Village View
James’ monthly column about life in Greece, 2008
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Inspiration comes at unexpected times, usually when you are doing something mundane that you don’t have to think about; cleaning your teeth, weeding the garden, reading this… Today it came while I was watching the boats leaving the bay and heading off across a calm sea, seemingly unaffected by the strong, cold breeze sweeping down from the north.
I was trying to think of what to write this month and went out onto the terrace to drink in the view, listen to the neighbours around the corner chatting vociferously, get some fresh air, watch the workmen relentlessly pushing wheelbarrows up and down the lane and see if anything caught my imagination.
While standing there looking at the electric cable to the house and wondering why it was held together with a piece of masking tape, my mind ticked over. Things around me registered subconsciously, the cold breeze, the clear sky, the brittle air, the old lady passing by wearing pop-socks and carrying a plank. A tune came into my head: ‘Winter Is Icumen In’, the antidote for the traditional English round ‘Summer Is Icumen In’ (dated approx. 1260) and, as far as I know, not yet written. Writing… winter… time on my hands and lots of possibilities. What to do?
Suddenly, admiring the neighbour’s washing line and trying to remember a day when she had nothing on it, my mind started to work. It never ceases to surprise me when that happens. Other people are even more amazed at this rare event.
I had had an idea and I had to write it down before I forgot it. So here I am.
Two questions come to mind, two things Symi visitors often ask, 1) ‘What’s it like in the winter?’ and 2) ‘What do you do in the winter?’ The tempting answers to which are, 1) It’s like this but colder, and 2) mind your own business. The more polite answers, however, are briefly explored below.
‘What’s it like in the winter?’
I assume people are asking about Symi life. ‘It’ is a pretty vague word but the fact that the question is usually asked of me while on the island helps to narrow down the possibilities.
Well, yes, it is quieter, with fewer visitors and less residents as some return to other homes or to work elsewhere. And there are fewer opportunities for eating out. But there are more opportunities to catch up with friends who have been beavering away at work seven days a week for the summer, there is time to enjoy the festivals and events that happen and more time to search out company and invite people in for meals and entertainment. That is if like us, you do part time work in the winter. Not everyone does, and life for full time workers carries on much as it did in the summer only with less sweat involved, though just as much toil.
But before I can fully settle down to my winter schedule of tapping out nonsense, putting together a new book of anecdotes, writing my family history and generally enjoying hours of creative time in the fridge that the front room becomes, there are some practical matters to attend to. And before we can really get into the social whirl, which is an ex-pat, part-time-working, all year round, resident’s way of winter life there are things to be done.
For example, there is the roof to paint. The flat roofs often crack slightly under the searing summer sun, and those cracks require filling, otherwise rain will find a way in and drip perilously close to the Xbox and other essential winter survival items. There is wood to be gathered (for those lucky enough to have a real fire) and this can come from various sources. I’d been saving the old vine twigs for kindling, but a small snake has set up home in that pile now so I may leave it alone and start collecting again.
Lots of people go through an exchange period at this time of year as things come out of summer storage, carpets are cleaned and put back down on the cold, stone floors, bags of clothes are excavated and aired; the duvet is back on the bed and sheets of plastic are pinned to windows to keep out water and wind. There is a period of generally making the house ‘winter-proof’, though it often only helps to temper the chill rather than preventing it completely.
But, once everyone has recovered from the summer shifts, and the pre-winter chores are completed, the social diary can start to fill. Now I can shed some light on:
‘What do you do in the winter?’
Naturally, Christmas plans were made last July, so those three days are sorted out.
This winter has a theme in our household: learning and re-learning. I am hoping that Neil will learn how to turn lights off when he’s finished with them, but it’s doubtful, and I am hoping that the Alarm Cat will learn how to keep snakes out of the wood pile, but that too looks unlikely. Instead the former is going to learn music and the later is going to find new and interesting places to sleep, which is something both of them do all year round, so no change there.
As for myself, I am going to put my mind towards piano and Greek practise. A group of us will be getting together for language ‘lessons’. It’s rather alarming that I have been appointed ‘Greek teacher’ as I am neither Greek nor a teacher. But thanks to several years of Latin when younger I do know the difference between a noun and an adjective. I am also quite adept at explaining the third person plural indicative active, and I once spectacularly pointed out the difference between a protasis and an apodosis (if you try it, you’d probably love it). And what I can’t do with my litotes is nobody’s business. Actually, I am not the cleverest person I know and I just looked up those things in a grammar dictionary as I had no idea of their existence until now. But I won’t actually be teaching, merely trying to control a group of people in an overcrowded environment. Oh, it’s the same thing.
