BANANA WARS

Hello from Crete. Kali Kronia. Happy New Year! Luckily, we had a wonderful Autumn with warm, bright sunshine most days until close to Christmas when we had at least three huge storms blow themselves overhead for days at a time, without much respite until today. Remembering the severity of last year, we closed the shutters, I searched for my wellies, kept checking the ceilings and floors for leaks and spent many a happy hour switching the router on and off, whenever thunder and lightening were in evidence … which was very frequent. We don't know why our phone line is directed through the router, but of course no one can reach us by phone or internet at these times. Fortunately our woodpile lasted until today and we could keep ourselves reasonably warm even when the electricity went off and the water went off .. often .. and this began to get on my nerves. The most unnerving thing is that I noticed that when the weather was horrible I was very tempted to drive on the wrong side of the road! I can obviously cope with left hand drive in the sunshine but bad weather reminds me of the UK so much! I kept coaching myself with 'right is right' while out and about. The seas have been very rough and pounding over the harbours and car parks in Chania and Rethymnon and the winds have been tossing tables and chairs around so that there are oddly misplaced belongings on other people's roofs and gardens!

We had a lovely Christmas Day with our pal, Mary who cooked a lovely Christmas lunch.  Since then we  have sustained ourselves with a good supply of mince pies, home made Christmas cake, some amazing home made sweets made by a friend, crystallised ginger and hot cups of tea, interlaced with something a bit stronger when available. Life certainly isn't dull, but demands constant vigilance! I have used up dozens and dozens of candles over this holiday season and my candle powered bathroom radiator is doing very well!!

Our Christmas post arrived on 2 January and we were mighty glad to know that everyone hadn't forgotten about us. Mrs C also had a panic before Christmas that K's medication – a horribly expensive but very effective box of horse pills did not materialise at the EOPPYY office in time to last him over the Christmas period. We were told on 23 Dec on our second visit to the office that all the boats had stopped due to poor weather. So for 12 days, K had no pills to take and actually felt much better for it! However, today is brilliant sunshine again, the boats have started operating and I picked up the long awaited package this morning. It's a bit like balancing on a knife edge, but Mr C says, “Stop panicking!!” I don't know why things seem so overpowering when the weather overhead resembles a thick, grey, damp horse blanket! Venturing out today, the sunshine was so blinding and the mountain tops shimmering in sparkling blue and white.. It just lifted the heart.

Thinking that gifts would be a bit thin on the ground this year, Mrs C spied a jigsaw puzzle whilst touring Lidl's and thought that it would make a nice gift to leave around at Christmas for Mr C who is really good at geography. Unpacked, Mr C declared it impossible! In truth, it was a demon which took a full three days to find edge pieces and then a bit of strategy to work out how to proceed. The print was miniscule for place names so we sought out various grades of magnifying glasses, the example on the box had been defaced by advertising matter over the whole of one corner, the light was not very good, the side table was not nearly big enough and the pesky thing has taken up the majority of the dining table for three weeks! Now it has been completed, we have the added worry about what to do with it? Mrs C is very tempted to put it all back in the box and pass it on to some other unsuspecting person but Mr C wants to mount it on the wall!

All suggestions gratefully accepted.

Mrs C has also been worrying about the possibility of having an operation on her arthritic hand and went to visit a couple of very reputable surgeons hereabouts. Crete is not populous for there to be dedicated hand surgeons closer than Athens and it would have been taking a bit of a chance. Having found a recommended man and almost at the point of having the operation, Ma Crozier backed out ... the recovery time required was FOUR MONTHS. It would have been much too difficult to sort things out for such a long time without transport and both of us incapacitated. So Mrs C is relieved at having made the decision, is taking collagen syrup and Omega 3 capsules for the time being and looking forward to nice weather when trying to grip things and get by every day with arthritic hands is not such a problem.

