Greetings

A couple of days ago – last Thursday to be precise – the Agnanti restaurant closed.

The Agnanti is the oldest, most famous and most upmarket of our Glossa restaurants and every year in early or mid-October, it winds up for the season.

It is something of a tradition here to support the first and last days of any of the seasonal businesses. Indeed, some hold an open house on the first day of their trading summer, where everyone can wish them ‘kalo kalokairi’ – 'good summer' and have a free drink or two to help the sentiment along.

On Thursday the wishes were for a good winter – ‘kalo himonas’ and there was a good deal of helping the sentiment along.

Greek people are very good at good wishes of many kinds. We, who are used to a restricted diet of ‘Good Morning’ and ‘Goodnight’, find ourselves showered with time-specific blessings. In addition to ‘kalimera’ – ‘good morning’ or literally ‘good day’ we are wished ‘kalo misimeri’ – which can only be translated, rather inadequately, as ‘good midday’.

Then there is afternoon, not to be confused here with after noon. Early afternoon might mean ‘soon after twelve’ to a northern European, but on Skopelos it is more likely to mean six or so. You see, here it is morning until the end of the morning work session at 2 p.m. Work resumes in the afternoon – after 5 p.m. usually. 

In between is a special time set aside for lunch, a siesta in hot weather, or for the family to get together and talk. It is strictly not done to call on someone or even to telephone them between 2 and 5 p.m. If our phone rings at this time, we know it is not a Greek at the other end.

This time has its own good wish – ‘kalo apoyevma’ a sort of ‘good afternoon’. Then, at sometime after 6, the saying is ‘kalispera’ – ‘good evening’. Context is important too. If our neighbours see us on our way to dinner, they are just as likely to say ‘kali orexi’ – literally good appetite, instead of ‘kalispera’.

Similarly, an elderly villager heading off home for the night at 7 p.m. will be wished ‘kalinichta’ – 'goodnight'. Whereas, if you see some friends at 11 p.m. and you know they are on their way out and not home, you would wish them ‘kalo vradi’ – another sort of good evening.

On the first of the month you will wish your friends and colleagues ‘kalo mina’ and on their saints’ days, ‘chronia polla’ – literally ‘many years’.

In Greece, people celebrate their name day – the feast day of the saint with whom they share their name – rather than their actual birthday (although the celebration of birthdays is becoming increasingly common for children).

The naming of children is quite structured on the island – generally, they are named after grandparents and then aunts and uncles. The result is that 90% of the population of Glossa share perhaps a couple of dozen names and on the feast of Georgos, Iannis, Maria or Eleni, the streets will be continuously ringing with cries of ‘chronia polla’. 

Perhaps all these friendly greetings, accompanied by a willing smile, can give the impression that this easy-going island paradise runs along entirely without effort.

It is fashionable at the moment for the press to give Greek people a good verbal kicking and brand them as lazy and workshy. I would like to invite some of those journalists to try our local working hours. In the summer work starts as early as six to exploit the cool of the day. By 2 p.m. a full eight hours work has been done and then there may be the chance to top up some sleep for an hour or two. Work resumes at 5 p.m. and may continue until one or two the following morning.

In each 24 hours a full 16 hours of work is done. And this frequently goes on for seven days a week and for 16 weeks in the summer season. A single working week of 112 days without a break.

This is the equivalent of 51 weeks of work for those who have a 35 hour week.

So, when summer comes to an end, it is good to all pile into the Agnanti – or whoever is having a last night and wish each other ‘kalo himonas’.

Let’s talk.

Swallows

The swallows have arrived!

Which is a little confusing.

A week or so ago, I became aware that I had not seen any swallows for a few days and realised that they had left for their long trip to sub-Saharan Africa. Mentally, I wished them ‘kalo taxidi’ and looked forward to seeing them next year when a pair or two might actually nest on the little shelves we have provided.

And then, yesterday, a flock of swallows came swooping around the house.