Apart from the language and music practice there are many other, more appealing things to do on Symi in the winter months. Going to Rhodes when it’s windy is always a thrilling gamble. There are things to keep up, our blog, the housework, our reputation. There are things to keep down, the plastic covering the leaky skylight, the electricity bill, the cat from the sofa. There are things to take up, new hobbies, dinner invitations, wet carpets. There are things to put down, towels under doors, damp carpets, the cat. (Only joking.) There are places to visit, the hardware shop for more roof plastic, the electricity board to pay the bill, the cat sanctuary. (Still only joking.) There are things to give up, wearing shorts, sitting outside, swimming. There are things to give in to, dinner invitations, party invitations, and temptation.
And there are more serious things to do. We will be taking a short break to Marathunda over the Panormitis weekend (7th to 9th November) and attending the festival. Walks are planned and this will start (though probably not finish) in an opposite direction to the kafeneion. There will no doubt be quizzes and DVD nights, dinner parties and maybe even a murder mystery party. There are several name days and church festivals that we could attend. Early next year there will be Epiphany, and then the pre-Lent carnival, various parade days, and Independence Day in March, and before you can say ‘Koukoumas’ we will all be asking ‘where did that winter go then?’. Just like we are now saying ‘that summer went fast’.
So, ‘what’s it like in the winter?’. Busy. ‘What do you do in the winter?’ Keep busy. ‘Yes but what do you really do in the winter?’ Don’t be a busy-body. I’m busy.
October - A short walk
The Village View for October can be found on www.symistories.com – click here to go straight to the page.
I don’t want to bring up the ongoing and thorny topic of traffic on the island but I overheard a conversation the other day which set me off:
“I don’t think I will be coming back, there are too many cars.” I assume the visitor was talking about coming back to the island (or not) rather than reincarnation. I started to wonder where else she might go. The Western Sahara, perhaps? Not many cars there, at least, not until the Dakar Rally zips through. And you won’t find the same clear sea, beautiful architecture and loveable, nutty locals. Well, you might find the latter, but the chances are they will also be driving. Camels, possibly.
This led me to think about something I’d read somewhere, some time ago, and sent me scuttling to the Internet to find out some facts and figures. Using various encyclopaedias, the United Kingdom’s Highways Agency and some of those places where clever, nerdy people post useless information, I came to the conclusion that the following statement is true:
There is more combined vehicle length in the UK than length of road.
So what would happen if everybody with access to a vehicle decided, one August bank holiday, to take it for a drive? Disaster.
Much as I hate them, here are some statistics: 95% of UK households have access to a vehicle, (according to answers.Yahoo) with each family averaging 1.7 cars. The Government says there were 17 million families in 2004, so that’s nearly 30 million cars, then. That is almost enough to give one each to every person living in Canada. And we haven’t counted lorries and vans. There are probably enough of those to donate one each to every person in Scandinavia and have a few left over for New Zealand.
When I first heard about this disaster waiting to happen it reminded me of a day when a drive from work in east London took three hours instead of the usual 25 minutes, because of an accident in the Blackwall tunnel under the River Thames. It only took a couple of hours for the roads in a six mile radius to be jammed. Even the backstreet short cuts, where nobody in their right mind, or a car of any value, would ever risk driving through, were blocked up. And that reminded me of a radio play I was planning to write:
Like Symi, the UK is an island, so you can only drive so far before you fall off the end and into the sea. While everyone is out there on that bank holiday, trying to get to the seaside or Ikea, and thus clogging up the roads, more ferries arrive, unloading more vehicles. Eventually they would have to start taking them back to where they came from. (There is an estimated 500,000 drivers from abroad on UK roads at any one time – slightly less in winter).
While you’re sitting in the traffic jam, desperate for coffee and a pee, tantalisingly close to Heston Services, more planes land and need to be refuelled. The tankers, however, are stuck in their depots because they can’t get out. There are too many people trying to drive one hundred yards down the road to B&Q, and too many cars are blocking the way while not actually going anywhere.
Train drivers are called in to shift fuel about, but most can’t get to work for the same reason, and air traffic control have been on shift for far too long as the replacement staff can’t get in through lack of trains.
The Minister for Transport is supposed to be at Broadcasting House in half an hour but is stuck in a jam at Hampstead. He could walk, but he’s forgotten how. Besides, it’s getting a bit hairy out there what with the road rage, dischuffed drivers and planes falling out of the sky. (Aircraft circling the airports waiting to land are running on empty, and those on the ground can’t take off. There is no space for any more so they divert to France.)
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse the hospitals start suffering the same fate as the airports. Ambulances can’t get out, people can’t get in. Only the walking wounded or cyclists who have used the pavements, parachutists and possibly anyone with a hang glider can get to hospital.
The Royal Family are happy enough up at Balmoral, seeing orf those people trying to cut across the grinds in the hope of finding an empty road. But then the power stations start to close down through lack of staff and fuel, spare parts, deliveries, and even the Royals have to revert to candles and conversation. As does, within a few days, everyone else.
But there is good news. Somebody phoned the BBC to report that there was a spare parking space at Land’s End in Cornwall. If the person in the first car on the A30 would be so kind as to reverse into it, and everybody else were to shunt up a few feet, the last car at John O’Groats in Scotland might be able to get a little closer to the bank holiday sales.
