MY CRETAN COTTAGE

For some unknown reason my blog refused to upload the article I wrote on Saturday with pctures and facts about my cottage. So here I go again:-
Peter has asked me for more pictures and data about this place. I first found it a year ago when I was surfing the internet in the middle of a New Zealand winter, (google Crete Direct) and the idea of spending three months in a town in Crete appealed strongly. Over the year I have been assiduously learning Greek, I have mastered perhaps a word a month. But for $NZ1200 per month (that is less than I would pay for a flat in Wellington or Auckland) I have a cute little traditional Cretan house, two rooms and bathroom with a sun deck and courtyard in the town of Kissamos. It is very simple, but hey who wants complications at my time of life. I am about three hundred metres from the shops and another three hundred from the sea. If I want to live the tourist life there are a lot of glitzy cafes along the water front, but also some really good traditional Greek restaurants (Papadakis and the Cellar are the best I have found so far). Buses run from the town square, fourteen per dat to and from Xania which is a hub connection to Heraklion and the South CoastIf anything goes wrong, like my water heater failed last Tuesday I ring Nik the English manager of property services and he is there to fix it withing minutes.
I am connected to broadband internet and can talk to my family on Skype.
Living here is quite cheap, as long as you don't try to convert Euros to dollars, and I do not have to pay running costs to take my car into town, nor do I have to buy firewood, the temperature at 7a.m. this morning was 26C. Sunblock and skin lotion is a different matter,I need loads of it.

Who would I recommend it to? Families with kids, they would learn Greek playing with the neighbours'children; Honeymooners, it's secluded; retirees for the same reason.
Wo would I not advise to come here? Shopaholics, there are no malls.

AN AFTERNOON AT THE BEACH

Falisarna was a city state in the 4th century BC. It had a port with a sea wall and a thriving infrastructure, the only remnant of all this is a stone chair and a lot of stones. A huge earthqake raised the sea bed and the people left. Now there are acres of shade houses, it looks a bit like Kakanui before the developers moved in.
The bus dropped us at one of the two tourist complexes, and we scrambled down a rough track to the beach, a wide stretch of pink sand with a narrow boardwalk and a few shady tamarisk trees. Unfortunately people had parked their cars under the trees and the only shade for humans was rows of sunbeds and beach umbrellas where a lot of pale Europeans lay like loaves of bread set to rise. But there are lots of little rockpools suitable for children and old women to paddle in. The sea was full of swimmers. One end of the beach is reserved for nudists and I was tempted. If I come here again I shall definitely bring my togs. Lonely Planet says that people come here to experience the fabulous sunsets which light up the coral sand. Eventually the heat drove me off the beach and back up the path to an outdoor restaurant shaded with tamarisk trees where I ate fresh Greek salad with crusty bread and newly squeezed orange juice, and sat in the shade for two hours until the bus came. There was plenty to entertain me. A local swain, on pretence of talking to the teen age son of the house was trying to chat up the pretty waitress, who wasn't interested, I could not understand a word they said, but I could tell what was going on.
Eventually people strolled up from the beach and took shelter under the few trees in the car park, A middle aged couple from the English midlands, a German youth twined with his blond girl friend, she will probably have gravel rash from his wiry beard, a very dark African lady with her two stunningly beautiful daughters, and a horde of teenagers chattering in at least three languages, but understood each other perfectly.
Two buses arrived, the teen agers got on the Xania bus I got on the Kissamos but and we headed up the hair pin road over the hills. I for one was craning to get a last glimpse of the stunningly beautiful and secluded valley.

PROCRASTINATION

In a white cup with pink flowers painted on, above the shelf where I plug in my web book, the landlord has left three brand new sharp hb pencils. So I have no excuse, everything is here for me to start the GNZN (great New Zealand Novel) I don't mean the romantic novel I wrote seventeen thousand words of before I left home, that was just writing for fun, and I don't mean the historical tome that is now in the computer equivalent of a desk drawer, I mean that GNZN the Jungian stereotype novel which is in the limbo of my subconscious waiting to spring into existence the moment I have three months to concentrate on it.
Well I have the three months,I have the pencils, the lined paper, I can just sit down and write, but first I must finish reading the books left in my cottage (apart from the da vinci code in German) just to make sure nobody has written the GNZN before me. Then of course I must clear my e mail.I haven't looked at it for several days. Now the sorting mechanism on my little machine seems to have a philosophy all its own, it regularly fills my in box with advertisements for VIAGRA available at bargain prices, notifications that I have won lotteries worth millions of dollars, all I have to do to collect is sent my bank details to somebody in Nigeria, that dozens of firms in the United States have made a mistake in my billing and yet more millions are waiting to be collected, all I have to do is send my bank details, you get the picture? They go into my in box as letters. But when I had a look in my folders I found one labelled 'Intercepted spam'so , curious, I opened it and there were the e mails I had not got and had been wondering about; from my niece Mary in America, my writing friends in New Zealand, Jan in Temuka.
So the GNZN is not even started yet, there are several things I have to do firstt like sweep up the dead leaves in my courtyard, change the little pads in the electric mosqito repellers, kill the ants, take my rubbish along to the skip around the corner, and one day I shall tell you all about the disgusting way the Greeks dispose of their toilet paper, write this blog. That should keep me busy for a while.

