HIBERNATION

The weather had been so lovely and the sun so hot on our trip to Margarites that I asked K to check the back of my head the next day because it felt as if I had got sunburn. After a couple of days this was covered with a rash and our Doctor took one look and said “Shingles”. Fortunately, he was able to prescribe a good anti-viral medication to lessen the effects and I have spent the time since hunkered down at home. The weather became very wet, and the rain on the mountains and nearer foothills has turned to snow = definitely log burner weather. Over all this lies a thick grey shawl of misty cloud which makes everything feel horridly damp and cold to the bones. I have barely put my nose out of doors and unearthed all the thermals.  Locals on the other hand were grateful that their olive trees were getting a really good soaking.

In the village the kafeneons are busy – which is largely due to their efficient heating! At the nearest kafeneon – Kostas and Angeliki's – their small portable log burner, alarmingly with the trade name of 'Napalm 78' has been set up for the winter. They arrange a sheet of metal on the floor, the stove on top (which frequently supports a large saucepan of meaty stew), and a chimney which is attached to the stove, spreading across the room and out of a hole made in the wall.. This seems a bit ad hoc, but gives off a wonderful heat. (UK Planning Authorities would have a fit!). Angeliki strolls over every so often and pulls the small metal ring from the top of the stove with a handle, drops some olive sticks into the aperture and shuts it off again with nonchalant skill. The heat from the efficient little burner is amazing. On days when the kindling is a bit green, the black smoke from the chimney causes a fog which makes you gasp for breath outside the house, but the system works very well on the whole. As the warm weather arrives, the little stove is stowed away again for the summer months when the hole in the wall is plugged with a branch of Rosemary bush.

K likes to get out of the house a bit and pays a visit there every evening at about tea time to have a chat and warm his hands. He never gets home without his pockets being stuffed with oranges and mandarins from their fruit trees or a bag of freshly laid eggs. On my one egg per week diet, this is a little problematic and we can't get through either the eggs or the oranges by ourselves, so we make sure they go to good owners.

At the bigger kafeneon run by Apostoli and Christina, a lot of changes have happened. In the Autumn, the place had a makeover with a new kitchen, toilets and the addition of tables and chairs for simple meals at the back of the building. A new local dance move has developed: the toilets now have up-to-the-minute lighting systems which turn on automatically when you enter and theoretically turn off when you leave. The dance begins when you first wonder who switched the lights off and then realise that you have to somehow activate the motion sensor.  The unsuspecting are frequently left in the dark clapping, swaying and waving their hands about madly and, as a dance, it is much more difficult than Zorba's!

Swiftly moving on ... the biggest impact has been made by a huge cinema screen used for watching football matches on Friday and Saturday evenings. On these nights, the atmosphere gets very noisy and Christina is very busy producing souvlakis for the boisterous soccer fans. In the meantime, an even louder card game is a nightly fixture at the front of the cafe and a lot of shouting accompanies this. We have to remember that this is never a quiet night out, but the customers are a hospitable lot and we frequently go to pay for our drinks, only to find that they have already been covered!

K's quad bike (= “mobility scooter with attitude”) needed to go for mechanical service and because parts needed to come from Athens, he was confined to barracks for 10 days or so. However, it has come back in a much more reliable state - although in wet weather, his movements are still a bit limited and getting into and out of waterproofs takes ages.

Days at home have been confined to spending time reading, knitting and summoning up energy to complete a crocheted blanket. I have been making thick soups, with all the wonderful vegetables available, to keep us warm and satisfied – even a sort of haggis on Burns Night. Filmon gives us a good choice of programmes on TV. Sadly, the two hour difference means that the UK programmes we like start too late at night to keep awake for! I have also to revise for my Greek lessons because there is a test on Friday – eek!

All our letters and parcels from abroad arrived eventually in one fell swoop. This was great and we have enjoyed all the Christmas goodies, albeit in mid-January.  Not great timing for Christmas lights or music but they are early for next year!   We are so grateful to have the ability to use Amazon which delivers quite a number of goods and foodstuffs, such as Marmite, teabags or oatcakes to Crete. The post in December is hopeless and don't get me started on our internet service which cuts out about 20 times each day. However, Kindle keeps us in books  and Amazon can deliver a surprising range of things to make life easier, so long as we don't order at the end of the year.