The scenario could go on and on, but you get the point, I hope.
If you were wondering about the facts and figures behind this (hopefully) fantastical story, I have to admit that they are based on averages, and, worse, my mathematics. But even under-estimating the total length of vehicles and over-estimating the total length of roads in England, Scotland and Ireland there is still not enough road to accommodate the 31.5 million vehicles in Great Britain today.
Even doubling up the length of road, to take into account multilane motorways and so on, the country would still be lacking many miles of tarmac. (I didn’t include Northern Ireland because no one would be able to get there. And I didn’t include motorbikes as I guess they would just drive on the pavements or over fields and find other annoyingly macho ways around the gridlock.)
I assume that the visitor I overheard will not be holidaying in the UK. Which brings me back to Symi. (I was wondering where I was going with this.) Sadly, I can’t find a website that lists statistical information for the length of the island’s roads and the quantity of vehicles, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the same was true here as it is for the UK, or getting pretty close to it.
But at least the traffic in Symi can be fun. We’ve all seen people playing that naughty but amusing game: “What can I take on my motorbike without getting caught?” Or, as I like to call it: “How many family members can I put at risk today?”
Yes, people should wear crash helmets, yes, it’s illegal to carry more than one passenger, but no, you will never stop either practice.
Recently, I noticed a moped coming across the village square and was interested in the large, woolly shoulder bag the driver was sporting. It turned out to be a dead sheep. But that wasn’t half as much fun as the chap I saw with a (live) goat in his footwell going down the Pedi road at breakneck speed. (There is a reason it’s called ‘break neck’ by the way.) I sometimes think it would be safer if the animals were driving.
It might be quieter, too, as I don’t suppose goats think the noisier the machine the more attractive it is to the opposite sex, and the more your mates will think you’re hard. The removal of baffles as a way of promoting one’s virility has always baffled me. But then, I don’t own a motorbike or a car anymore, and, besides, I’m fast becoming an old fuddy-duddy.
Only once have I had the use of a car since living on the island, and discovered two interesting things whilst driving it. One: there are very few places where you can safely get into fourth gear. There is a reasonably straight piece of road up in the mountains where you could have a go. Wind down the window and throw her into fourth as you shout yippee! But be prepared to slam on the breaks in time to avoid doing a Thelma and Louise at the fast approaching sharp corner.
Two: taking a left-hand drive car down a steep hill with a deep drainage trench on one side and a much deeper ravine on the other, is not much fun for someone who isn’t used to driving something where everything is back to front, while looking over the wrong shoulder and going backwards.
But serious accidents are surprisingly few and far between, although, recently, two friends, on two separate occasions, came a cropper with washing machines. These washing machines weren’t illegally parked or anything, but innocently draining their water out into the street, making slippery-when-hot stone even more slippery-when-wet. Mind you, you can just as easily go boob-tube over boot while walking near anywhere where laundry takes a priority over safety.
So, vehicles: a necessary evil and every bit as evil as they are necessary. It’s just not always necessary to use them.
Sunday Morning
Sunday is a day off and I am ever hopeful that it will start with a lie in. It rarely does, thanks to the alarm cat. Perhaps I should explain the alarm cat before going on.
Jack was discovered four years ago behind a spare mattress on a mousandra where his mother had brought him after giving birth out in a ruin somewhere. He now weighs six and a half kilos, is completely white and has always been totally deaf. A friend asked the other evening, ‘how do you know he is deaf?’ the reply to which is, ‘because he can’t hear us.’ It doesn’t matter whether you talk to him in Greek or English (he hasn’t yet mastered sign language) he simply can’t hear you. We can hear him though as what he lacks aurally he makes up for orally. He is loud. He is also out every night, as all good cats should be, patrolling the perimeter, keeping the nasty things at bay and having a good old scrap with his mates when they get out of line. He returns to the house around dawn to wake us up, shouting at the top of his voice something which we assume translates as ‘feed me now!’ Picture Audrey Two from the Little Shop Of Horrors in feline form, add the vocal projection of a well trained opera singer and the persistence of double glazing salesman and there you have Jack. T. S. Elliot would have had a field day with our alarm cat.
He usually goes off far too early in the morning but it does mean that I’ve not used an alarm clock for several years now. And it also means I don’t often get a le in on a Sunday. Ah well, never mind, there are lots of things to do on Symi on a Sunday. As I lie there in bed wondering if the rest of the neighbourhood appreciates the morning ‘call to assembly’ the alarm cat is joined by the sound of the church bells. Sometimes quiet and distant with their call to church, sometimes fast and joyous announcing a festival or other special occasion and sometimes completely drowned out by the cat. You just have to get up and get on with it.
So, cat fed, I’m having a herbal on the terrace, listening to the liturgy being sung at the nearby church and watching the sun come up when odd thoughts pop into my head.