So, what are banana wars all about? Each Friday, Zacharias the Fruit and Veg man arrives close to our front door with his van and all the ladies of the block bound up in warm, black clothes burst out of their houses and swarm around with plastic bags to buy their stocks for the week. It is one of Mr C's tasks to buy some goodies and normally some kind villager brings the bags up the road for him and hangs them on our door handle. But Bananas are always the first things to go and you have to get in fast! Very often Mr C gets sidelined in the crush and misses out so we end up getting them at the supermarket! And then there are the Fridays when Pa Crozier waits for an hour or two and Zacharias doesn't arrive at all!

Now we have a couple of days of dry weather, we can get the washing done and clean the house a bit. Otherwise it's hibernation! We hope you all have a very happy, healthy and plentiful New Year without having to fight for bananas!

ROUMELI HIGHWAY

Saturday is the day of the mop and bucket, but having finished porch cleaning and dropped leaves clearance, we set off along the Roumeli Highway. It has such a romantic sound to it, doesn't it?  When we moved to Crete,  this route was all rough walking tracks amongst the groves where anemones grew in clumps, but a new road opened in the last 5-6 years taking a good 15 minutes off our journey to the municipal centre of Perama. At the opening of the road just south of our village is a signpost with the European flag on it which signifies that it was built with a grant from Europe. These signs crop up quite often round and about here outside new developments or by heritage sites or beaches. As we puttered along, I reflected that we hadn't seen many of those sort of signs in the UK. … and this kind of got me wondering why if grants were available from the EU, why I had not seen any evidence of them round and about in England? Perhaps they were for areas that needed support for development and I had lived in too well-healed places … but this seemed highly unlikely. Any benefits from Europe seemed very remote when we lived in England. Its only when you count them up you begin to realise what you are going to lose out on. It hasn't hit the population of the UK yet, but it will.

With thanks to Madeleina Kay

Anyway, back to Roumeli highway. It's a great smooth road which snakes along between acres and acres of olive trees of the Geropotamos and yes, this year is going to be a bumper one for olives. We passed trucks and tractors parked alongside their trees where families and groups were spreading the nets underneath the trees and preparing to shake, twirl and rake down the olives, sort them and put them in sacks to take to the olive mill. Dimitra, our friend who used to help with Greek conversation is now working 14 hour days at the mill doing all the record keeping and administration. Greek conversation is a No No, but there are new free lessons available in Rethymno and Mrs C is cudgelling her brains once more to try to get a better grasp of Greek. We put the car radio on for a listen to get a bit more practice.

The road is often crossed by small ferrety skinks and snakes as we drive along, so we watch our speed. At one point, the car does a sharp S bend where the road crosses a stream and where the bamboo grows in swathes. We always seem to meet a large 4 x 4 truck speeding in the opposite direction at the narrowest points and others whizz out of side turnings without stopping to check for other traffic. We do often wonder what the driving test must be like in Crete, when the standard and safety consciousness is so lacking, but we press on, driving defensively and on the lookout. Left from the storms of March, debris washed down from the escarpments is still in evidence … a little more swept together but not removed from the roadside and each new rain storm brings more stones and mud down across the road to add to it. We narrowly miss a truck driver at Roumeli itself as he careers out of nowhere and round the corner right in front of us. We zig zag down the chalk escarpment to the main feeder road and bus route to Perama and crick our necks at the awkward junction. A new emporium has opened which seems to sell hardware and has wheelbarrows outside, but as we cannot read the Greek shop sign quickly enough, we need to find out what else is there! We will have to have a nose at a later date. Two new chapels have appeared on this route, beautifully built in dressed stone and we have a new wonder whether there are Pappas (clergy) to officiate at these churches or whether they stand empty most of the year. We are permanently mystified, but make a note take a little visit when we have time.

