bonus. The opportunity to draw, paint and sculpt this year has been great. Number of jumpers knitted = 4, shoulder bags woven = 2 and a floor rug is in the making. It is a joy to have a big kitchen to spend time with recipe books. Edmunds 'Sure to Rise' Cookbook from NZ has been truly tried and tested and cooking here is not without it's challenges. Adapting to Greek flour which is low in gluten content has resulted in some peculiar looking cakes with the appearance of bread puddings. Our biggest problem has been knowing what to do with gifts of food when in the middle of cooking a large meal and the gifted object will not squeeze into the freeze box. Such abundance means cooking two dinners simultaneously! Developing new dishes with unrecognisable cuts of meat, cooking up orange recipes after the 4^th batch of marmalade in six months and learning to cook without standard UK store cupboard staples has been a challenge but is more than made up by the mounds of fresh food and herbs, prolific in the gardens, fields and hedgerows. 7/10

Our ideas about gardening are currently restricted to a tiny patch of earth at the front of the house over which enormous effort has been exercised to keep cats off rather than actually getting plants established. However, we have one lemon tree and a vine planted and scores of pots and window boxes planned (for which we have to find a supply of local earth and sharp souvlaki sticks to deter erstwhile cats). We have managed to find sacks of potting compost but Cretan plants do not thrive in this and yesterday found us with a large bucket and trowel collecting earth (with permission) from a friend's building plot and picking up lots of pieces of broken pallet wood which we could then chop up for kindling. In short, it is not the pretty garden patch we envisaged … yet!   5/10

Driving in Crete is not for the faint-hearted either. Once you have got your head around the different regulations applying to Cretan cars, the driving standards are not at all good and although there are driving tests and strict rules (to be ignored), most young people jump in a car to drive to their own driving test having been driving solo for some time! Kimon is doing very well; Merope is only driving local roads and NEVER in Rethymnon or big towns! Cretan drivers are scary on the road and even worse at parking. At Lidl's this morning, the doorway was blocked by several cars ranged higgledy piggledy on white “do not park” hatchings leading us to believe that if the driver had been able to take the car inside and drive round the aisles, he would have done so!          6/10

My Greek language proficiency has been a bit disappointing although Kimon has always been fluent. However, I am up to Lesson 5 in the Greek Tutorial and things are slowly beginning to fall into place. Complex written things such as bills, instructions on boxes and phone messages are still too hard for both of us. Our Greek mobiles bleep to give us messages frequently - possibly offering free minutes to the initiated - but are totally incomprehensible to us! I imagined that I would have heaps of quiet time for study and reading in retirement and I am not surprised that our Cretan neighbours do not have the time or inclination to read much or to sit still for very long. We have found it much more difficult in winter time to curl up with a book. Too cold and dark to sit still inside - warmer and lighter but too wet to sit outside! The car would be the most comfortable place but our neighbours might think us a bit strange. No change there then! 4/10

We did achieve telephone and broadband in 3 months (which is more of a prize than you would think) and continued over the year telephoning, skyping, Emailing and playing Words with Friends (Scrabble with far-flung children) via the internet. We were only able to do this after the wonderful gift to us of an I-pod before we left the UK, and the tuition given by each of the children on the amazing Apps which have been invaluable ... books, music, maps, messages … This blog would never have been illustrated without the great little camera we always have handy. Sorry we cannot take a photo of it!  The discovery of Radio 4 on the internet has been a real life-line for news, entertainment and even offers Lent Talks from afar. 8/10

So … An interesting and positive year where we have enjoyed ourselves and survived (so far) under the current restrictions of the Greek economy. The sun still shines, the rain still rains (and how ...), birds sing and the plants still grow here in the village. We have made lots of new friends and swapped all our goodies with each other – eggs, oranges and oil are in abundance. The raucous tannoy of the fish van announces its arrival most days – so there must still be some fish in the sea!

Adieu and Roll on Summer - we do have lots of time to think about all our family/friends and surround them all with our thoughts and prayer from a distance. In the words of our teachers from way back we are quite sure we "could have done better" but we are still trying!!!!

(Average over the year = 64% calculated via I-pod)

(pai sto kalo)  (go to the good)