Tuna fish. It always strikes me as funny that the word for tuna in Greek is the same as the word for a musical tone (and several other things). Obviously it depends on context as to which version on ‘tonos’ you are using but I’d love to be in the position of complementing an opera singer in Greek with, ‘madam I do so admire the tuna fish of your voice.’ ‘Laspi’ is another one, meaning both mud and mortar. Flanders and Swann would have had trouble scanning that if they got it wrong: “Mortar, mortar, glorious mortar. Nothing quite like it for cooling the…’ Donald, what rhymes with mortar?” “Er… daughter, slaughter, snorter…” “That’s quite enough of that.”
More thoughts about language creep in, this time the local dialect where phrases are truncated. (At least this is what it sounds like to me.) ‘Pou einai afto?’ Where is it? This phrase is shortened down to a small Italian car, ‘punto?’ And ‘Spiti tou’, his house, ends up sounding like something you would find on a bar room floor in the Wild West, ‘Spitou’, I can hear the ricochet. And why does my dictionary state that Αρβύλα can be used to describe both a soldier’s boot and a grapevine?
Which somehow reminds me that it is Sunday and there are things to be done. The soldier’s boot needs seeing to as the nipples are falling off. (Πώγα being both grape and nipple according to the Pocket Oxford.) And that’s another thing; who wears clothes with pockets large enough to hold 572 pages of dictionary?
But the grapevine can wait for another day; it is Sunday, there are better things to do. Such as visiting the beach, taking a walk before it gets too hot or cleaning the house. Really? Yes, it has to be done.
Reluctantly I fetch the necessary equipment which includes a cleaning product a TV advert persuaded me to buy. After all, if it can clean the unsightly mess that woman let her cooker get into then it will have no trouble with my modest overspills. Where do they find these people from? I thought I was bad at housework but the state of some of those houses… That work surface is filthy, it hasn’t been cleaned for years. But not to worry as ‘Mr Magix Super-Klean’ will whiz through the grime slaughtering germs as easily as the manufacturers slaughter the English language. With just one carefree wipe your work surfaces will be left sparkling and looking newer than they were before they were new. Happy TV housewife looks bowled over with the results and she hasn’t even broken into a sweat. Layers of encrusted brown stuff have been wiped from the face of her hob as if my magic. Her work surfaces, which were once of great interest to the local biological research station, are now so clean that her child can east his peanut butter sandwich from them. He doesn’t have to worry about nasty germs when he is eating from a surface now coated with a thin film of Sodium hypochlorite NaCIO. (Bleach.) I have been scrubbing away at this sink for half an hour now and the only thing that has been wiped out by my ‘Mr Magix Super-Klean’ is my will to live. Let’s go outside instead.
Back on the terrace I am struck by how quiet it now is. The cat is sleeping happily inside, lying in front of the fan, on his back with his legs in the air in the kind of position that only cats can achieve with dignity. The bells have stopped ringing, the liturgy is completed. There is no breeze and, strangely, not even the sound of birdsong. It is as if the population of the village has left. No one walks past, no one is speaking, no music, the olive tree is still. Everyone is either sleeping or on the beach I guess. The village is silent.
My suspicion that there is a glitch in the matrix and the programme that puts people into my life has broken down is confirmed when I take the rubbish bag down to the skip. Not only do I not see a single person but the skip isn’t there either. I cautiously approach the village square… and am relieved to find the usual groups of Sunday morning coffee drinkers. This day isn’t turning into a 1950’s B movie after all.
And so Sunday morning slips into Sunday afternoon and on into the evening. At night I put the cat out saying quite firmly: ‘don’t wake me up too early’, which he translates as ‘breakfast at five thirty’ because he hasn’t mastered lip reading yet.
A treasure hunt
A few years ago, when I worked in Yialos at the leather shop, a visiting yachtsman asked Takis where he could find a diver to assist with some nautical goings-on beneath his boat. He was duly directed to the bakery. Of course, where else?
I was reminded of this recently when a visiting friend asked where he might find goat’s milk. We asked around at the supermarkets but they didn’t have any in, we asked at a few kafenion and were directed back to the supermarkets. We finally found the answer during a visit to George Kalodukas’ organic farm: we could find goat’s milk in Chorio by asking at the hardware shop. Of course, where else?
So our friend was able to call in, speak to Petros and, the next day, pop back for some freshly squeezed goat’s milk and a plunger. (The bath was in need of a good plunging.) This reminded me of the time we moved into the current house and discovered that it had a bath. But no bath plug. Enquiring at a few hardware stores and other likely outlets, (the butcher for example,) all we found were blank faces and scratched heads. In the end we were directed to Rhodes. This being a costly excursion for a plug, we had a couple of ‘one size fits all B&Q specials’ sent over from England. One now hangs around the bath (which isn’t very often used, but don’t worry as we also have a shower) and the other is up on the roof under a brick and blocking the rain water inlet until it’s time to open up and fill the sterna.
