Well, here’s my last Blog for January! Soon it will be Easter and then, before you know it, Christmas will be around again and you will wonder where the year went. Another beautiful sunshiny day though still a bit on the chilly side but that’s easily remedied; just add a few more layers. Before the advent of central heating when houses on the island were cold and damp that was all the Cretans did – just put on another pullover. We have been watching “Tales From The Green Valley”, the series that purports to demonstrate life on a Welsh farm in 1620, and absolutely fascinating it is too. I mention it in relation to the cold because last night’s episode was January. There is an episode each month of the year. The farmhouse must have been very much like Cretan country houses until very recently except that most Cretan ones would probably have been even smaller. Kitchen fires would have been the sole method of heating. It’s strange here to see men of the older generation walking about the village wearing full winter garments in late March because winter isn’t officially over though the day might be as hot as an English summer’s day. I suppose there is a Cretan equivalent of cast ne’er a clout till may be out. No one has been able to tell me whether that is the month or the plant.
I remember so well the very first January we had here all of twelve years ago when, driving from Kalives into Vamos, we stopped to admire the view, the snow on the mountains chiefly and I sat at the side of the road and said, “Hot hot hot,” and have been sent up about it ever since. As we had left England so cold, so wet, so grey, so miserable, here I was sitting in glorious sunshine and had every reason to say appreciatively, “Hot hot hot!” The mountains at the moment are heavily blanketed with snow right down to the foothills and look quite beautiful. The first weeks of winter were so warm we wondered whether they would look like this. On first arriving in Crete, Chris and I spent the first night in a delightful little hotel overlooking the Venetian harbour in Xania and them, for a few days, until we had beds made and the house became habitable, we stayed in a holiday apartment in Kalives right on the beach – and that at night was cold! This house had no bathroom and no indoor toilet so you had to march across the courtyard (umbrella if it was raining) to go to the loo, the door of which wouldn’t close. That was chilly but at least you could admire the view. It did have a flush toilet but no cistern so had to be flushed by means of a bucket. When we had the extension built it was pulled down and I came back from a shopping expedition in Xania to find I had no loo. A temporary one was hastily put up and, in the process, the builder tried to find the old cess pit with no success. Where all those years and years of shit went to is still a complete mystery. The new cesspit was dug out and a friend, looking intro it, remarked “You could have a million shits in there!” and, as far as we know it is still working perfectly. I was reminded of this by the Green Valley programme when they had to rebuild the privy yards from the house and do it in flurries of snow. What I wanted to know was – what did they do in the ten days it took to do it?

Not a cloud in the sky this morning, at last at last. No doubt later the sun will warm things up, at last at last.
Am struggling to write a new lyric for BLACK MARIA. Not easy. It mustn’t sound like “I am what I am” from LA CAGES and it mustn’t be “I have a dream” like Martin Luther King but it has to be somehow along those lines – just different. Added to the problem is the fact that I am trying to set it to an already existing piece of music with quite intricate phrasing so altogether quite an interesting exercise. Placing it in the script where I have also means the number following, a very slow ballad, torch song really for the juv, is too close so has to be moved and I am thinking of making that the eleven o’clock number. If that doesn’t work it will have to be moved forward.
My sister has sent me from South Africa an article on Durban’s buses, or rather the complete lack of them. There is no doubt that once beautiful city has degenerated into an unholy mess. Why did it have to happen? One would have thought that of all African countries, South Africa would be the exception to chaos but obviously not and evidently it could only get worse. Admittedly it hasn’t gone the way of Monster Mugabe’s Zimbabwe so that at least is a mercy, but inefficiency, bureaucracy, despotism, and corruption are obviously rife.
Have moved on from watching YES MINISTER to watching YES PRIME MINISTER, just as terrific. Made twenty odd years ago last night’s episode was all about a cabinet minister trying to push through an anti-smoking bill which would include a ban on smoking in all public buildings. Of course there were all sorts of objections raised but it was fascinating when one thinks that in fact it has come to pass. One expected the Brits to toe the line like good boys and girls but in Italy we were surprised to find the law was being obeyed to the letter. The first large hotel we stayed in had signs up everywhere. “It is against the law to smoke in this building” and it applied everywhere we went; but what about the Greeks, a country of really heavy smokers? No longer will the surgeon at the end of a successful operation still in the theatre be able to light up his cigarette and take a longed for draw. The law is definitely being obeyed in hospitals, clinics, surgeries, (I think) the roads and areas outside being littered with cigarette butts but I don’t think they’re going to put up with not smoking in bars, tavernas, etcetera, and Chris tells me in the bank yesterday there was still the aroma of stale cigarette smoke in the air so, even if customers are obeying the law, bank manager and tellers were no doubt pulling at a sneaky drag. As for me I am just glad I gave up six years ago and only wish I had managed to do it sooner.