This is a bit of a dull blog, but I hope it will be more exciting next month because (in fear and trepidation as well as three re-connections to the internet) I have booked flights for New Zealand! Yippee! Oh, and I have just looked outside the door to see the first sunshine in two weeks. Great!

CLASSES AND CLAY

We have been enjoying unbelievably warm days for January recently, which means that we've been out and about as much as possible and making the most of good winter drying days to get rugs and blankets washed after Christmas. We can see plumes of smoke from the terrace coming from the olive groves now because the olives have either been picked or are being picked and the small branches and twigs cleaned from the trees are often made into a big bonfire (which would be completely forbidden during the dry season). Friends have started their marmalade concoctions but I didn't have the heart for it this January as most of mine was made with my Dad in mind.

First of all, an idea to get a Greek conversation class started in a small village close to us a year ago almost fizzled out when all the events of last summer landed me in hospital and another keen participant lodged in the NHS system in the UK. So we turned over a new leaf and tried to initiate another go at it. A lovely young lady with perfect English and a degree from a Greek University agreed to lead the lessons and we turned up with pens and paper to try and cudgel our brains back to work. Although we had all studied Greek before, we were all glad to do a bit of revision and try to think of examples of words beginning with alpha, beta, yamma, delta and so on. There were just a few of us and it took us way longer than we thought it would, but we are all keen to move on and gain a bit more confidence. Our teacher's father had fashioned a brilliant whiteboard and she took the whole project much more seriously than we had expected. It is clear that Greek schools take work very academically!! The discipline will do us good though and our teacher is very fun loving and good natured.

This week has been a bit of a whirl with things happening every day. On Tuesday, a trip to one of the potteries at Margarites was organised so that we could learn about the history of ceramics and why Margarites is now one of the few villages left in Crete with pottery workshops of any note. We listened to how the clay was collected, where it was worked and how ceramics were fired. We were lucky that the weather was sparkling and warm, but unlucky that DAE (electric company) had dug a pit right across the road at the entry to the village and this meant quite a large diversion to reach the pottery round the corner and up the hill. In the end, we dumped the cars, stepped over the wooden crate covering the abyss and climbed up the steep hill to the pottery shop where Yiorgos and a thermos of coffee awaited us.

We were a motley crew and the first thing was to decide how to organise the day as we had planned to go and see where the local clay was collected but this was a few kilometres away and our cars were not as handy as we had hoped, Discarding this idea, we climbed up the steep road to where old stone buildings lay, largely in massive disrepair, on either side of the road. Until 1969, and the arrival of water and electricity to the village, this is where all the potters of the village had their workshops and kilns. At the same time, the containers which had been used for oil, water, foodstuffs and chimney pots were replaced by metal and plastic alternatives which spelled a very bad time for potters and many workshops were deserted and fell into disrepair. These remains are classified as archaeological places of historical interest – meaning that nobody can do anything with them. This is sad for Yiorgos who, with passionate zeal for the long history of his art form, would like to set up a working museum so that interested people could see the process in action. The circular kilns had been best preserved – a sort of stone beehive shape with two openings. One at ground level to lean into and place the pots on a slotted floor and one at a lower level beneath the floor round the corner where the wood was put into the base of the structure and stoked to keep the temperatures hot for many hours. This design of kiln was used in Minoan times and up to 50 years ago until electric kilns arrived. It was obviously very hard work for the ancient craftsmen. These days designs for ceramics are made very much for the tourist trade where souvenirs need to be transportable.

In the absence of a museum, Yiorgos did the next best thing for us and pointed out where the potters worked and we poked about in the wooded lands at the edge of the fabulous gorge where many of the old stone workshops had stood looking at the cysterns for catching water, sinks hewn out of the rock and admiring all the kilns which we would have probably walked past on our wanderings without recognising. The kilns were once fired with all the wood from around the valley and now with olive branch clippings. Yiorgos explained the firing processes and how different arrangements and inlet of oxygen to the kiln affected the chemical qualities and colour of the finished product. He showed us a clearing in the woods of land belonging to his family thronging with huge ali ba ba pots, shards, jugs and vases lying about in heaps along with roof tiles in large stacks. We all stood round large sinks for cleaning and beginning the initial preparation of the clay from the mountains. The work of collecting and cleaning the clay to remove stones and impurities was a long process and needed infinite patience.