Last year some other friends were visiting and fell in love with a door knocker. Now I don’t want you to think that these friends are particularly odd or anything, falling in love with door furniture, it’s just that they are of that breed that loves to pull houses apart and rebuild them for the fun of it. Therefore they’re always on the lookout for something unusual or unique and what better place to find it than in Symi. So, the hunt was on for a brass door knocker in the shape of a hand. Why a hand? I asked a few locals about this and received various replies ranging from, ‘I don’t know,’ through ‘why not?’ and to ‘because you knock on the door with your hand.’ Makes sense to me. But where to find such a thing?
Back to the hardware shop… No joy. Household furnishings? Nope, not even for ready money. The craft shops that sell traditional things like busts and statues looked a little more hopeful though brought no results other than ‘you might find one in Rhodes.’ Actually, later that year, I did see one for sale in Rhodes Old Town. We were about to travel some distance at the time so I decided to get it on the return journey rather than carry it all that way and back again. And of course, when we got back it was gone. There is a happy ending to this story though as we have now tracked down where to find these door knockers on Symi; and here this part of this month’s ramble kind of comes full circle. Remember the yachtsman in need of a diver? Well we didn’t find the knocking hand at the bakery but at the chandler’s, which is where you would have thought the yachtsman would have found his diver.
I suppose that all that works on the same principal as: if one morning you want to find a shop keeper, dentist or other person whose premises is unmanned then check the nearest kafenion, (and I include the village photographer in that). If you want to discuss furniture with the furniture man then you need to stop the Panormitis bus. Rat poison? The pharmacy. And should you be in need of musicians then it’s the cobblers for trumpets, Hotel Fiona for saxophonists and another hardware shop for keyboards and so on. Symi folk are not only diverse in what they sell but talented too. Naturally if you are in need of anything urgently during siesta time then forget it.
So little treasures can be found in the most unlikely of places and I am sure there are many more additions to the above that I haven’t heard of yet. But other treasures abound on this island and you don’t have to be such a sleuth to find them. Next time you are on the island with some time to spare see if you can find:
A Roman mosaic with nearby catacombs. An old consulate (or embassy) building with a sundial on it. An original ‘bell stone’ or two. The face of Hermes in stone over a door. The disused public toilets in the village. A supermarket shopping trolley (no, honestly, and I know where it is.) A wild tortoise, or even a calm one. Ancient wine presses. One of my articles without any typos. In a church, a carved wooden screen with a bullet hole in it. A bell made from a wartime shell case. A pebbled floor depicting a mermaid and a boat. An original Skafandro – diving suit.
And when you’ve found all of those, go looking for goats’ milk, you’ll have a great time.
A ramble
I really have no idea what to write about this month so we’re going rambling. Rambling around the village as well as the subject matter as whatever pops in to my mind simultaneously pops out on to the page. Bear with me as this is the way I like to write.
The thing that sparked off this idea was a memory; a memory of something which has sadly disappeared from the lane around the corner. It was there a couple of years ago but is no longer to be seen. It was one of those quirky, Symi things that makes one smile when you stumble upon it. I was investigating a tantalising looking path that I’d not walked before, not far from the church of Ag. Athanasios, when I came across a sign, a piece of wood with some writing on it in English. Looking beyond it I noticed that the path was in fact a dead end so its only real attraction was the sign. A notice which frantically exclaimed: ‘Look! No toilet!’ Did this mean that there were no public conveniences to be had in this direction or a request for rambling folk not to use the alleyway as one? Maybe it was just a statement of fact as there was indeed no toilet there.
Whatever it meant I am thinking of placing a few more notices around the village. ‘Look! No airport.’ ‘Yes! We have no bananas.’ Or simply, ‘Stop! Nothing to see here.’
Actually that last one would not only be misleading but redundant as there is always something to see in the village, even in the backstreets and narrow alleyways that appear to lead to nowhere but confusion: Plants growing from the stone walls for example, interesting ruins with layers of paint revealing colours of the past, wildlife, steps that, when you think about it, have been there for hundreds of years. Which then leads you to wonder exactly how many stones, rocks and slabs there must be up here in the village. Thousands, millions? And then… how did they all get here and where did they come from? Next time you are rambling through the village just stop for a moment and look around you. In that one wall running along the path there must be hundreds of individual rocks and stones and the staggering thing is that they have all been placed there by hand. Or by donkey and hand. Ok, it’s taken hundreds of years but someone had to do it. I reckon that there are probably more stones in our village than there are in the Pyramids at Giza, and we’re not one of the seven wonders of the ancient world are we?
And there’s another thing you might come across when wandering the lanes: donkeys, or mules rather. Only the other day I was staggering up the steps past the old barber shop with a couple of bags of shopping when I had to step back and let ten mules pass by. I was sitting in the courtyard once, with the street door open, simply minding my own business when an investigative mule stopped by, popped its head in, had a good look around, satisfied itself that all was as it should be and left.
