August Fire Flies

Making the best of the weather is a little tricky and we have been taking precautions not to get de-hydrated and sunstroke by limiting our exits to early morning or late afternoon. We look carefully at the cooker or oven before contemplating cooking anything hot and all too often decide to forgo cordon bleu and make a sandwich. Panormo is absolutely heaving with people … all good news … and the business owners are working flat out, but we are finding it a bit much and keeping at home for much of the time, which means we miss out on our swims. As we are feeding neighbours cats, we have a bonus of using their pool whilst keeping an eye on the house and watering their tomatoes!

Huge watermelons have started appearing in the porch when we are not looking because as they all ripen at once and are generally too enormous for even a large family.  Eventually, nobody knows quite how to get rid of them all.  I seem to be taking ours into the town centre for people without gardens to share. They are really heavy, but cool, sweet and delicious.

However this week, my travelling companion (who enjoys a good, long walk) suggested a new area to explore and we set off on Monday to a small bay about 8 miles away. We set off early and arrived in time to park easily and explore a small fishing hamlet and some back tracks through the olive and citrus groves. It was a fabulous morning. When we arrived back to the waterside, we found a way to swim in the small sandy harbour – the nicest and most welcome swim – and once dry, sat down at a little Kantina where Poppy, the Proprietor waited, cooked and served home made food. A souvlaki, salad and bread slipped down easily with some local white wine and lots of glasses of water and we arrived home just in good time for an afternoon siesta. What an idyllic jolly holiday!

Later in the week, I retraced my steps with K in tow to the same place. The wind was stronger but it was a wonderful, quiet place to spend some time cooling off, doing some painting, swimming and enjoying watching the different moods of the sea. K looked enviously as it is a favourite spot for local fishermen and he did not have his gear with him.

Saturday was the highlight of the week when the Russian Ballet came to Crete and performed at the Fortezza in Rethymnon under a very nearly full moon. The setting was very special with an ancient Greek style amphitheatre on the mount which overlooks Rethymnon from a considerable height with the dome of the Fortezza lit up in the background. What an evening and quite an experience for seasoned ballet goers to see how it pans out in Greece. First of all, we had a lovely muddle over our seat allocation as the lady officiating did not realise that our party was altogether and that we would be happy to work out the allocation amongst ourselves (bearing in mind dodgy hips, bad legs and so on!) After a hilarious interval of musical chairs and when at one point my neighbour was holding three tickets in her hand and looking completely confused, we managed to shuffle about and sit down quietly. Then we took bets as to when the performance (advertised to start at 9.00 pm) would actually start. Eventually, when all the Greek ladies, small girls, teenage girls and various people dawdled in, chatted to old acquaintances and had long conversations on mobile phones - which stayed in their hands lit up for most of the evening - the performance began at 9.35 pm. Etiquette has obviously not quite got here yet!

The dancers were superb and how they managed to perform with layers of costume, tights and point shoes in such heat just went to show their professionalism. It was BOILING! The Ballet, Sleeping Beauty, was a treat and the audience appreciated it all. An appearance by the Witch/Bad Fairy had us intrigued as he was incredibly tall, played the part amazingly well and I kept looking at his legs and feet wondering if he was wearing stilts underneath layers of dark fabric! There were appearances by pupils from local dance schools to add to the experience. We were especially mystified by small elves filing up along the back of the audience hand in hand in the semi darkness during the first act. What a delight when they appeared later in the performance as little mice doing their number in a kitchen scene. They had to negotiate the rocky surface at the back of the amphitheatre in virtually no light by holding on to one another's tails!  With the twinkling lights of the city in the background, it was one of those magical images which will stay in my mind long afterwards.

Meanwhile in the moonlit sky, fire flies were circling above the heads of the audience underneath enormous pine trees. It really was an evening to remember.