FINDING HISTORY

Previous tenants in my cottage have left books, some treasures some not so. War and Preace, Animal Farm, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, John Pilger\s Hidden Agendas and a shelf full of airport thrillers, Dan Brown,Stephen King and others too awful to mention. Almost hidden were two real treasures. Vasili, Lion of Crete by Murray Elliott ISBN 960 226 348 2 published by EFSTATHIADIS 1987 is about Dudley Perkins who was killed in action after volunteering to return to Crete and help the resistance.
On the Run, Anzac escape and is evasion in Enemy-occupies Crete by Sean Damer & Ian Frazer ISBN 978 0 14 300722 7 is published by Penguin in 2006.

They are both rivettingand full of details passed over in official war histories. On the run has also alphabetical lists of known evaders and escapers, and the men involved in major escapes from Crete. I found a few familiar names, boys from Hastings High School who in September 1939 had only one worry - that the war would end before they were old enough to go to it.

But the rivetting thing in On the Run is the incredible heroism of the Cretan women who took food and clothes to soldiers hiding in caves,looked after sick and wounded soldiers and guided them along mountain trails risking their lives, and the lives of their families. There should be a special medal struck for these women, and their stories need to be collected. It's too late for first hand stories, but their some of their daughters might still be around to record their mothers'stories.

I knew about the retreat from Hora Sfakion and the trek through Imbros Gorge, but according to On The Run there were New Zealanders guarding the port at Kissamos Kastelli who escaped into the mountains. The villages they escapes to are still there, and if I can find an English speaking driver willing to take me I intend to go looking for Sifirinia,Topolie, Polirinia, Kalithenes.

Watch this space:

WHAT IS YELLOW PAGES IN GREEK?

Last night when I took off my glasses the right wing came off in my hand. It was not just a loose screw,(all my screws are tightly set than you) the whole thing had snapped. Without my glasses I cannot see the print on my computer screen, or read the title on a book cover, How to find someone to fix them? Of course, let my fingers do the walking. Except of course the yellow pages here are in Greek.
So holding my glasses carefully to my nose I set out for town. I knew I had seen an opticians somewhere, it was a matter of finding it. I did, it is one of the tiny shops opposite the new town square on the way to the beach. A bank with an ATM iis on the corner, then a pastry cook selling Danish Pastry, then the optician next door to the apothecary who sells Voltaren without prescription, but don't try to buy codeine in Greece, it's banned.
The optometrist and his assistant clucked and commiserated. The wing was broken, could not be repaired. Could they fir my lenses into a new frame? more clucks. Not possible, something about the lenses, But bless their hearts after five minutes he returned the spectacles to me with the wing mended (I shall have to be extrta careful until I get home,) and he refused to charge me.
I continued down towards the old town square and sat under a huge umbrella surrounded by middle aged and elderly Greek men. Two very beautiful waitresses organised my breakfast for me, practising their English as they did so; Greek yoghurt with Cretan honey and wallnuts. Cretan honey is the best I have ever tasted, and that includes the manuka honey I used to buy from roadside stalls in the Coromandel. One of my Loutro friends told me it is because the bees are allowed to roam the countryside and feast on herbs. Anyway just this morning's breakfast was worth the trip!

IT IS ALL SO ANCIENT!

Next door to my cottage with its white painted walls and blue shutters and doors is what I think was originally the farm house, It is bigger than my place but it has been empty for fifty years. There is no paint anywhere, and the windows were boarded up so long ago the timber had rotted. My landlord tells me the building will eventually become a museum.
Next to that is the ruined Roman Baths, an empty section full of broken stone columns and what looks like the roman equivalent of the whaling pots that are scattered around the New Zealand coast. I have no idea what they are. They look truly ancient.

I KNEW THERE WAS SOMETHING!

Yes, it's a pretty town, except that the public squares are full of chairs and tables with waiters of both genders dashing about serving coffee to Greeks who scream at each other fortissimo. Greek is not only a rapid language, it is loud. I would like to sit under a tree down on the beach, but the tamarisks have all been cut down, developers are flat out building tourist hotels and the only places one can sit out of the sun is in yet another cafe on the purpose built promenade. Of course there are a few old fashioned family restaurants, like Papadakis on the beach with chairs and tables at the waters edge but so far I have found nowhere to sit and watch people coming and going, to strike up conversations so people will tell me their stories.There are no car parks outside the supermarkets, and their aisles are so narrow there is no way two shoppers can stop and discuss the merits of what is on display. Houses are built flush with the road and they have high walls enclosing them. I can't compliment a gardener on her dahlias, or chrysanthemums as I pass.
I have yet to find a public library, not that it would be of use to me if I did, but in New Zealand and Australia the Library is one of the main places a stranger can make contacts in a new town. Someone there always knows where the writers'groups are.
And how I miss the Women's Institute! There might be an equivalent here, but without Greek I am forever excluded. My phrase book does not have'Çan you direct me to the Women's Institute please?' Glenavy W.I. I miss you all!
In Oamaru, when people go into town they can stroll around on wide footpaths and stop to talk to friends, Here the footpaths are about 30 centimetres wide, and the town is a warren of tiny streets full os tiny shops, apart from the Agora Supermarket, which is about the size of a corner dairy. Men sit outside the shops, and in the sidewalk cafes and shout at each other. If there is a wider piece of footpath somebody will have parked his car on it.