Talking of animals, there are plenty to be found up here at various times of the year, some more welcome than others. Cats of course are permanent neighbours, dogs have a free reign to wander about, meet and greet you, chickens can be found though often penned in. There are cockerels that have no watches and crow whenever the mood takes them and there are many varieties of birds. We have an owl or two nearby and further up at the old house there were always bats flittering about at and after dusk. Some of the less welcome neighbours include snakes, spiders and rats that keep the cats amused for hours; there are probably more varieties of insects than are dreamt of in your philosophy and I have even caught a tortoise or two making a leisurely dash for freedom from time to time. At a certain time of year you may see a sheep or goat eating up wasteland grass, blissfully unaware that this could be its last meal as Easter approaches. And, though not at all unwelcome, bewildered and lost tourists are always fun to see. ‘Castle this way?’ ‘The museum please?’ ‘Where is the bus to Rhodes town.’ (No, honestly.)
But back to stranger things. It’s good to see that the village now has a health and beauty shop though it’s a little alarming to see a concrete mixer parked directly outside of it. I have an addition to my list of ‘101 things to do with an old Symi Visitor’: Lining the windows of Zoi’s Taverna as the building gets painted up for the season is the most recent one. (Others involve spray-mount glue, kitchen drawers and cat litter but they are too complicated to go into at the moment.)
Bells are a constant in the village. Now then, I am not too sure of the technicalities involved but can only assume that the peels are electronically controlled and each peel has its own on/off button somewhere. Of a morning it is not uncommon to hear the slow, sombre tolling of the ‘funeral’ bells suddenly interrupted by an enthusiastic, though temporary, exclamation of an accidental baptism. The churches do have their manually operated bells too; you’ll see them in the tower attached to a rope so that they can be rung by hand. Here’s a tip: when videoing a baptism be wary when climbing the tower to get a ‘bird’s eye view’ shot. Those bells are loud when they go off directly behind you. And a further tip: remember that video cameras come with sound and although people like authentic atmosphere and bells on the soundtrack of their baby’s baptism they tend to be less keen on expletives.
As we are on tips for better village behaviour:
When wandering the lanes trying to find your way home in a rain storm at night, take a torch as the streetlights often black out when wet. And, when you find yourself groping blindly along a wall and you come across something soft and squishy in the pitch darkness and the lady says to you ‘do you know where you are?’ it is more appropriate to exclaim ‘signomi!’ rather than something in the Anglo Saxon dialect
And please, when you are exploring the village, don’t do what I’ve seen a few visitors do when they come across an open courtyard door: walk in and take photographs of someone’s private property, or wander around the grounds as if they were open to the public even if there is a nice view from the terrace. Next time I see you do that I will ask for your address then turn up a few months’ later with a coach load from Glasgow and bring them in for a good old nose around your garden. (No offence to people from Glasgow, I’m sure you’re all very nice really.) Simply ask first and most villagers will welcome you with open arms.
Don’t wear swimwear as you walk through the village square to the Kali Strata on your way to the beach, it’s not funny and (in most cases) it’s not big. Besides, some people might be eating. A little respect goes a long way and I bet you wouldn’t walk down your high street in your Speedos would you. You would? Oh boy.
I am sure you will agree that I have rambled on for long enough now, in fact I think I have strayed so far from the village path that I am perilously close to the cliff edge at Saint George. So I will close now and go looking for more interesting trivia to thrill you with next month.
The oven
I have heard a few tales about treasure that has been hidden on Symi and never found. One of these gave my imagination a little food for thought and here you have the result below. Of course, the real treasure to be found on this island is the island itself.
The year is 1750 and one of the wealthiest families on Symi has just completed their new mansion house on the edge of the village. From its place high up on the edge of the fields the property looks down on the village below. Petros, the rich merchant, stands on the balcony and surveys his scene. The village houses tumble down the hillside to the bowl of the valley before clambering up on the other side towards the fortification. To his right the bay of Pedi glints in the morning sun and he looks forward to holidaying there is the summer.
But before that he has a duty to attend to.
As his new house was being built he also arranged for the local villagers to have a new oven. A street oven where anyone who needed to could come and bake when their own cramped kitchens were too busy. With so many people living in the village and so many mouths to feed, ovens became a scarce commodity, particularly at busy times like the upcoming Easter. Petros had financed the building of this one which would service one of the village parishes, the one nearest to him and today was the grand unveiling.
As it turned out it was less of an unveiling and more of an inspection. Although reasonably well liked in the village the locals didn’t quite trust Petros with his wheeling and dealing in the merchant trade. They admired the way he spent at least some of his fortune on the local community though but even charity did not stop the gossip and rumours that always surrounded him.