After the weekend, on the night of full moon and the promise of a lunar eclipse, we drove up to Thronos in the Amari Valley for a Cretan Evening by moonlight. We had visited the mountain retreat Aravenes before and arrived just as the musicians and dancers set up and rehearsed their dance steps. We fell into the company of a couple from Norway who, having sampled the home made wine, home made raki and home made ouzo were up for having a go at all the Greek dance steps (which are much more complicated than they look with odd, unsymmetrical rhythms and balance changes which leave the unwary tripping over themselves to keep up!) They did amazingly well!  The party and panorama were worth the drive and the temperature up in the mountains just a bit cooler to refresh us.

We await the celebration of Panagyri on 15 August with a little trepidation because of the heat and crowds for the busiest bank holiday of the summer. We will be relieved when the cooler nights of September get here!

CHURCH CRAWL

View to the sea from the first Chapel

The summer heat is here, the tourists are here, cars are cramming into small roadways designed for donkeys and we are trying to stay off grid for the hottest part of the summer season when everything is geared up for holiday makers enjoying their well earned summer break.

On Sundays, all the beaches are really crowded and, avoiding resorts, we tried a newly opened restaurant near the village and had a simple lunch cooked on the outside grill with salad and french fries cooked in olive oil … wonderful. Followed by the sweetest water melon ever – just like eating ice lolly. Very nice and nothing too fancy.

View to the East

On Monday morning two lots of builders arrived to work on houses in the immediate vicinity causing maximum chaos. A large lorry promptly parked on the bad corner spot and delivery vans were slowed in their tracks with megaphones blaring. Then our friend Rik arrived early to mend a side wall to our house which has remained untouched since we bought the house and was looking very dilapidated. Rik dropped off a scaffolding tower, bags of cement and all his tools and decided to park the car elsewhere! Since then he has been sweating in the hot sun as he painstakingly puts the wall back to rights.

A place for healing prayers/memories?  Clothes tied to the tree

By Tuesday, I was ready to escape for a spell, so my pal Caron and I jumped in the car and set off to take a look at one or two little chapels in the vicinity, to walk a bit and get some exercise. The first stop was the little chapel of Agios Phanourios is on the top of a hill overlooking Perama in one direction and a little way outside the village of Achlade. With my heart in my mouth and praying that we didn't meet a big 4x4 truck coming down the hill, we put the car in first gear and climbed up to the top of the track, parking under a large shady tree. The church gate was stiff, but opened and so did the door of the church, which was lovely. There were icons to look at, and all along the front of the carved and painted screen hung small silver metal medallions in the shape of arms, legs, eyes, babies and so on. We think that people may visit this place to pray for healing. Outside in the bright sunshine, we looked round from our vantage point and could see a long way in all directions. Perama in its river valley with the mountains beyond in one direction and the sea between steep headlands in the other. Along the path, in the little walled yard, it looked is if clothes and other fabric items had been tied around an old tree which seemed to be growing amongst even older remains of habitation. To one side, a fenced off area contained huge piles of stones. We wondered whether a previous town or village had been here in ancient times.

Fred Flintstone's picnic table

Today, it was a beautiful deserted spot with only the buzz of insects and the song of birds and may be the hope for a miracle or two. We photographed a stone age picnic table and chairs at the foot of the tree and set off for the next little chapel.

This was O Drapanos. This seemed to be a much more modern building and the door was locked with wrought iron grills over all the windows. However, the gardens were lovely and we admired daisies still blooming (when all their cousins had long since dried and withered out in the open) because of the shady trees of the churchyard. A few hibiscus bushes bloomed prolifically and my foraging companion gathered a handful of past flowers to take home for her tea!

We took a little side road up and around passing a lovely old house and garden, admiring the old well, whilst the road it was on curved around and led us back to where the car was parked. All these morning walks give a great opportunity to talk, to admire the wild life, to forage and to sometimes just stand in awe. We earmarked a lovely plot of fig trees - to return to when the fruit have ripened - as they do not seem to be in anybody's garden. A brief discussion ensued about a recipe for fig rolls, K's favourite biscuit.

Budleia Avenue

The third chapel was Agios Paraskevi, which we have visited before in our perambulations but we approached it by car this time and parked under another lovely shady tree. Churches seem to be well provided for in terms of shade! From here we explored a new track which led us through a dreamlike avenue of budleia bushes and we were processing along accompanied by a brilliant array of butterflies. Small blue ones, magical swallowtails and the air was humming with insect life. We had a beautiful morning; it was glorious!