Clearly, these were not the birds that had spent the summer here, but had nested further north perhaps in Denmark, Sweden, Belarus or Estonia - where the barn swallow is the national bird, curiously enough.

I wondered what they had seen as they skimmed their way south and what other sights they would encounter on their long journey to South Africa.

Which got me thinking about our other ‘swallows’. In the village of Glossa where we live, there are quite a few houses which are only occupied in the summer. Mostly these belong to people who grew up here but moved to the mainland for work, marriage and to raise a family.

There is still a strong tradition that when a girl from Glossa marries, her parents give her a house. Sometimes it is auntie’s or granny’s old house passed down through the family and renovated for its new owners. Occasionally it is newly built on one of the remaining tiny plots of village land sandwiched between two older houses – land which may have been the subject of years of on-off negotiation.

Every summer, these houses spring back to life. The parents, cousins or grandparents left behind and permanently resident here, start preparing for the annual return of the exiles. First you notice the cleaning and airing going on. It is a time to be nimble as balconies are cleaned with seemingly dozens of buckets of water slooshed down to cascade on the unwary pedestrian below.

Those of us who live here all year round – ‘summer-winter’ – as they say, attract a certain kudos and there is a mutual respect among those who remain in the quietest time of the year. Of course this apparent toughness of the marooned is all a false construct.

Certainly there are storms which sometimes cut off the electricity for a few hours at a time – so we have plenty of gas lamps and stoves and a good stock of firewood. It is true that travel plans can be disrupted if the Flying Dolphin finds the sea too rough to handle – but modern weather forecasting allows us to leave earlier or later for our shopping trip to Volos or concert trip to Thessaloniki. And if that load of bricks and cement is delayed, there is always ‘avrio’ – tomorrow.

‘Avrio’ is a frequently heard word here and it has some similarity to the Spanish ‘mañana’ although without the burning sense of urgency of its Spanish counterpart.

No, we summer-winter Glossa residents enjoy a short and mild winter and all the joys of the  blossoms and wild flowers in early spring. We also enjoy catching up with all our friends who were busy in the summer. And it is true that we enjoy being thought of as the tough summer-winter island folk – just don’t tell anyone that we have the best end of the bargain.

So, once the houses are cleaned for the summer visitors, they start to arrive – a few at a time to begin with and then a flood. The streets ring with the sound of “kalos ilthate” – welcome. In Greek this literally means, ‘good that you came’ and the traditional reply is, ‘good that I found you’.

We have nicknamed these annual returners ‘swallows’ like their feathered counterparts and they are anticipated and welcomed in the same way. Now we have been here six years, we recognise individuals and families – and they way they have changed. Of course, it is mainly the children you notice. 

Hair ruffled, cheeks pinched, picked up and passed around they are re-assimilated into the collective consciousness of the village.

The toddlers have become kids (ough, too big to pick up now), the babies have become toddlers (arms aloft to join the ritual) and here and there is a baby starting its first summer in Glossa.

The noisy cat-chasing lad with the skinned knees has become quieter, more watchful and slightly self-conscious of his breaking voice – but handsome and so tall, says grandma! The girl, only so recently proudly showing off her new holiday dolly to the village children, is gaggling and sharing secrets with the other girls – each with a phone in hand – whilst glancing sideways at the boys.

And so the world turns. Like the heights inked on the back of our pantry door when I was a boy myself, this annual tide leaves its mark. Piles of pebbles lovingly gathered from the beach and reluctantly left behind, the lilo that won’t be going home to Larissa and the memory of a summer when your nose just reached the balcony rail. Here and gone.

Back to the mainland to their real lives they go. And I find myself wondering which of these lives are their real one? The summer or the winter? For the swallow of the bird variety, is the real life the summer of laying eggs and raising young or the other summer of building strength for the next big migration? Or is it all part of a perfect whole?

Today the flying swallows have gone again, refuelled and on their way via Syria or Egypt and other places I will never visit, to cross the desert and head home to the lush grassland. Living a life entirely without winter, these summer-summer birds.

Let’s talk.