After this we returned to his pottery workshop near the centre of the village and watched him work on the potter's wheel. None of the pieces could be thrown or worked in one day but took several jumps and rests on and off the wheel before completion, each portion a labour of love. Yiorgos' skill was amazing and as a final flourish he produced a most unusual paintbrush with ancient origin. A stick handle with a slick tail of lambswool attached with which he quickly showed how the village signature of a palm frond was done as decoration – all with a masterly flick of the odd looking brush in a matter of seconds. Amazing to watch and to absorb his passion for a craft which could easily die out, without such experts as he. We understand that he does teach at the University and are glad that more people have the benefit of his experience. Sadly, we could not thank him with a lunch at the taverna as he had another appointment, but we hoped that we have found a compromise by putting some money by at the taverna for him and his family to have a meal some time soon.

The welcoming taverna awaited us at the top of the hill with a glowing log fire and the hospitable proprietor had prepared a large selection of meze starters and platters of chicken. All our New Year diets were forgotten about and we feasted royally. It was a memorable day out and we all thought that we would have liked to try our hand on the potters wheel at a future date. Yiorgos had looked a bit apprehensive – and with good cause, I have no doubt!

Kali Chronia!

CHRISTMAS AT CROZIERS

We are always delighted that Crete seems to pass by the hectic lead up to Christmas that happens elsewhere in the world and we enjoy the peaceful laid back shopping and instinct to keep things simple. I wish I had remembered this in my preparations for Christmas Day.  There are a few disadvantages, though, and being so far from family and friends is just one of them.

In the village, it was lovely to hear the children who came round the village carol singing on their last day of school wearing Santa hats and bashing triangles. Greek carols seem a bit odd to me without much of a melody except when I managed to identify jingle bells, but the children's excitement was lovely!

So, far from home and resisting the feeling of it being 'always winter and never Christmas', we tried to keep our spirits up by planning a traditional lunch and listening to lots of carols and the sort of Christmas songs which drive everyone mad when Christmas shopping in the UK. One drawback here is that Greek postal workers don't have the same urgency to deliver Christmas parcels by Christmas as the good old UK Post Office. Christmas is just another Church festival to them so all our Christmas packages were still “somewhere else” until well after Christmas and some have still not made it. Primed by the family in the UK and NZ who had made a special effort to post things in good time, I toured all the courier and post offices locally to see if any were lurking behind desks somewhere, but no joy. On the 30^th December, this lovely garland turned up from New Zealand in cut out and glue together form, which we set about immediately. It did our hearts good.

After a couple of years of flunking off (or being otherwise occupied), it was our turn to host Christmas lunch. This is quite an enterprise for 10 in the UK, but serving up Turkey and all the trimmings in Crete is anything but simple and needs organisation. Things like stuffing, gravy mix, sausage meat, custard powder, mincemeat, shortcrust pastry and ground ginger, parsnips and brussels sprouts, for instance are not readily available and have to be ordered from a UK shop (fairly distant) or brought back from the UK in bulging suitcases along with the teabags and marmite. As for crackers … a lovely friend arranged for the delivery of these via a UK to Crete van delivery. Therefore the build up to the festive meal was a bit frenetic in the making of mincemeat, Christmas puddings and pies all done from scratch without the option of Tescos, if all the culinary arrangements went astray. The vegetables came back in my suitcase and were blanched and frozen late at night on my return. My pastry has always been suspect, so I tried three dry runs with different recipes and in the end not many people touched the mincepies anyway and they would have been a feast for the birds unless Rik the Builder hadn't taken a few away for the family. We waited until Christmas eve when the Christmas lights eventually made it via Amazon and everything was a bit stressed getting the house ready and large scale veg prep.

On Christmas morning, three of us ex-pats from Skepasti danced round each other stirring sauces, making starters and heating gravy a good while before the other guests arrived. In the end, the feast itself cooked well in spite of the power going on and off all morning and no means of keeping 10 plates warm simultaneously or everything in the oven at once. However, the Crozier Christmas pudding which had been steaming in the slow cooker upstairs turned out beautifully without a trace of suet available – thanks to the NZ Emunds-Sure-to-Rise-Cookbook recipe!