Post foraging, we unpacked the car: One big bouquet of rosemary, two scrumped pears (not quite ripe yet), a handful of hibiscus flowers, one discarded clothes dryer (for recycling … gate material for straying kittens) and two pairs of very hot, sore feet. It was well worth it!

OFFICE WARFARE

 How did we ever find time to go to work? People imagine that the life of ex pats is one long idyll where we lounge around on sunny beaches and shady bars all day, every day. Sadly, this is not the case. House maintenance and cleaning duties take up a great deal of our time but bureaucracy is the biggest timewaster.

We spent several weeks jogging backwards and forwards to the IKA office in Rethymno to get Kimon's IKA Health Insurance book renewed and changed. Previously it had been issued resting on the premise that his wife was a pensioner and pensioners' husbands or wives can also get medical health insurance equivalent to pensioners' entitlements in Greece. This is until and unless the dreaded Brexit changes everything … but enough of Brexit. The madness is out of our hands now and anyway, we have enough comic daftness of our own to contend with. Each visit to the IKA office is initiated by a depressingly long queue in a boiling hot office. Kimon had duly presented all his ID documents to the lady in the office who said that he needed a form from the Accountant to say that he had paid all his taxes and a form from the UK. K phoned up the UK and they sent him the appropriate form in duplicate. K made another journey to Rethymnon to present the forms as well as everything else but they said this was the wrong form and he needed an E108. K returned home and telephoned England again. Form 108 does not exist any more and form S1 replaces it. They refused to accept it a second time of asking. Time was running out and the book was becoming invalid and the man in England did not dare to send whatever other form it was, for reasons best known to the mysteries of all these agencies even though there was no doubt that K was entitled to medical care either in the UK or in Crete but the two bureaucracies were in complete deadlock . We were flummoxed.

At this point I contacted the British Embassy to ask for help. I tried to work out the different processes required by the British office and the Greek office. Typed them all out, google translated it all and Emailed it to DWP in England asking them to fax it to the office in Rethymno. Then we collapsed in a heap for a week or two trying not to worry about cancer care without health cover - scary stuff! After a couple of weeks we had a gentle voiced telephone call from the lady who had kept sending us away saying that if we came to the office again at 8 o'clock in the morning, she would sort out the book and we wouldn't have to queue. K and I couldn't believe we were dealing with the same lady, but we smiled, spoke Greek and K charmed her as much as possible while I chased up and down the stairs with pieces of paper from one office with a man inscribing a huge record book and another office where another man with a biro and a rubber stamp squiggled something.  I finally chased downstairs with my prize sheet for the completion process. DONE! It had taken about five weeks of travelling, queuing and worrying but such a relief even if you have to do everybody else's work for them.  Everyone celebrates with such a feeling of achievement.

Then we needed to make sure that our tax return had been completed by the Accountant. We paid a visit and handed over some money. Several days later, we had a phone call requiring our marriage certificate. K dropped it in. Then the Accountant wanted a translation of the marriage certificate – so google translate came to the rescue again. Then they decided that the marriage certificate was not sufficient and that I should have had another document from the Church with a signature and a rubber stamp on it. K and I were beginning to lose the plot at this point and wondered why on earth they needed our marriage certificate? The Accountant thought she would reassure us by saying that she would send it somewhere to some other office so that they could put a rubber stamp on it and the technical language was a bit beyond our powers of translation..

They were surprised at my strong negative reaction to putting any marks on our document!

The accountant wondered could we get a certified copy from the Central Register every year? Of course not, there is only one, we got married once and this is it! I jokingly asked whether we should get married again in Crete, so that the documentation lined up? The argument continues and I have made contact with my parish church in Farnham and the Surrey Records Office because life just isn't busy enough.

It has given me lots of time to meditate upon the intrinsic value of a rubber stamp! What is it about a print impression made out of rubber that gives a document such power and authenticity? Suddenly, I realised that seals and stamps have been used in Cretan prehistory since Minoan times and obviously have much greater significance within the Greek official hierarchies than we are used to. A maker's mark or stamp must lurk within the psyche of all our Greek and Cretan officer folk as a symbol of supreme authority and reverence!