The children from the village school practising for Oxi Day

Once parked at Perama, I struggle up the incredible slope from the car park and puff over to the ATM to check the bank balance. The value of the pound has meant that we have to keep a much closer watch on our spending these days. Fortunately, we are still solvent and able to get the groceries! I stroll back to town – all down hill this time – and observe a few Christmas windows among all the closed shop businesses, hear the heavy beat of music coming from the gym (who wants to spend time cooped up inside on a fabulous day like this?) and check on the new oranges growing on the trees by the side of the tiny pavement. It is important not to spend too much time looking up in Crete. Narrowly missing falling into the basement of a bakery which has thoughtlessly cut a large section out of the pavement to form a delivery hatch, I cling on to the wall and make it safely back to the Posh Cafe for a welcome bevy. Who would have thought that a trip to the cash machine would be so fraught with danger? The most fabulous hot chocolate arrives, which comes with Viennese fancy type shortbread. Yum! With the demise of so many shops and businesses, the Posh Cafe is the trendy place to be for now! Mr C people-watches while he waits there. The car parking antics outside the Bakery and Supermarket can keep us amused for hours, as customers' cars stop dead in the middle of the road, trucks double and triple park while lorries try to deliver loads of goods in the midst of complete lawless mayhem. It is frequently heart stopping to see all the manoeuvring and near misses.

In this bumper olive year, you will be pleased to know that the Croziers have completed and achieved their olive harvest already. It took all of five minutes from the large potted olive tree on the roof terrace. Mrs C has consulted the oracle and they are soaking in brine for a while. To be honest, they look a little puny and we don't hold out much hope, but time will tell. Thanks to our neighbours and people who really do know what they are doing, we won't be short of oil this year. 

Happy hunting!

SWEPT UNDER THE CARPET

The dusty heat of Summer has passed and the last few weeks have been wonderful. Clear, bright skies and a cool breeze to lull us into activity as the tourist activity of Summer closes and Autumn opens its doors to us. Leaves are dropping from the mulberry tree outside the porch and the grape vine along the fence. This involves a lot of sweeping day by day. There have been just a couple of light showers to fool the garden plants into thinking that it is Spring again and for new green leaves to shoot up here and there.

Driving back from town, we are halted every now and then by herds of goats and sheep being led to winter pastures across the national road and the coolness helps us to welcome the pauses and to stop and have a good look around us. The local authorities have also taken the opportunity to paint white lines along the road and there seem to be far more double white lines than before. Hopefully, people will be persuaded to overtake only when safe to do so. Rumour has it that the Police catching motorists ignoring the road markings have their number plates ripped off the car and face enormous fines. So, just … not … worth … it. Until last week, the roads were still full of hire cars and tourist coaches and it is the first year I have experienced rush hour traffic in Crete. There was absolutely no point in overtaking, since the roads were full of lines of traffic all the way to Rethymno.

This week things are quieter and we can get into the car parks. Aqua aerobics has finished for the year as the hotel swimming pool has closed up and other forms of exercise are in the planning stage. Outside the shops, the summer fair of inflatable beach toys, sun hats and flip flops have been taken in and the shops are getting out their winter stocks of hats, scarves, leather coats and boots! The hardware shops which displayed hoses, garden pots, watering cans and green netting now have hauled out tree loppers, rakes, olive and fruit pickers, roof paint and gum boots. Yes, the seasons move on again. Somehow, each new season in Crete brings welcome change to look forward to. The hotels and cafes will close so that people can harvest their olive trees.

I have had many a pause in the garden or the roof to sweep up falling leaves and ponder on the misty views across the Geropotamos valley and at Mount Psiloritis. My meanderings, however, have been less on the magic of nature and more on the poor quality of sweeping implements! My favourite broom went missing after the roof painting weekend and I was ridiculously miffed because it had taken many forays to far-flung emporia to find it. I was left with a feeble excuse for a broom as a swap, which was barely fit for purpose and I now need to start the whole frustrating broom search all over again. I don't want to labour the point, but brooms, buckets, dustpans and all such articles here for which any Greek housewife will need on a daily basis are pretty useless. Poor design, plastic which degrades in the heat, broom handles which rust away within months and packaged sets of brooms which do not fit together with their 'matching' dustpans. If anyone wanted to start a new business redesigning all these articles to keep the dirt and dust at bay and making them of decent quality, they could “clean up” ha ha ha. Just saying! And don't get me on to the subject of mop buckets. Three stand in a sad line, all broken or imperfect in one way or another! I just shudder about all that plastic used to make things that don't do the job properly and then remain somewhere, taking up space for evermore. If only we could melt them all down and make house-ware that is more functional and fit for purpose! Well I had to have a whinge about something!