There had been a rumour recently that he had built the communal oven for his own purpose: That when and if the island was invaded by pirates he would use it to store his wealth. Believing this to be true Sotiris, the impoverished carpenter, made it his duty to fully inspect the new facility. The oven was domed, around six feet long and had a door just large enough for an average sized man to crawl in to. It was designed thus so that the inside could, if necessary, be repaired. As the distrusting Sotiris squeezed painfully through the opening with a lantern to inspect the inside for hidden compartments where treasure could be hidden his wife, Maria, resisted the urge to lock the metal door behind him and let him bake away in the hot April sun. Her mother egged her on but she resisted, after all today was a celebration. Instead the two women shared the private joke and waited for Sotiris to back out of the stone oven.
This he did after a minute or two, his backside wiggling through the gap until his hips became stuck. It took two friends and a mule to finally pull him free and he emerged dusty, red faced and sweating, to great laughter and jeers.
But Sotiris didn’t care. As the new oven was finally blessed, lit and filed with bread to bake he sat on a nearby step and pondered. He’d seen something in there, he’d been sure of it. A place for the wealthy Petros to store his gold in times of attack. But it was a suspicion that, for now, he would keep to himself.
The years passed. The oven was a great success and many families came to rely on it not only for baking but for communal gatherings. When Sotiris’ daughter, the young and beautiful Katarina, was married there was a great street party with the oven the centre of the festivities. Some years later, when Sotiris died, a wake took place around it and it was during this that Katarina told her young son about the secret that the oven held. ‘Always be aware of pirates,’ she told the boy. ‘As, when they come, this is where the rich will bury their treasure.’
And so the rumour became a fact. But, when the island was invaded in later years, no one had the time to remember the secrets of the oven and the fact became myth. It became just an old family story passed down through the generations until, two hundred and thirty years after it was built, only one man knew the myth about the old street oven.
Yiannis often sat by it as his neighbours and family gathered to eat and chat in the streets during all seasons of the year. And, as he gazed upwards to the nearby ruin that had once been Petros’ magnificent house, he smiled. They had recently been working on that ruin, they were going to turn it in to some kind of museum and they had already found some of Petros’ gold hidden in the walls there. There wouldn’t be anything hidden in the faithful old street oven. And then he brought his gaze to look at the surrounding buildings. Since the mansion had been built back in the 18th century more houses had sprouted up behind it on what were once fields. Now it was more in the centre of the village rather than being at the very edge of it; lost in the sprawl of houses that had been built during the wealthy years. Those houses were now mainly ruins too. Some had survived the wars, the occupations and the dereliction left behind as families went to find a better life elsewhere. His family still lived in the parish and, in the times when things had been bleak, they had used this old oven as the focal point of their community. The oven and the church; the two things went hand in hand when it came to local, family and village life.
Yiannis was in his seventies when the developers moved in to the area. A man from England bought what was once the house of Yiannis’ grandfather’s sister. The Englishman did it up, moved in and then set about buying up everything he could in the street, renovating the houses and renting them out to his English friends for the cooler summer months. Good for the village, good for the island yes, as more people were visiting now and those previously out of work now had incomes. But still the old traditions wouldn’t die, still the families would gather at the oven of an evening to cook, bake things, drink and chat. Though no one lived in it the street was alive again, after years of depression and neglect the parish was coming back to life.
So Yiannis was more than upset when the Englishman lent out from his upstairs window one evening and ordered the families eating below to be quiet. Some harsh words were exchanged and a damper was well and truly put on the jovial atmosphere that summer night. And the night after when the foreigner complained again, and the night after that until, one evening, after he had poured a bucket of water from his balcony down onto the oven, the police were called.
‘But this has always been our way,’ complained Yiannis as the policeman ordered the families to go home and stop cooking outside.
‘But he is the man that now owns the street,’ the policeman replied. ‘And I’m sorry to say that now he can demand that you stop using this oven.’
‘It’s never been that way before.’
‘Well, it’s that way now.’
And that, it seemed, was the end of the life of Petros’ oven and the end of a tradition for the parish.
But Yiannis had other ideas.
He was sitting in the kafeneion one morning, silently sipping coffee with two friends, when one of them broke the thoughtful silence.
‘That Englishman is a greedy fish,’ he mumbled.
‘What Englishman?’ asked Yiannis. There were so many foreigners around these days his friend could have been talking about any number of people.
‘The one who has the house overlooking your oven. The one that owns the street.’
‘Him you mean?’ The second friend said, pointing to a man passing the kafeneion.
Yiannis watched as the red faced man puffed by. He was carrying papers and talking to one of the local architects, no doubt planning to take over and ruin another street.
‘How greedy?’ Yiannis asked. He fingered his thick moustache, twiddling the ends as his brow knitted in thought.
‘Very,’ was the simple reply.
The trio settled into silence again but in Yiannis’ mind a plan was forming. A plan based on something his grandfather’s sister had once told him.
It was two days later when the fateful meeting took place. It was a simple exchange but it did the trick.