Anyway, enough of all this stuff. Crete is in the middle of a heatwave. Scorching days and nights with the air conditioning keeping us from sizzling up. The plants need lots of tender loving care, a nest of swallows have hatched and flown the nest in the porch leaving a great deal of unwanted guano behind and we are keeping under cover as much as we can during peak holiday season with loads of tourist traffic. The car is baking hot and we need oven mitts to use the steering wheel. It seems much nicer and cooler at home than venturing out too much.

Wish us luck with officialdom, it is keeping us very busy indeed!

TRAVELSCAPES

Ma Crozier has been on a brief trip to the homeland to catch up with Master Crozier and his other half before they set off on an eight month adventure to Canada and New Zealand. There was a lot of catching up to do, notes to write, keys to deliver and teabags to pack before waving them off to Gatwick early on Wednesday morning and trying to finish off at home before my flight from Manchester on Thursday. All went well; the weather in England had been reasonably fair without a lot of rain and I had managed to catch the first performance of a Tribute to Dinner Ladies by the Stone Revellers which was a treat. What an amazing amount of work goes into their productions … the scenery was so realistic that one of the audience wondered when we would be leaving the canteen and sitting down in the theatre! I, for one, will really miss Victoria Wood's comic genius and observation but full marks for the set builders and performers on the night!  

Back to Crete! I landed at sunset on Thursday and was delivered by wonderful Grigoris – the best taxi driver - who is almost like a member of the family these days! The journey from Heraklion went smoothly into the night, round the dark mountain bends along the national road so that we arrived in our village shortly after 11 pm. A few souls were waiting at the little kafeneon and the lovely Angeliki stirred herself to fetch welcoming drinks for everyone. We observed that the swallow families were still guarding their nests and that the weather was about 10 degrees warmer than when I had left a week before.

Today is 16 June and I deduce from the sound of Greek music coming from the big square of the village that it is the last day of school term and they will be having a party to celebrate! Sadly, K and I are too pooped to attend, but we know that they will have fun with Greek dancing,  popcorn sellers, balloons and a few tasty treats cooked on the barbecue.

We had a splendid week with visitors just before the journey to England when our friends Sally and Paul made their first visit to Crete. Paul had done a bit of swotting with his guide book and definitely wanted to go to Knossos – so we spent a lovely day looking at the archaeological remains and decided that paying for the guide was a good investment.

A few days later, we jumped in the car and made a trip to the Amari Valley. I was so pleased to have done this as I seem to have missed this treat and only skirted through it quickly on various journeys from North to South Crete and not taken any time in the lovely villages. We visited a magical mountain retreat in the village of Thronos with panoramic views. Paul had been reading a great book by Christopher Somerville called 'The Golden Step' about his three month journey on foot from the Eastern to the Western edges of Crete about 15 years ago and we were all enthralled to find some vistas we had never seen before. We deduced that the tucked-away inn must have been the place where the exhausted rambler from this book had stayed.

After a refreshing cup of mountain tea and/or fortifying frappe, we progressed on our journey to Amari village, where we trekked up to the peak where a Venetian bell tower lauded it over the surrounding countryside. Feeling in need of sustenance, we stopped at Fourfouras for a meal and had an interesting time searching for somewhere to eat and fastened upon the nearest thing to a Taverna that we could find. It was deserted (never a good sign) but the man of the house jumped on the phone to his wife who turned up (noticeably puffed) a few minutes later and we had a very nice meal made even better by dividing up our plates and having a taste of everything! The daughter of the house spoke very good English, the bill was modest and we went on our way to find the best road home.

The coasts of Crete are wonderful, but so our the mountains and the inland spaces, if you can get to them.  It was a wonderful peaceful day whilst all the tourists stampeded for the beaches.  I have earmarked the leaflets and cards for a trip during August, when the weather gets too hot to deal with!

Enjoy your Summer (or Winter) wherever you are!

ROLL ON SUMMER!