Our miniature olive tree on the roof terrace has a tiny crop of fruit beginning to turn purple, the roof has been re-coated with waterproof paint and the pallets are down in the porch, ready for our first delivery of fire wood. Today, I unfurled the winter rugs (which are cleaned, moth proofed and rolled up during the summer along with heavy blankets) so that the floors can be swept and cleaned free of sandy dust which blows through the house in summer. I've defied personal tradition, which has escaped me so far in retirement, by making and jarring up Christmas mincemeat to get nice and mature by the time Christmas gets here! Preliminary tasting tells me that it needs a little more brandy, but that can wait until later.

As Mr C was embroiled in the Rugby World Cup, a quick visit to drink a hot chocolate at Vinzi's overlooking the harbour in Panormo today was a lovely outing. Just warm enough not to need a cardy, but cool enough to be comfortable and watch the fishing boats reflected in the still water and the last remnants of tourists sunbathing and swimming. We will all enjoy these last magical days before the winter storms begin in earnest!

I was determined to complete a blog without the Br*%!t word and have just about achieved it. In this respect, I've resorted to prayer now!

Keep warm and dry wherever you are!

RUNNING OUT OF TIME

Outside the house a furious gale force buffeting of wind is throwing things about and the power is dipping on and off as electricity wires are momentarily touching and cutting off the supply. I have been in and out tying things down, retrieving umbrellas, removing sun blinds and closing shutters to keep most of the furious onslaught of hot winds from the south at bay. However, inside the house everything that is not fixed down is swaying about and the noise is a bit scary! We will await going out and about for an hour or two, to see if things calm down a bit. I wonder if this is one of the tails of the hurricanes which have been in the news.

Mr C and Mrs C are enjoying some down time after a bit of a squash. A crisis situation in the UK brought a brother to stay for a couple of weeks to bridge the gap between looking for somewhere to live and pension arriving in the bank. Housing in the UK has become so prohibitive lately. We all spent a couple of days scouring internet sites with him looking for affordable places to rent which were few and far between.

This does not bode well for many pensioners here. The most recent posting from Gov.UK  (via the British Embassy) informed us definitively that S1 health funding would only be available for 6 months after Brexit. The rush of people returning to the UK for life-saving medication and health care will be an extra crisis for the local authorities to handle with little or no funding from central government. After the kindness we have received from the Greek system in spite of their financial difficulties, the attitude of the British Government has been chilling and I feel ashamed of what is happening. This is not the Britain I grew up in post WWII, these are not the values I hold dear, how can all this be? Everyone seems to be so frightened of mob rule that they are adopting a regime to encompass the line of least resistance, so that the country is to be run by tax evading mobsters instead of some statesmen holding firm with any sort of moral compass. I can barely believe it. I have now turned off and blocked all news from Gov.UK, because it has become a list of threats and no help to us.

While my brother was with us, we discussed Philotimo. A wonderful Greek concept of help, love, support for others without any expectation of reward. Entrenched within the Greek national tradition in their quiet and noble way, the Greek people we know demonstrate this trait and show their welcome and hospitality as naturally as breathing. We do hope some of it rubs off on us in the time we are here among them. We intend to stay put as long as we possibly can!

We have been trying to ignore Facebook and the Six O'Clock News, but things are now closing in on us. The folk who tried to live in a warmer climate and eke out a modest pension in their senior years are being denied what they paid into for all their working lives unless they return to the UK. The drop in the pound has made the cost of living higher here, even though Greek costs have stayed the same, our doctors and access to medication will cease and many of us will be forced to leave our homes here because of Brexit. If those at home are having a bad time already and think “Huh, serves them right!”, just remember that a new mass influx of elderly, homeless and poorly will make things worse for everybody in the UK. The housing crisis will not improve. Hospitals will still be under stress without access to medical professionals from Europe who have gone home in droves. None of this will be an improvement for the man in the street. The only people to win from this will be rich and super rich people who trade on the foreign exchange markets or who keep their mega bucks in off shore accounts and don't pay taxes. If they had been forced to pay tax (as the EU had recommended) it would have helped to cover the costs of schools, roads, hospitals and infrastructure. Avoiding paying tax by all the giants of industry, commerce and the media is what all this push for Brexit has really been about.