The Englishman came across the man known as Yiannis on his return from visiting one of his latest building projects. This old man was one of the few remaining Symiot neighbours and the Englishman was wondering if he would be interested in selling his nearby house to him; the purchase would complete his Monopoly board, his portfolio. He also wondered if he could rip him off, as he had managed to do with some others, as funds were currently low. Yiannis was looking intently into the street oven door when the Englishman interrupted him.
‘I hope you are not thinking of lighting that,’ he said gruffly in his most stern, if somewhat incorrect, Greek.
Yiannis slowly straightened up, holding his back, and looked along the deserted street. The street that would normally have been filled with his friends and relatives gathering for an evening of chat and grilled fish, freshly baked bread and merriment.
‘No sir, I am not,’ he said in fluent English. Then with a furtive look over his shoulder, he beckoned the Englishman closer. ‘I think you have done us a favour,’ he said.
‘How so?’
‘I will take you into my confidence,’ the Greek man said as he gauged the Englishman’s size, looking between the oven door and his stomach. ‘Because I like you,’ he added, then crossed himself and apologised to the Virgin for the lie.
Yiannis sat the man down on a step beside him and told his story as he gazed on the oven. ‘My great aunt once told me that the man who used to own the building that is now the museum…’ he pointed up towards the nearby building, ‘…hid his gold in that oven,’ then pointed down again, ‘when the island was invaded back in, oh… many years ago. The rich merchant, as he was, then left in a hurry, like so many others, abandoning his wealth and intending to come back to it later. But he never did. I remembered this story only the other day and in a couple of days I’m going to crawl in there and see what I can find. There is a hiding place right at the back, they say, and I’m going to find it.’
‘Rubbish,’ the Englishman said, his eyes flicking towards the oven but only seeing gold coins. ‘You’d never fit inside.’
‘It’s possible to squeeze in if I’m careful,’ Yiannis said. ‘But that’s for another day when I get back from my trip to Rhodes. Good night to you.’ And with that he stood up and walked to his house, a few streets away.
The Englishman sat and thought, his mind racing with possibilities and greed. There was no time to lose, no time to dismantle the oven from the back or knock it down; people would get suspicious. Although he now owned the houses on the street he didn’t own the street itself, or the oven. He would have to act quickly and under the cover of darkness.
The Englishman stood by the oven at one in the morning, or just after as it was always difficult to tell if the clock at the nearby church was accurate or not. (That chiming was another thing he intended to put a stop to as it disturbed his sleep.) The street was empty, the night was dark. He held a torch in his hand and bent down. The doorway looked too small at first but if the old Greek man was confident that he could squeeze in then so was the Englishman. He cheerfully hummed ‘Anything you can do I can do better’ as he shone the torch inside. The domed roof was black with layers of soot, the floor was filthy with it but solid and he was wearing his oldest clothes. Having propped open the metal door with a stick so as to stop it swinging shut on him, he put both arms inside followed by a shoulder, twisting painfully until his chest was inside too. His overfed stomach was a little more tricky but, by breathing in and scraping his flesh a little, he managed to heave that part of him inside. The oven smelled damp and he dreaded to think what the soot was doing to his clothes but then his mind raced ahead to the hidden gold and where it might be. His knees were in now and he was on all fours. Just the feet…
But as he shuffled forward with his feet sticking out through the door one of them knocked the stick. He hardly felt it. But he felt the panic when he heard the door creak shut, coming to rest with a gentle thud. ‘That’s OK,’ he thought, ‘I’ll just push it open when…’
He heard the latch drop and clang into place. ‘That’s OK,’ he thought, ‘I’m sure I can find a way to open it. I just need to turn around and…’
But he could not. He couldn’t stand up, he couldn’t go left or right, the oven was too narrow. He couldn’t go back as the door was now closed and locked. Trapped.
‘That’s OK,’ he thought, ‘I’ll call and someone will let me out.
But no one lived in that street anymore. He had made sure of that. The old family houses were now rented to tourists and, as it was August, it was mainly Athenians, Greeks and Italians who came to stay. And the Englishman didn’t rent his properties to them.
August. Trapped in an oven with no one to hear him yelling. Things didn’t look good.
A couple of days later, when Yiannis returned from his trip to Rhodes, he passed the old oven and stopped to wonder what was wrong. But then he just shrugged and went on his way. After two hundred and fifty years of regular use followed by sudden abandonment the oven was bound to smell a bit strange.
[This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to people living or baked is purely coincidental.]
You have to smile
February was a bit on the quiet side for me and my principal view recently has been the PC monitor. But rather than tell you about that as, let’s face it, it would make for rather dull reading unless you are a monitor of monitors (in which case it’s a ViewSonic VA712), I thought I would share with you some random thoughts about Village (and Symi) life. No particular order or theme, just a brainstorm… well more of a brain-shower as it’s early on a Sunday morning.
Some time in Rhodes
In flight translation assistant