Spring has blossomed and unfurled just in time to show the best possible face for our visitors around the local villages for the last couple of weeks or so. Two weeks ago, the mountain peaks still had snow cover but steady warm sunshine has shown more and more areas of bare rock on the peaks of Mount Psiloritis and the wild flowers at the road edges have nodded their heads in glorious clouds of yellows, white and green while red poppies and wild irises are dotted here and there to delight the eye. There is a custom on May Day for families to take a picnic in the countryside, to gather armfuls of beautiful marguerite, daisies, chamomile and other colourful blooms and to make a posy or wreath to hang on the outside of the house by way of celebration. Sometimes, the posies dry as they hang there making a lovely dried flower display which can last for many months longer!

Meanwhile, K and I have been out and about and taking on the heavy house cleaning to sweep away the soots and sands of winter, roll up the dusty rugs after a good beating, and take off the heavy covers needed for the winter to make room for summer sheets and warmer nights. All the winter knits and warm clothes have been put away with moth papers in suitcases under the beds and summer shirts and shorts retrieved for the ironing pile. In an island of extremes, these annual changeovers become the weft and weave of our seasonal life.

A poor wee cat, no more than a kitten turned out NOT to be a male as thought and deposited two tiny and rather sickly kittens under the wood pile. Sadly, we do not think they could have survived, despite trying to look after the little mother who began to look very downtrodden and frail. She and the kittens moved up the road but we did not hold out much hope for this little family. However, the villages are not short of alley cats and there will be many other litters of kittens who will survive better.

K and I had a lovely interlude in Panormo the other morning when a new fishing boat arrived by lorry and we spent a good hour gongoozling as the crew unhitched a crane and manoeuvred the boat off the lorry and alongside the jetty into the harbour. Then K listened with appreciation as they started up its diesel engine, flipped out the plastic fend-offs and puffed off out to sea on its maiden voyage with its proud little Greek flag streaming in the wind. I checked later in the week along the harbour wall and read that its name was Agiou Nicoloau … Saint Nicholas. It looks bright with new paint and well set up for some serious fishing excursions.

Outings with brother Chris and his better half Linda took us to the usual suspects of local haunts, Vinzi's delightful cafe overlooking Panormo harbour (our local), the Cafe Posto in Bali, Margarites for ceramics and for a real treat we drove up to the Wood Museum in Axos to see the sacred and dedicated work of the self-taught sculptor, George Koutantos who had the most magnificent wooden sculptures to admire. https://woodenmuseum.gr/en/the-sculptor/   After absorbing all the work involved from all angles and taking lots of photographs, we carried on further up the mountain road to eat a Sunday lunch in Anogia where the tavernas selling lamb cooked over the charcoal in their special way made an extra treat. We narrowly escaped forced purchase of Cretan andartes hairnets despite the strongest entreaties of the determined little old lady selling these and other home made lace items … but it was touch and go!  Chris and Linda visited Rethymnon and did a little shopping and eating and, I think enjoyed their week in Crete. It was the ideal time to visit. We tried to hold firm against large helpings, too much wine and sugary treats but again, it was touch and go!

On Saturday of the same week, John and Val, wonderful friends from Gravesend in Kent arrived at Heraklion airport and, as they have visited Crete a few times already, we could let them loose in Panormo after settling them into the lovely Philoxenia Apartments. Although not strictly open for a few days, the owners made an exception for them and gave them a beautiful premium apartment which was lovely and cool and overlooked the sea and the pool at the back. They were delighted and found the beds really comfortable after their long journey which started at silly o'clock from England. A first swim at the harbour beach lived up to its promise, and a lovely meal at the fish restaurant was a real treat. We would have hatched many more plans if K had not injured his foot somehow and might need a trip to the First Aid Health Centre in Perama first thing on Monday morning.

Tourists and hire cars are out in their hundreds and the season is well under way! As there are wedding anniversaries this year for our daughters … TEN YEARS … we can only say this month ... May the Fourth be with you. Kalomina!

LEARNING GREEK IN 25 YEARS ....