K and I had a duvet day on Boxing Day to recover. We will think about a completely different menu if we do it again – more buffet style and less of the roast dinner - as we were on our knees.

Since Christmas day, the village has been very quiet. I crept out on Christmas eve with a small gift for each of the little children in the immediate neighbourhood and left an enormous tray of Thornton Chocolates for our lovely friend Angeliki and Kostas at the little kafeneon as “English chocolates are her favourite”! True to form, Kostas appeared half an hour later with dozens of eggs and an enormous bag of oranges from his garden and we are struggling to think how to use them all up as Ma Crozier can't face marmalade making yet awhile … after all the kiwi fruit from before and still being on the one egg per week diet.

Clearing up after the party, we seem to have been left with a large supply of home made chutneys and marmalade brought as gifts which will need to be redistributed when we next get together along with 4 leftover crackers and a lost earring!

We were all a bit blurry by this time ...

We approach New Year simply longing for peace in the world and a time where lots of good things happen so that folk can learn to trust each other again. It would be good if all the rain would stop for a bit as well as we hear about the flooding of homes in various places and look forward to things drying out and better defences for the future.    We send our love and best wishes to you and your families for a happy, healthy and joyful New Year wherever you are.

Kalli chronia! Have a good year!

FESTIVE FORAYS

Festive greetings from the Croziers. The long intermission is because life has been hectic for the last few weeks and each day has given us a new challenge. Ma Crozier also had a lovely time in the UK to start some Christmas shopping and check on progress to the new house.

Back in Skepasti, the Mayor of the village turned up with a truck load of kiwi fruit and one crate per househould was distributed (whether you really wanted them or not). The fruit, which otherwise would have gone to landfill was on the small size, very hard and I had two or three marmalising sessions and still have to nip out each morning to see if any more of the bullets have softened a little in the porch. I managed to contrive some orange, cranberry and kiwi sauce which MIGHT be OK for Christmas lunch … I will let you know the verdict. Meanwhile, kiwi jam (looking dispiritingly like frogspawn) is now residing in the store cupboard for when we feel brave enough. The following week, a large consignment of oranges by the crate and more, larger kiwis by the crate arrived. I had a total of 3 crates of kiwis on the front porch and everyone we knew was trying to give away kiwis. Eventually I found a seasoned jam maker from a distant village to take one crate for her kitchen. I suspect that a lot of the smaller, less palatable fruit may well end up in the ground but more widely dispersed! I wonder what Archaeologists of the future would make of that!

Kiwis Galore!

Christmas Lunch will be at our house this year and local expats from UK and France have been invited. I'm feeling a little nervous about cooking a Cretan turkey on Cretan power for that number of people, but hopefully all the light and power will hang together long enough to put a meal together … Watch this space. I was slightly peeved that my ready-to-roll icing was allowed by security at Manchester airport but confiscated at Athens (where to be honest it had softened a lot) and I wished that it had been taken from me at first so I didn't carry it around all day until 40 minutes away from my destination! Such is life and the plus side is that I have found a store on the outskirts of Rethymnon which stocks everything needed to ice cakes and decorate them.

We have been to quite a number of Christmas parties already and have a few more in the diary. Last weekend was the Christmas do for “the Friends of Animals” - mostly ex-pats who have to raise money to veterinary care for all the lost and stray animals hereabouts. There is also lots happening to feed and clothe refugees and many organisations are collecting warm woollies and winter clothing so that those coming out of the sea by raft have some dry clothing available. Who would embark on such a journey unless they were absolutely desperate? I can hardly bear to contemplate why many, many small children do not make it alive - so many parents are totally traumatised on their arrival on many counts.

We have been reading about horrendous flooding in the North of the UK and hoping that things are better and warm homes have been found for all the flood victims before Christmas. I can't imagine anything worse inside your home than flood water, especially if this is not the first time it has happened. By some reverse trick of weather patterns, Kriti has been wallowing in sunshine and warmish day temperatures for longer than usual. Then after a week of overcast skies, the dark brooding clouds over Mount Psiloritis parted at last and revealed the gleaming white snowy slopes glistening in the sunshine. The nights are cold though and I need pyjamas, dressing gown, hat, gloves and socks to keep warm. Somebody please tell David Cameron that it gets very cold in Mediterranean countries too and our log pile is diminishing fast. We paid National Insurance for as long as everyone else and are every bit in need of cold weather fuel allowance!