Don't be fooled, we have all been ripped off and so much damage done to our country in the process but there is always hope. My hope is that Britain resists threats from the mob, stands firm in the tradition of free speech in parliament and overcomes, confuses and confounds any malign forces that would try to destroy all that is truthful, responsible and right. 

In spite of all this pontificating, the wind is still gusting outside, the power twitching and the router needs rebooting for the third time today! Keep safe!

STONE GROUND

The Canal Basin, Stone by Emma Joustra

Back in Crete after two cool and refreshing months in the UK, I kept any Brexit discussions under wraps since where we were staying was so ordinary, so prosperous, so 'carrying on as if nothing has happened', my current state of mind is just regarded as hysterical.  

Anyway, good things happened and we made up our minds to enjoy our surroundings, the lovely woods and farmlands, the canal happenings and lots of nice waterside pubs to have great pub lunches. We tried out North Staffordshire oatcakes, plump sausages, pork pies and all the delectable local fare which is scarcely found in Crete unless someone brings it back in their cases.

The wedding was a wonderful time where friends and family made a plan to be there several months in advance and co-ordinated their time off and holidays around being in England and enjoying the Peak District. Our daughters, their husbands and children all came over from New Zealand, finding holiday cottages and meeting up with old friends in their limited time in England. K had the use of a little mobility scooter which tackled the roads around the local town and gave him a bit of a boost. The wonderful three day wedding celebration was a brilliant time.

I also found our equivalent Makers Group in Stone at The Artisan Boutique where several ladies meet regularly for a knit and natter group on a weekly basis. We admired jumpers, patterns and different makes and I stayed for a Taster Session in felt embroidery work on one extra day. What with that and the local library, a church, nice coffee shops and pubs all within walking distance, we had lots going on. I was there for the Farmers Market, explored all the new shops and building project for the exciting Crown Wharf Theatre.

The news for us back in Crete, as a no deal Brexit looms, is ever more sombre. The British Embassy insensitively sent out a poster about the difficulties awaiting us should we dare to come back to the UK if S1 medical care is no longer available on a reciprocal basis in Europe. It seems that the powers that be have only just worked out a few of the consequences of their terrible decisions. We were told to expect a wait of six months back in the UK to be entitled to normal care under the NHS and the difficulty in finding a GP was spelled out. Also that social and welfare care would not be available to us. A gap of six months in, say diabetes care, cancer treatment or many other problems would be a death sentence to many. Perhaps that is what they hope for… to kill us all off. Investing in a property abroad and having to abandon it (virtually unsaleable in Greece) would still leave us with tax and bills to continue to pay in Greece, while many would be without anywhere to live or even with family links back in the UK. It has to be against all human rights to sweep aside people's life and status (except in a war situation) by those who are in no way qualified to make such a decision. We keep praying and praying for this nightmare to be over and for someone, somewhere to say that our lifetime of NI payments will still be honoured and that we are not being punished for settling in Europe when the UK was happily part of Europe. What would be the compensation for ruining so many families' lives who could no longer travel to be with parents or children, travel to find work or study abroad? Problems as occurred in the aftermath of the Berlin Wall and the troubles lying in wait for us at the Irish border are only a fraction of the difficulties we are storing up for the future. The United Kingdom has never seemed to be so dis-united or on the brink of dismantling.  Quite a price to pay for ... "sovereignty" and what did people actually mean by it?  What precisely had we given away that needed to be taken back?   

But its all been said a hundred times and many people are still oblivious to this Pandora's Box.

In view of this,  I need to write a thank you note to Europe. It was a wonderful hospital in Berlin who offered medical help to my brother for leukaemia treatment when nothing was available in the UK in 1961. The kindest of German families looked after my mother who was accompanying him, while the British Army took my ailing brother out for tank excursions. It was France, Austria, Norway, Portugal and Germany whose students of English came to stay with our family when we were growing up. It was France who (forgivingly) offered me my first ever job after leaving college at the European HQ of IBM. It was European law that took up most of my trade association jobs on returning to England in 1971 while we adjusted to decimalisation, metrication and new marketing rules. These arrangements all took many years to accomplish … so I knew first hand that a successful withdrawal from the EU would take five years minimum to achieve and the scant two year Article 50 withdrawal move would always have been impossible. It was from Greece that my husband's father came to Edinburgh University in the 1930s, London where my father in law settled and bought up his family. In the next generation, my husband's work with shipping companies that took him all over Europe with roll on-roll off ships.   And Crete of course became our home after our retirement.