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

Our lovely teacher

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

Τη Δευτέρα, όταν έρθει το φορτηγό ψωμιού όλοι αγοράζουν ψωμί

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

We all buy bread from the Bread Van!

We all settle down again, hanging our bags of bread on the back of our chairs and press on with prepositions.

Ο ταχυδρόμος είναι εδώ από τις 10.30 το πρωί έως τις 11.30 π.μ.

[The postman is here from 10:30 am to 11:30 a.m.]

Before long, a car screams to a halt outside the door and Michali the Post pops his curly head round the door with a couple of letters for the Taverna family. He stops to read the board and is interested to read that “I will visit my friends during my stay in their country”. Ah yes, he nods and sets off at a break neck pace to his next port of call.

Ο Μανάβης έρχεται στο χωριό τη Δευτέρα

[The Greengrocer comes to the village on Monday]

After twenty minutes or so of mind-cudgelling Greek grammar, a raucous jangling loud speaker announces that the greengrocer is outside. We all identify the loud message as from the expensive greengrocer and not the reasonably priced greengrocer who calls on Saturdays. Nobody moves and the Van eventually moves off again without any buyers.

Dimitra gives us homework for next week:

• On Monday I will go for shopping Τη Δευτέρα θα πάω για ψώνια
• We will eat lamb at Easter Θα τρώμε αρνί το Πάσχα
• The Doctor will be at his office from 9 am to 2 pm Ο γιατρός θα είναι στο γραφείο του από τις 9 π.μ. έως 2 μ.μ.

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

The waysides are full of flowers

On Wednesday, we had planned to go for a nice country walk but Cretan life got in the way and we ended up doing a beach cleaning expedition instead. The sun was out, so we off-loaded our raincoats fairly quickly and evoked some curious looks from passers by as we donned rubber gloves, a fist full of black sacks and the long picker uppery thing. It was enough to put you off plastic drinking straws, take-away coffees and water bottles for life as we tried to clear the beach and shingle from as much plastic and non-degradeable stuff as possible. I began to get expert at picking up the hard plastic bottle tops and bits of lego. There were huge plastic petrol cans and pieces of rope, old shoes, bits of tyre, drinks cans (which degrade into really nasty sharp debris) and all manner of detritus which gets washed up on the shore or blown out of the bins winding up on the beach. After a couple of hours and 3 enormous bin bags full, we called it a day and left the final two beaches of Panormo to a group of youngsters who were in Crete for a week from a Bible College in York. Not a holiday, obviously. We hope that the turtles who lay their eggs on Cretan beaches will remain a bit safer as a result. I am wondering if we need to do a weekly sweep to keep local coastline tidy!

I was just sitting down to draw breath when news reached us by telephone of the death of a dear friend in England who had been battling cancer for a good while. Oh dear, so glad that I got to see her in Devon last year. We still keep in our minds the hilarious picture of our lovely friend foraging for prickly pears on her visit to Crete and of the ensuing chaos which spread around the kitchen in her wake. We were gobsmacked by her decision to pack salt cod in her suitcase for the journey home. We had picnic'd together on the beach I had just finished cleaning. This morning's work seemed somehow symbolic and I have a tactile wooden cross in my pocket which she gave me recently. There are loads of events to remember with a smile and some tears.

Sto kallo, dear friends.

INDEPENDENCE DAY

Greek Independence Day holiday overlooking Panormo harbour

After a short spell in the UK, I have heard that there are people asking when the next blog will be and that I am under orders. So this blog is dedicated to Josie and her little dog Horatio (who I've never met) but they been waiting for the latest episode from our part of the world and becoming concerned that there seem to be large gaps between transmissions. I fear that Josie may be disappointed because I have just spent two weeks in and around Manchester! However, I did have some nice days in the UK and enjoyed varieties of Spring flowers which do not appear in Crete.

Daffs along the tow path in Stone

I had several illuminating conversations with people back in the UK. The first expression on hearing how anxious the Brexit decision has made those of us living abroad, prompted an almost identical response from most people:

(in a rather belligerent tone)

… “Well, what difference is it going to make to you then?” ...