Cute donkeys knitted at Makers to raise funds for the Donkey Sanctuary

Tomorrow is the last Makers gathering, apart from a Christmas meal, before the holidays. We are all taking bags of warm things to contribute to a school collection in Rethymnon. I have also to find some wrapping paper because this is the most difficult item to track down in Greece. Much of the contents of our turkey dinner will have been brought over from England or bought in the UK store which is a bit of a distance away. Our local village shop (jokingly referred to as Sainsburys) is looking a bit short of rations these days and Kostas, the proprietor, has stopped stocking cigarettes and many other items since times are so hard for the villagers and the shop is suffering. All these good souls are trying to exist on what they can grow on their veggie patches, bread and eggs. They all look cheerful, though and keep busy.

Panormo - outside the Post Office

I hear sounds of step ladders and struggling outside while K contemplates putting Christmas lights in the tree outside. Fare thee well for now – I think I am needed!

HANGING ROCK

 You can tell we are becoming as introspective as our Greek village neighbours when all the talk revolves around a huge lump of rock left suspended high up over the main national road following the torrential downpours of recent weeks. Our village was on the telly! Life was exciting for a day with heavy lifting equipment, large cranes, TV crews and lots of usual local suspects turning up in front of the TV cameras hoping that someone would take action before the monstrous thing obeyed the laws of gravity and killed off a few passing motorists underneath.

Picking up our lovely Lena from Panormo, we spent a couple of days doing quite a long diversion – just to avoid that small section of road. However, hanging rock is there no more. The police arrived on Wednesday and closed the road, all the heavy equipment got into action with lorries, chains, a tanker lorry full of water which was pumped to the top of the escarpment and flushed down under the base of the monster to give some leverage. After some hours, broken chains, workmen shouting and bulldozers reversing for their lives, the huge thing broke in two and did a majestic slide, breaking into smaller pieces on the way to the road side. Then the bulldozer set to and started to clear up the debris which is now gathered and piled up at several spots along the side of the road (and has blocked off the access to and from the bus stop). However, honour is satisfied and no one has been injured in the process. Bravo to all those good souls!

Lena the Cleaner, a very sweet young lady, brought a small plastic bag of fruit from her garden on Wednesday. Beautiful mandarins freshly picked (what a glorious smell) and some PRICKLY PEARS! I tried to arrange my face as Lena proceeded to peel them - trying not to look horrified since the last adventure with prickly pears left their microscopic splinters all round the kitchen sink and we couldn't escape without throwing all the washing up brushes, sponges, gloves and stuff away. This time it was WORSE! Lena had peeled one of the pears and left it on a plate to taste saying how good it was for you. After this and oblivious to the spines herself, she took all the brushes and dusters round the house and left the little splinters EVERYWHERE. So for the next few days, having found and got rid of one, I almost immediately picked up another from somewhere else. They were on the sofa cushions and in my knitting. I have been squinting with my specs, magnifying glass, tweezers, selotape and nailclippers to try and get rid of them. Then I had to don two pairs of rubber gloves and clean all the surfaces of the house again! The flavour of the fruit is … OK … but nothing makes it worth tackling the tiny hairlike spines that are impossible to see and equally impossible to get rid of! Of course, it is the thought that counts, but my experience compels me to advise curious people to avoid prickly pears like the plague as there are much tastier fruits … and they are just not worth it! And they are full of hard pips!

After a week or so of dark, cloudy wintry weather, the sun came out this week and it was almost like a second Spring. All the plants started to bud and bloom and the garden is coming to life again. Kimon took himself off to Panormo at the crack of dawn to try some fishing. He has been planning this for more than a year, so his increased mobility on the 'mobility scooter with attitude' is giving him a real new lease of life and independence. It is very good to see.

I spoke too soon. The telephone has just rung and it was the would-be fisherman on the other end. The quad bike is stuck in some sand on the beach and K needs rescuing. I have just gone to the car and realised that the roadway outside the kafeneon has been dug up by the Water Board and is now impassable leaving our car stranded on the wrong side of it so that I am also marooned! Fortunately, Stuart answered his phone and has gone to the rescue. We have settled for interdependence!