I think many of us were guilty of thoughtlessly blaming some new code of practice or regulation change as “another EU regulation” and blinded ourselves to the improvements or peace that most of us were living through. We enjoyed all the good things like easier travel, stable currency, food, educational opportunities, grants for beleaguered communities and belly ached about trivial things such as losing our navy blue passport covers and swallowed all the misinformation regularly disgorged by the media. We did not check our facts, we did not appreciate everything we had in terms of young medical professionals serving us, youngsters making good in our midst or the richness of our life as a vital part of the European project of peace and stability. The dire effects of Austerity throughout the UK were due to the policies of the UK government and no one else. Objections to bendy bananas and maroon passports surely pale into significance to the UK Cabinet callously legislating for a no-deal Brexit knowing that faceless UK or EU subjects could die from lack of medical treatment because of some bureaucratic carve up. How have we really become so hardened and what kind of society are we blindly walking towards?

Since I typed the body of this text, Boris Johnson has pro-rogued the next parliamentary session to reduce the time available for MPs to debate the final Brexit issues in Parliament. Fortunately, there are plenty of people up in arms about such an assault on democracy and it isn't just me!

What next?

Ask not for whom the bell tolls!

Wedding 2

SUMMER CELEBRATIONS

Humble apologies for the delay in blog posts.  Google Mail seem to have created mayhem at the Blogger headquarters and caused all sorts of log in problems for would be bloggers.  After changing all sorts of pages and profiles and getting nowhere, I have approached it from an alternative browser which sorted out the problem immediately.  If the appearance is grossly altered, I will send my sorries in advance.  I am unable to see the whole page of the blog any more so I may just have to post a lot of photos on a separate post.

We are spending the hot summer weeks in the UK.  We are trying not to think about the consequences for us of a no deal Brexit.  We feel amazed by everyone in the UK as everyone here seems completely oblivious to the outcome for our nation, but we have learned not to raise the issue.  I walked past a stand at the Farmers Market emblazoned with pale blue Brexit Party regalia and had to turn my face the other way so that I didn’t start an argument.  They didn’t seem to have any interest in their publicity as people were way too engrossed in pork pies and beeswax candles.

We have been doing much more interesting things in Stone and in the Peak District.  Pa Crozier had to return last week to Crete to catch up with medical scans and stuff but Ma Crozier is enjoying welcome coolth and drizzle with enough sunny intervals to make life interesting.  Mr C so enjoyed a little break sitting beside the Canal at the Star Inn gongoozling the narrow boats as they negotiated the lock and we were enchanted by the metal clanking of the steel cogs which turned the  sluices and worked to make the lock gates open and close.  The sun was strong and the small electric scooter bought for him earlier in the year worked out well for local running about on smooth UK pavements. (It would be hopeless on Cretan tracks!)

Leo and Harri’s wedding in the Peak District was a wonderful weekend which brought together all the family from all over the world.  They had event planned it beautifully with a fish and chip supper on our arrival on Thursday, a groomsmen’s BBQ on Friday with rounders and football matches.  There was a really difficult quiz on a wedding theme later on that night.  The big event on Saturday needed to be held indoors due to cloud and misty rain, but the sun came out after the ceremony so that all the photos could take place in the sunshine.  We had a lovely time.

The cake was made by the mothers of happy couple and a sister from NZ.  It worked well and looked lovely.  The decor had been envisioned by Harri, the bride and with long fronds of ivy, rose petals and long lace runners on the refectory tables looked simple and lovely.  Yours truly made a few hundred metres of bunting, which also looked surprisingly cheery.  It was a real combined effort.  If I can’t put too many photos on this page, I will post another blog after this!