Gulp!  It was obvious that the average Brit was under the impression that ex pats are all living in Shang-ri-la and that we are all engaged in lounging around on yachts or by the side of our own swimming pools drinking gin and tonics being lazy and horrible! Oh no,  we are not! So, after sketching my worries over peace and stability within Europe, I began to explain that the drop in the pound had hit us instantly in the pocket so our pensions had devalued by 15-20%,   We had no peace of mind about our future lives/nationality/status and the likelihood of any sort of healthcare provision once the UK had left Europe, and that along with EU nationals settled in the UK and UK nationals settled throughout Europe, we were all bargaining chips in the forthcoming negotiations. For people who had quite legitimately sold up everything and gone to other places in Europe to try and make a living or a modest pension stretch a bit further, the future looked anything but rosy. I don't think people in the UK could imagine the position for overseas residents, near or far. In fact the divisiveness of the process has caused people to dig their heels in and behave in ways that they never would have, say, five years ago. As a seeker after truth and peace, I was a bit unnerved by the overt animosity of it all.

Fire window at Manchester Cathedral

Despite the long term worry over health care, we still have a year or so before everything closes in on us and our IKA health insurance books needed their annual renewal in March. In recent years, a group of us always used to organise a dawn raid on the IKA office with books, passports, a crib sheet form on which we copied our declaration in wobbly Greek letters saying that we did not earn any money in Greece and only received a pension from our home countries. After presenting these to the people behind the grills, if were lucky we would get our books back stamped for the forthcoming year in the midst of crowds of people who were all trying to do the same thing at the same time. ~What a scrum!  We learned that this year we needed an extra form from our Accountant to ensure that we had paid all our taxes due to the Greek government. I managed to renew my book but K's visit and 4 hour wait was in vain.  He needed an extra piece of paper from the UK Government before he can give it all to the IKA office and breathe a sigh of relief. Its a very frustrating process but ensures that if we do suddenly need medical treatment, we will be covered for this year at least. After Brexit – who knows what will happen?

It is a relief to arrive back in the homely Cretan village where our hard working neighbours' pensions have been reduced to one-third of the value they were five years ago. Despite all this, they set us a good example and soldier on honourably - all is quiet, orderly, peaceably traditional and the birds have not stopped singing this morning so, being here does have its homespun and home-grown compensations. I delivered a big box of Thorntons chocolates to my dear friend Angeliki at the kafeneon, who has a weakness for English chocolate, and was given a bag of eggs and a bottle of their home made wine a few minutes later! Her husband Kosta makes very good home made wine which tastes like sherry. So it is important to serve it in a small glass and only have the one! We are still in Lent, when Greek Orthodox faithfuls fast by giving up meat, fish, eggs, dairy food and exist on grains, pulses, fruit, vegetables and alternative sea foods such as shell fish, prawns, squid and octopus. I thought I would have a go at adopting the practice this Lent, which was easy in Crete but not at all easy in the UK. I did my best but lapsed on a few occasions!

Saturday was Greek Independence Day and a national holiday. The service at the village church was broadcast by loudspeaker to all the nearby houses and followed by a march of school children dressed in navy and white to the village square all carrying Greek flags. As it finished, we decided to go into Panormo for a cup of coffee since our favourite coffee bar opened for the first day of the new season in celebration. The sun was warm and we discovered other friends who were in Panormo for the morning and bumped into more friends making up an impromptu party for lunch at one of the few restaurants open yet, near the edge of the sea. It is still Lent, so the menu was predominantly sea food items and we tucked in adventurously to shrimp saganaki, salted cod with a garlic sauce or cuttlefish spaghetti, sampling the home-grown olive oil and house white wine as we waited and chatted.  It was a heaven sent opportunity to catch up with one another after emerging from the hibernation of winter. A brave tourist couple swam in the harbour and sunbathed on the sand, but it was too chilly for us still! The talk was of getting our homes cleaned after the soot and dust of the winter, damp problems and leaks caused by the heavy snowfall and getting gardens sorted. Phone numbers for handymen, painters or paint suppliers, taxi drivers and chimney sweeps were exchanged. All of us welcomed the contact and buzzing hive of industry to get us back to work again after the winter chills!