Afternote: A Friday evening out at a lovely traditional kafeneon in Achlade, a nearby village, gave us the opportunity to see all the youngsters of the village hard at work. Demetra, one of the three daughters of the family, took me to a small hall next door where lots of long tables were covered in fir cones, almonds, acorns, glass holders and candles. They were assembling table centres incorporating a calendar to sell at Christmas and raise funds for their village youth centre. Having bought one for 5 euros, congratulated all the people at work, the older sister stopped mid-flight for a brief chat. Victoria was rushing off to meet with the Hellenic Red Cross volunteers who are off to Mytilini in Lesvos, where hundreds of refugees are arriving by rubber rafts. She said that many more small children than reported were drowned on these desperate voyages and it was very difficult work for them. I said that we sent our prayers with them and she said “Oh yes we are going with lots of prayers from old people” (this made me gulp a bit). She wondered why I was wincing at a pain in the pad of my thumb, I mentioned that I had still a few splinters from prickly pears … “Ah, this is easy”, she said. “You need to cover your hands with oil and a spoonful of sugar to give them a sugar scrub”. I tried it. It works.

BACK TRACKING ...

Waiting for the ferry at Rafina

Well, winter proper is here. Mount Psiloritis is covered in a thick grey blanket and the closer foothills have disappeared from view as well. We arrived back in the village on Friday from our travels in Evia and were relieved to get back from the airport in dry, if overcast weather because it was after dark by the time we arrived home. Ma CrozIer had driven round half of Evia from the Southern tip to the half-way point at Chalkis and back again. She is very relieved to be back without incident. Summer to Winter is a full commitment here in Crete because all the lightweight summer clothes have to be put away and the heavy woollens retrieved. There is no space for two seasons clothes to live side by side as the difference is so extreme. We had delayed thinking about shifting heavy cases before we left and set about hauling out our big storage trunks in a joint effort as soon as we got back.

Evia was interesting after thirty-two years. We remembered a dry dusty landscape with a few desultory bars and cafes by the roadside, but what a difference now. Far in the south where the main road crosses the mountains, the roads were in poor shape with lots of hairpin bends. Evia has adopted wind farms in the blustery south and there are miles of them. K was also amazed to see two or three fish farms in the little bays close to the road. The weather was bright for late October and there were a few people still swimming in the resorts we passed.

Marmari - Hotel Thea

As we progressed further North, the roads improved and we noticed that places that had been fishing villages years before were now fair size towns with suburbs. The roadsides had large outlet stores, petrol stations, garden centres and large supermarkets from Carrefour and Lidl. Chalkis was enormous with a confusing one-way system where we promptly got lost and opted for the nearest paying car park we found. It was only 100 yards from the hotel booked, but it was difficult getting our luggage there and we rashly got a taxi to drop us all off with our bags.

Chalkida

Chalkis was nice and I had planned a day of shopping and getting my hair done (which is never easy travelling without the proper equipment). We hadn't accounted for the fact that Wednesday was Oxi Day – a national holiday – and absolutely everything was shut except for restaurants. After enjoying the parade from our balcony, we ate out at a popular taverna on the front called Delphinia where the staff were working flat out to get the crowds of customers served.

On Thursday, we started the journey back. As we emerged from the big city with masses of cars, traffic lights and confusion, we got to the point in the journey where the sign post said Eyboia N and Eyboia B. We had to make a decision between turning left (B) or going straight on (N). I knew that we should be travelling South and couldn't decide which road to take. After a few minutes “dialogue” about whether the signs were in Greek or not and whether N meant North or not. They were in Greek and N stood for South! We stopped at a filling station to check and carried straight on heading South (N)!!! All very confusing. Sadly, we had not left enough time to get to the archaeological sites, but that will have to await a further visit.

The front path to the old house.  

On the other hand, we were delighted to find K's parents old beach villa which had been sold about 30 years ago and was hidden by vegetation, but still there. We feared that a large hotel complex may have swallowed it up. The trees, just saplings in our time were now mature tamarisks and pines. They shaded the road which was lined with lovely shrubs and seemed like woodland. Stopping delightedly to take photos of the house and causing all the neighbourhood dogs to bark and yelp, a next door neighbour emerged to ask who we were and after a few moments, we all recognised one another! The Chronos's had been friends of K's parents and working colleagues, so catching up with their son Hector and family was a good moment.

