BOTHER, I MISSED IT!

I was just getting too cocky. I am so pleased with being able to read 'Í'm feeling lucky'in Greek I don't bother any more to switch Google to English and so I missed an event I would have walked over the white mountains, sore feet and all, to see and participate in. (block your ears for a moment while I let off steam with as many four letter expletives I can remember, none of them in Greek.
I thought the beach front cafes were rather empty last Saturday, I assumed it was because the summer holidays had ended. I could not have been more wrong. At sunset 150,000 people, most of them in national costume made a line out of Chania, which is one hour's drive from here,and they danced, You remember Zorba? Greek dance is a very masculine thing. This was to comemorate Hiroshima Day and the organisers were trying, successfully, to set a world record for Greek dance.
Maybe there were posters on walls around Kissamos, I could not have read them, Maybe those vans driving through the town shouting at everybody were telling us about Hiroshima day, I could not know. I missed it, and when I get home all my neighbours who stay at home and watch satellite TV when they are not fishing are going to say, 'Oh, yes, Greek dance, saw that on TV.'

LET'S HEAR IT FOR THE OLDIES

Thia photo has very little to do with to-day's blog. It was taken at Fogg Dam out of Darwin where we went to look at birds and crocodiles. It's relevance to my blog is the age of the people.We are oldies,and I am discovering that to-day's newsmakers have some oddly old fashioned ideas about us. We are not all gaga with senile dementia. In the above photograph is a major Australian poet, a painter, a French writer seeing the world, an English writer, and me. We are educated, and not afraid to express our opinions.
What brought this on? I was cruising the NZHerald's web page to-day and found a story about an old lady who had 'fought city hall'and won. It appears that her WOF had the wrong expiry date. When the city council sent her a notice of fine she wrote and explained and refused to pay the fine. She was shuffled around through the bureaucracy (Greece is not the only country full of incompetent buck passers) and her initial protest, that the city council had made amistake , was ignored. Then she was told $25 per week would be taken from her pension until the fine was paid.
Now, the conventional model of a nice old lady would have accepted that. but not this one. She sent e-mails to her M.P. the Minister of transport. That brought results and the money already taken from her pension has been refunded.
(Google NZHerald for the full story with photo)but it surprises me that a newspapwe finds a computer literate, logically thinking eighty year old newsworthy. What is news worthy is that she defended herself and won against the system. I am not surprised to find it took an eighty year old woman to do it.
We octogenearians are the 'Beeby brats'. We were the first generation to get free secondary education, and we have made use of it. We are the products of the first experiments in running a 'Welfare State.' We got free education. free health care,
we were paid an allowance to raise our children. Also we were the first generation to see a different world, every Saturday afternoon at the Regent, or the Paramount we saw children who sang and danced, heard music from symphony orchestras and jazz bands and saw newsreels of events we knew had happened. We are a pretty clued up bunch.
When I get back to New Zealand I am going to raise some questions, relax Sergeant Anastakakis, you are safe, but I want to know why my e-mails to the consulate general for New Zealand in Athens were ignored. And I shall keep hollering until I get sensible answers,

CRETAN CUISINE & A PAIR OF GREEK DISHES

Aren't they lovely? They were looking out to sea and I wanted to take a picture of them backside on, but my Greek was not up to that and I don't like taking pictures without permission.
To-day was so hot my eyes were stinging from the sweat dripping into them. I walked down to the beach, past the windmill and decided to lunch at a seafront cafe. Now the Greeks have gone back to work there are not a lot of tourists around. Anyway, for 9euros I sat under a shady umbrella a meter from the sea, and ate a delicious veal stew, full of onons and tomatos and countless herbs, plus the best part of half a loaf of fresh bread to sop the gravy up with and a bottle of ice cold water. It was a bit early in the day for wine.
The two Cretan cuties were playing along the promenade.
Behind them one sailboat with spinnaker set was sailling along the horizon, a welcome wind ruffled the water of the bay. It was worth the kilometre trudge down there just to feel the cool breeze, almost worth the trudge back up hill again.

Meanwhile back in New Zealand my second son, Richard is celebrating his 56th birthday. When I talk to any family they are all wapped up warm and complaining about the cold. Ha!

SHEBA'S BREAST & SAINTED SPINACH

Thank you to the clever people who identified the pomegranite, Now we know what the Queen of Sheba's breasts looked like, remember the Song of Solomon? 'Thy Breasts are like Pomegranites.'

And I lunched today at another cafe in the old square, on the shady side because it was so hot. I ordered Moussaka and iced coffee. Their moussaka came in an individual terra cotta dish and had rather more meat that the one I ate at Petrakis. And it was salty, I have been drinking litres of water since I came home.

SOUVLAKI, MOUSSAKA & A CHEESE PIE TO YOU!

Can somebody tell me what this fruit is? It grows on a bush up the road from here, and I am curious.
And talking of fruit, vegetables and food in general I am experiencing some delicious adventures. If I ate in a different cafe five times a day I still could not try every cafe and restaurant in Kissamos, but here are some of my findings:-
BREAKFAST: a big bowl of Greek yoghurt covered in wallnuta and Cretan honey, yummy and filling, best eaten under the big shady tree in the old town square. Or a cheese pie with capuchino; the cheese pie is made with super short pastry and is probably incredibly unhealthy, but tasty.Or a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice. The Greeks have a neat machine, where the operator throws three or four oranges in, sets a glass under the outlet, pushes the button and out pours fresh, fresh, fresh orange juice.

LUNCH: There are some cafes where the truck drivers and workers go to buy their lunch, like chinese takeaways in NZ. They serve plain, simple food which is usually on display in heated cabinets so I can indicate what I want. There is a green vegetable here rather like water cress which is tasty steamed with potatoes.
Then there is moussaka, spinach beattified by eggs, tomatoes and cheese; souvlaki, rotisseried meat cooked over charcoal, and hundreds of different kinds of fish, grilled, boiled, fried in batter or crumbs and of course the wonderful Greek salad which is a symphony of red onion, cucumber, tomato, olives and feta cheese served with a basket of fresh bread to mop up the olive oil.

DINNER; I don't know because Cretans like to eat late in the evening so I have not bothered with late dining.

BLOWING IN THE WIND

Isn't this beautiful? I found it in the old part of town below the wall. It's in the garden of an old style house, and I just pray the developers marching across the landscape with their reinforced concrete and 'mediterranean' monstrosities don't knock it down.

A TODDLE THROUGH THE TOWN

We complain about resource consent and such but when I stroll around Kissamos I am grateful that we have some limitations on what people can do when they are building. The pink house in the next block of my street has one wall is set right across the footpath. We have to step out into the road to pass it.


Ivor tells me that the Greek government does not charge tax on a house until it is completed. That is why so many houses have reinforced steel sticking out of the roof, stairways leading no where, like a Mark Escher cartoon, and piles of rubble on the footpath. And houses have extra floors stacked on them like slabs of cake.

This morning my in box was full of commiserations about my sore toe, and suggestions for cures, thank you my friends in Darwin, Oamaru, Dunedin Liverpool and other places. I am eating lots of yoghurt and honey, but I had not thought od spreading some on the offening toe. I don't think I will try it, having seen the ant population here.

I am feeling rather virtuous. In spite of the aforesaid toe I walked down to the beach, taking a detour past the old town wall, and I saw not only the wall,but a windmill. shall post some morepictures in thenextblog.