One for Sorrow

Our crows have got it wrong.

When I was a boy I was told – as everyone was then – if you see a rook on its own it’s a crow and if you see a group of crows together, they’re rooks.

This teaching by negatives or opposites was common then: “when gorse is out of bloom, kissing’s out of season.” It is a deal punchier and more memorable than: “at almost any time of the year it is possible to find gorse in flower.” I can remember as a small child recognising the truth of the statement, long before my own kissing season had started.

On Skopelos, we have ‘hoodies’ - hooded crows - which, as a child growing up in the south of England, I only saw on visits to Scotland and Ireland because we had the all black carrion crow. According to the bird book, they are the same in size and behaviour, differing only in plumage. Apparently they interbreed where their ranges overlap, which may be something to do with all the flowering gorse I saw in Scotland as a boy.

But our crows don’t know the saying about rooks and crows. The crows that live at the bottom of our garden are colonial. They live together all year round in close proximity, squabbling with each other whenever they feel like it and especially when the wind drives up the hill and offers the perfect medium for aerial manouvres.

When we first lived in Glossa, I nicknamed the flock ‘Biggles and Co.’ from their habit of scrambling like a squadron of fighters to drive off the enemy. (Biggles was the hero of a series of boys stories about brave RAF pilots and crew spanning the first and second World Wars). Up they would come as soon as Baron von Buzzard or one of the other baddies came into view.

Our crows are very touchy about who comes into their airspace. They will launch themselves in numbers and with aggressive cries of kraa, kraa, harass the offender – buzzard, kestrel, sparrowhawk or Eleanora’s falcon as the case may be.

Now, the crow is a large bird – its wingspan can reach a metre – but birds of prey are better flyers. Sometimes a young and inexperienced buzzard will get in a flap, but generally, a slight twist of a wing is enough to ensure that the crow’s attack only finds fresh air. No retaliation is necessary. Usually.

One of our resident hunters is a sparrowhawk. A tight, fast bundle of aggression who smashes into the tops of trees, if necessary, to pin down her prey. A little while ago, I was watching her hunt over our garden when, true to form Biggles and Co scrambled. Six kraaking crows on to one serene sparrowhawk. Even though she is only three-quarters of the size of a crow, she took very little notice. For a while she amused herself by making the tiniest adjustments to send the attackers off target until one of the younger hoodies clearly overstepped the mark with a louder and more than usually determined attack.

With an Immelmann turn she transformed the aggressor into the target and sped straight at young Ginger or whoever. The crow tactically lightened his body weight and panicked earthwards like a broken umbrella. At the last second, our sparrowhawk relented and swooped upwards – into a sky curiously empty of crows. I could almost hear the excuses fading into the empty air: “gosh, is that the time”, “I’m on me break, me”, “… the old paperwork getting on top of me …”, “don’t feel well” and so on.

The only other member of the crow family permanently resident on Skopelos is the raven. Most of the time we see them flying in dead straight lines, as if on wires, steadily going “kronk, kronk” or, in the cause of variety, “kronk, kronk, kronk”, or even occasionally – well you can probably guess.

At certain times of the year, these large black flying animals produce wonderful tumbling and whirling displays accompanied by a range of calls and chunterings not normally heard. The effect is startlingly like seeing a staid frocked priest on his parish rounds suddenly start break dancing in the street. In March these birds - who pair for life - display dramatically to re-establish their bond, in response to what my bird book rather coyly calls ‘spring feelings’.

Sadly we do not have magpies here. Or rather – sorrowfully – we have one.

There are Magpies a-plenty on the mainland, but they are not strong fliers and the one that lives here is probably the result of a stormy wind and a wrong turn. We sometimes imagine our lonely magpie waking up the next morning and wondering where everyone else was, like Gary Larson’s ‘Last of the Mohicans’.

Our feisty crows – defying what I was taught as a child – have each other and the squadron, our long-lived ravens have lifetime mates, but our magpie is all alone.

One for sorrow indeed.

Let’s talk.