The souvlaki joint had changed a bit!

After pressing on to Eretria, where we used to catch the ferry to Athens and eat souvlakis bought from an old wooden shack on the water front years back, we were overawed to find a largish town, schools, sports pitches and apart from the Dreams Island out at sea, couldn't recognise much else. In spite of this we stopped for a coffee before continuing our journey.

Karystos

We had time to spare, so we continued further than our destination of Marmari to the southernmost town of Karystos where we stopped for lunch. The whole trip had featured fish on the menu to an overwhelming extent – so we enjoyed it for the last time before getting back to our lovely hotel in Marmari for the night. We needed an early night to get to the ferry to Rafina in the morning, then to the airport and our flight back to Heraklion.

Crete is very cloudy and rainy still, so with some fair weather under our belts, we are tackling the log burner and the wardrobe change round with renewed energy.

Kalomina! x

NOW IS THE WINTER OF OUR DIS – CON – STENT

 This week has been overwhelmingly silly, but we are relieved to be near the end of it. The weather closed in on Thursday and we have days and nights of heavy rain and flooding in the area. A trip to Panormo to visit the Pharmacy was a bit like white water rafting and I am still trying to dry my trainers out after trying to wade across the road (temporarily a fast flowing river). In five seconds, the downpours were so heavy that my raincoat and all my other clothes were completely soaked.  There have been lots of torrents, landslips, rocks in the road and waterfalls but the forecast for Monday is much better.

Ma Crozier is feeling a little more comfortable every day but, due to the torrential downpours, we are having problems getting out and about and the washing dry. Yianni did a sterling job on the exterior painting of the house – so now the roof is complete and the walls are an interesting creamy yellow shade. We look much smarter. Lena the Cleaner is wonderful and we were surprised to miss our bedside rugs after her visit last weekend. They had all been shampooed and were out on the terrace to dry! Such energy. Rik fitted the new window a couple of weeks back, and we now have a modern one with built in fly screen, roller blind and a ventilation pane which tilts nicely. We opted for the traditional local windows a few years back but the new ones are much better than the old wooden shutters which crashed about in the wind unless wired together or locked shut, darkening the room completely.

On Monday, I visited the gastroenterologist to ask about management of the stent which I had been told had been inserted back in August and what needed to be done next. She looked at my hospital notes, all in medical Greek, and said that no stent had been used and not to worry about it. I was too dumbfounded to be joyful about this because I was sure that the Specialist HAD told me about it as I came round from the anaesthesia along with other pertinent instructions.

The next day I visited a GP type doctor and said that it was a bit crazy but could I just double check that there was or was not a stent? He understood my empuzzlement, shrugged his shoulders a bit and said "Well this is Greece and anything can happen" whilst handing me a note to take for a belt-and-braces Xray.

On Thursday, we set off early in very strong winds to Rethymnon for the Xray and after the photographic session, I was carrying a huge film envelope which kept being swept round like a sail as I carried it back from the Diagnostics Clinic to the car. K and I couldn't resist taking a peep. I thought I could see a rectangular blob in the right sort of place, so assumed that this was the pesky thing. The GP doctor put the film up on his lamp screen and said “No you DON'T have a stent. There are metal clips here (oh?) and what is this dark blob over here, I ventured? Oh that. He looked at me and grinned. That's just wind!

Embarrassing or what? Something lost in translation? Wrong information to the patient on the wrong trolley? Does anaesthetic make you imagine things you had never heard of before? Whatever the cause, it is all good news. Miraculously, I am stent free (and trying to ignore the reference to metal clips) !!!

My mood was euphoric on the drive back home, because at last K and I can plan for a few days away. What with one hospital and another, we haven't been free to do so for three years!  The weather looks dodgy, but never mind, it will be wonderful to escape for a day or two. It has been over thirty years since we visited Evia where K's parents had a villa in the 60s-70s and we wanted to take the opportunity to make one trip back there to see how much it has all changed. There is plenty of interesting archaeology on the island, especially at Eretria,  and I hope to take lots of photos.  Wish us luck! x