Running into me

I have been thinking about shoes. Not in an Imelda Marcos sort of way – I don’t collect shoes, although I do sometimes neglect to throw them away until kindly prompted.

No, I have been thinking about shoes. As distinct from trainers – or what my North American friends call sneakers. Every since I had the operation on my knee, I have been wearing trainers. Just because they offer the best grip in a village where almost everything is either up or down but almost never on the level. So my two pairs of trainers – one for best you understand – have become a symbol of my lameness.

It never used to be like that. At one time I had trainers because I went running, usually early in the morning, through the dark and empty streets and into the park – sometimes across the river under its duvet of morning mist and sometimes up the hard hill in preparation for the race.

I ran my first organised 10k at the age of 52 and two years later ran my one and only half marathon. I am pleased to note that my time was less than seven minutes slower than the world record time Patrick Makau set last Sunday in Berlin. Granted he ran a marathon in roughly the time that I ran a half marathon, but he is young and probably trained harder than I did.

My trainers then were shoes for going, not halting.

When I was young, we also had shoes for going, running faster than the wind. But these were sandals. Every summer there was a new pair of sandals with unsullied white crepe soles and a cut out pattern of holes over the toes that the sun would tattoo on your feet like henna, by the end of the holidays. I can clearly remember the pure joy of running so fast that my heels hit my buttocks in my new wonder shoes, winged like the sandals of Hermes, at the start of an apparently endless summer. Over the next few weeks, the once stiff and new leather became like a second skin - a moulded three dimensional representation of my ever-running feet.

Of course, autumn eventually came and it was time to put away these miraculous shoes in the bottom of the wardrobe, wings folded as they prepared to hibernate. 

There was little time to mourn the passing of summer as it was now time for New Shoes for the new school year. These were usually bought half a size or so larger than the fluorescing green outline of my foot in the pedoscope indicated, sometimes with consequences.

Early one March in the first year of my first school, I was running around the playground with that inexhaustible perpetual motion of a five year old and my feet had not entirely grown into the extra space allowed. I crashed to earth and skidded – on my knees as was the norm – collecting a good portion of schoolyard gravel on the way. There was impressive grazing soon followed by an appropriate amount of blood.

“Miss” was on playground duty that day. Of course all the teachers were called ‘Miss’, but you should understand that this was “Miss”. Our “Miss”, my teacher from my class. THE “Miss”. The fount of all knowledge and kindness. In memory she was always dressed in sunny summer frocks and always smiling. Of course, I was totally in love with her. She swooped across the playground and lifted me to my feet. One glance was enough for her. She held my hand and led me to the first aid room.

Now, here was a problem. I was a proud boy and even though my shoes were big enough to take the blame, I was determined not to cry in the presence – the exclusive presence – of my adored “Miss”. My plan was simple. If I held my breath, I would not be able to cry.

With my breath firmly clenched I suffered in silence as the stinging Dettol was dabbed on with handfuls of cotton wool. Then lint and plaster – the badge of a wounded playground warrior – and finally she was done. My breath still held – despite the stinging in my knees and the ringing in my ears.

“Miss” looked at me with that smile: “you are a brave boy, how old are you?”

Nothing for it. Let the air out fast and grab a quick breath in, “six next Wednesday, Miss”. And I turned and fled before my eyes let me down as badly as the shoes had done.

Well, spring turned to summer following a pattern I was beginning to see as normal. By now, the school shoes were a perfect fit, if not a touch tight. The first hot day, I went to find my sandals.

I remembered them as my great co-conspirators of the last summer. But something was wrong. They looked older and more worn, tired perhaps and smaller than I remembered them. 

It was a sad feeling and one I was to encounter again many years later when I dropped in unexpectedly to visit my parents.

I dusted off the sandals – regretting that I had not done as I had been told and polished them properly last September – trying to recapture the spirit of our mad Summer dashes. But to no avail. 

They would not be young again. I held them, but the betrayal was complete: I had outgrown them.

Let’s talk.

The heart of the matters

One of the great things about the souvlaki bar in Glossa is that you can drop everything and go out to eat or drink with a clear conscience. Never mind that your to do list is overflowing with unmade phone calls and arrangements not yet concluded, just go. I’ll explain in a moment.

In case you don’t know the place, let me tell you a little about it. It sits at the junction of five streets, three of them composed largely of steps and the other two being the in and out of what is, arguably, Glossa’s main street. And it literally sits in the junction. The tables are on both sides of the street and life flows through the middle.

As does the rain in the wet season. This place is called the ‘louki’ which means a water spout, gutter or groove – take your choice – and in the days before the impressive storm drain was built, rainwater would cascade down from the surrounding steep streets and rush across the little road in a torrent that was often 20 centimetres deep or more.

Bikes, cars, small trucks, taxis and occasionally donkeys pass through from time to time. It is never all that busy and many of the motor vehicles will turn round and return having completed their errands nearby. Beyond the louki, the road becomes narrower with one particularly harsh double right angled bend and almost nowhere to pass. So from here on it is mainly bikes, people and donkeys who pass, with the odd motorist who is particularly experienced, intrepid or lost.

As well as our famous souvlaki bar, the louki is home to the town hall, the KEP and the doctor’s surgery.

The KEP is a wonderful Greek institution. It is a sort of state sponsored hands-on Citizens’ Advice Bureau. The KEP computer is linked to many government bodies and utility companies but the heart of the KEP is an ancient rolodex containing hundreds of the most useful phone numbers for a resident of Glossa in need of help.

Some years ago, we went to Volos to buy a cheap wood-burning stove. We were told that the stove would arrive “with Stephanos”, but “when?” was only answered with a smile and a shrug and a Volos phone number scribbled on a corner torn from a piece of brown paper. 

A couple of days later I phoned the number. First, my Greek failed the test. Then, “Milate Anglika?” (do you speak English?) I asked. The answer was a terse “ochi!” and the phone was put down. This was not only memorable for the rareness of that experience, but for the helplessness I was now drowning in. Not only did I not know when or where Stephanos and his enormous articulated lorry would bring the stove, but I also had no way of arranging for a small truck to bring it safe home to our house.

In desperation, I sought help from the KEP where I poured out my story like an eight year old whose kite is stuck in a tree. Courteously and in perfect English, my mountain was reduced to a very small molehill and then brushed quietly away.

The rolodex held Stephanos' mobile number. The efficient young woman discovered he would arrive on Thursday – or possibly Friday and she had also taken the precaution of arranging for a local driver for the last leg. She would telephone me an hour or two before it would arrive at our house. Now, was there anything else she could help with?

So, putting together the KEP, the town hall and the doctor’s and with the Agnanti restaurant providing a dash of exotic foreigners hard by, you can see that a great deal of interesting human traffic will pass through the beating heart of the louki and a person sitting in the souvlaki bar will be able to infer, guess or invent the business of those coming and going with enormous fun and sometimes reasonable accuracy.

It also means that you can sit at your table with a cold beer or a hot loukaniko sausage as you choose and sooner or later almost everyone you need to see will pass by. Of course, those who you would perhaps not wish to see until tomorrow will also find you. Never mind. It all makes for a very dynamic meal with people sitting down and joining you for a few minutes or a couple of drinks. You may not discover everything you were seeking, but you will certainly find out something you didn’t know.

And it beats, by some considerable distance, a solitary sandwich eaten at your office desk.

Let’s talk.

Hooray for Buggins!

Great news!

Former Russian President Vladimir Buggins is to run for president again to replace the current incumbent, former Prime Minister Dmitry Buggins who will once more become prime minister.

At last, the result that everyone was expecting – except apparently the most weary and cynical of political commentators who tried to whip up some suspense.

The move follows the well known precedent of the UK former Prime Minister Tony Buggins' 2007 handover to his next door neighbour and former best chum Gordon Buggins.

Keen observers will note that this type of orderly succession was in fact prequeled by the famous Bilbo Buggins who left his ring and his hole in the ground to his nephew Frodo Buggins and disappeared in a puff of smoke. This sparked a great epic journey and a lot more fun than either of these recent imitators.

In fact, they are even now making a film about Bilbo Buggins in the beautiful, mountainous and elf-ridden country called New Zealand, which is somewhere down there.

You couldn’t make it up.

Let’s talk.

Open and shut

I am a member of ACOG – the Association of Crusty Old Gits. I didn’t choose to join, but somehow I just started paying the subscription and now I’m in.

And I do pay the subscription in various ways. I used to think it was funny when my grandmother remarked – and she really did – that the police were looking very young, that newspapers were using smaller and smaller print and that everyone had started to mumble.

I was first aware of making a payment when I first heard myself tell a friend that our bank manager was now a boy of 12.

Coming across another change for the worse in the world I thought I knew, I am known to sigh, expostulate or mildly bemoan the event. Curiously, Jo calls this “having a rant”. Perhaps she is right.

Language is a great source of subscription payments.

You can differ from and compare to or compare with. “Different to” is correct usage only in North America as far as I am concerned. But I accept that language moves on and there are probably only three people in the world who agree with my position – and one of them still believes that ‘a hotel’ should be said as ‘an otel’.

‘Owing to’ and ‘due to’ are now used interchangeably, which seems a shame. Is it pedantic to want to differentiate between ‘because of’ and ‘caused by’? Probably yes. Get over it. You have to keep up.

As a rule of thumb, once the BBC adopts a usage, I accept that the language has changed and I try to limit the number of times I mildly complain / rant about it.

And I like language. I enjoyed learning in the USA in the early 80s that ‘wicked’ now meant good. In the sixties I was ‘cool’ – or tried to be – and then had to remember not to use the expression in front of my kids. Now my grandchildren sometimes approve my actions with the same ‘cool, Grandad’ – how cool is that?

For a while ‘safe’ was the new wicked and top of the range was ‘state of the art’ (not sad to see that become square). And I have always liked the fact that a ‘dog’s breakfast’ is a complete horlicks, but the crème de la crème is ‘the dog’s bollocks’. Even so, I was a little surprised to hear one of our guests last week describe a local restaurant as ‘the cat’s ass’. Alls well, he just meant it was wicked.

So I’m open to new expressions and not too sniffy about old ones changing their once cherished meanings.

There is, of course, one that remains like concealed sand on a beach towel and scrapes me the wrong way every time: alternative. 

‘Alternative’ does not just mean choice, option, selection or possibility and there are demonstrably plenty of words that do. No, the whole point of the word alternative is that it means a choice between only two things. It is a binary choice: one or zero, black or white, heads or tails, fish or cut bait if you like, but it is a choice of this or that without the possibility of the other. All or nothing.

Many of the most important decisions in life are like that. Stay or go.

When we came back to Glossa in 2003 to look at property, we had plenty of options. We also had a carefully researched checklist: village house, good view, not too much work needed – perhaps a little light painting – a place for holidays for the next ten years with the possibility of retiring to Glossa one day.

We didn’t even intend to buy on that trip – just research the market – not realising we were using the modified Solomon Grundy real estate method.

On Sunday we found an agent,

on Monday we went to see properties,

on Tuesday we tore up the checklist,

on Wednesday we returned to the wreck on the hill we had fallen for,

on Thursday we agreed the price with the owners,

on Friday we appointed a lawyer and transferred the deposit and

on Saturday we scrapped our ten year plan.

Soon we were faced the alternatives: jump or stay put?

As so often happens we asked ourselves, “if not this, what – if not now, when?”

We jumped.

Sometimes it felt as though we were falling in slow motion, screaming. But once you have jumped, you have jumped.

Since then we have seen others do the same. And others who would like to but can’t – or won’t. “You are so brave”, they tell us.

Are we? Perhaps we had so much fun at the beach barbeque fuelled by our burning boats that we did not see the perils ahead.

But for us there was no alternative.

Let’s talk.