Createspace and Amazon together with Penguin USA are holding another literary competition, this time not for a short story but a novel and, once again, Greece is omitted from the list of eligible countries. Why? What on earth has everybody got against Greece? It is part of the European Union for goodness sake, as much as any of the other countries mentioned as eligible. In actual fact there is no reason why the competition shouldn’t be open world-wide as it is anyhow limited to the first 5000 entries within a certain time. How does Amazon and Penguin USA know they are not losing an absolute gem? I am fully aware that writers are in fact two a penny but there have been excellent ones from countries not mentioned in the eligible list. Strikes me as being most short-sighted.
Still very cold, still wet. At least the windows aren’t running with condensation this morning but the dehumidifier in my study is having a hard time of it. We have it on every night because, in the beginning, we lost three or four beautiful books to damp and mould. It is set at 30 and usually when switched on it reads about sixty but these last few nights it has read more than 70 and in the morning I find it has reduced that figure to about 55.
Normally the fire in the breakfast room isn’t lit until well into the afternoon but these last few days it has been going all day and the central heating has a morning as well as an evening spell. Will have to check and see how the oil is holding out. We might as well be back in England.
I had thought this morning I would be writing all about Sweeney, fully expecting when I got up to find she had gone. She has been refusing food the last three days and she gave us no end of false alarms yesterdays. It really did look like the end but, no, this morning she was sitting up in her snuggle rather than lying comatose as she did all yesterday. It is now fifteen months since we dug her grave because we thought the end was about to come and she is sixteen years old. I have no doubt my next Blog will be all about Sweeney.

This has now got beyond the ridiculous. It is still raining; a steady downpour. I now know the description of leaden skies is a true one and it is depressing. We have had it for almost two weeks. I think this is the longest period of incessant rain I can remember in Crete. Even the farmers have found it, together with the cold, too much to be out in and have called off their blockade with their tractors of the main highways, an oft recurring event whenever their grievances get too much. Well, the old cliché has it that it never rains but it pours and poor Greece, a country in a frightful financial mess, is evidently now having Rumania demanding ten million euro compensation because of the farmers’ blockade that has closed the border and prevented their lorries from delivering goods. Maybe the rain has come to the rescue and the lorries can pass. Evidently it is quite true the farmers are having a really tough time with the cost of diesel being what it is, the cost of living altogether being what it is and the price of crops and EU subsidy not being what it should be, the subsidy on cotton at one time was worth 1.50euro and is now 28 lepta, but in some ways it is their own fault. I am led to believe that, instead of using it for improvements, they squandered their first lot of subsidies: the lure of a new Mercedes or BMW being too hard to resist. Also they will not change old ways; they will not change their crops. Evidently, though I have no firsthand knowledge of this, cotton is an easy crop to grow and therefore gives the farmer an easy life. You don’t have to get up at five in the morning to milk the cotton. But it has created its own problems, mainly in that cotton requires masses and masses of water and has seriously depleted the water table in parts of the country, rather like the Greek exchequer I reckon. Mind you, if it is raining there as it is here I should think the problem has been momentarily eased quite considerably.
As for Greece’s financial situation which is as bad if not worse than the UK (are there any countries not hopelessly in the red?) the question being asked is, will it go bankrupt. Evidently it did once before shortly after it became a nation with the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Well bankruptcy may be avoided but what won’t be is the inevitable rise in taxes starting with those usual obvious targets, booze and tobacco, but there is evidently also talk of a new property tax. This probably wouldn’t be necessary if Greeks did not have a thousand ways of avoiding tax altogether. Reducing or even eliminating the the black economy would be half way to getting Greece out its financial fix.

Oh, dear! Yet more rain. I guess the country needs it but does it need quite so much? When is St. Swithin’s Day? Do we have this for forty days I ask myself? And the dreary cold that goes with it. Poor Douglas, came home for sunshine, brought the English weather with him, and now he goes back to England tomorrow the hours of sunshine he enjoyed counted on fingers, possibly a bit more than one hand – but not much.
When I wrote about all the good things visitors brought to the party I forgot to mention the mooseburgers! Yes, mooseburgers, brought by Norwegian friends. I think interesting might be the word. No, actually they were very good and supplied a second dinner after the goat. The Norwegians have also been quite liberal now and again with the smoked salmon, one luxury I could O.D. on.
The Bosie biography has had to be delivered to Torquay as the book-seller through whom Amazon got it does not deliver to Greece. This is not the first time this has happened and it is so annoying and rather silly I feel. I have no idea what their objection could be. After all, with credit cards and Paypal they don’t run the risk of not getting their money, the Greek postal service is actually as efficient as anywhere else despite what people might think and finally there is insurance should something go wrong, so what is the objection?
Annoying also is the courier company used by Lighningsource to deliver my books as they take forever. Four copies of THE JOURNIES WE MAKE were dispatched days ago and I suppose are till sitting in Heraklion as happened before. Then, when they do get around to delivering, they refuse point blank to try and find the house (not difficult; Vamos is hardly a large city or even a big town and there are plenty of landmarks to show the way) but fortunately our friend Georgia who runs the pandopoleo in the square will take them in and hold them for us. The reason for there being four copies is that the National Library of Greece likes to have three copies of books published in Greece. Three! What do they want with three? Does the British Library ask for three? Or congress? There are Greek publishers who produce some wonderful books including very large coffee table ones and where does the library store them all at three copies a throw?
Writing and being published in Greece has disadvantages in other directions as well. For example, Amazon and Penguin USA are running a short story competition with quite a hefty prize in dollars but Greece is not included in the countries eligible for submission. Douglas thought of submitting THE JOURNIES WE MAKE for the Booker prize but guess what – it is published in Greece so not eligible. Also they would more than likely consider it to be vanity published as DCG is not one of your big regular publishers. Ah, well, can’t win ‘em all.

We’ve been watching old BBC productions, series they used to know how to make such as DAD’S ARMY and YES MINISTER which is still one of the funniest and wittiest ever produced, brilliant scripts, brilliant performances. I wonder, did it win any prizes? If not, why not? I know I have been out of touch a goodly while but it seems to me, as the old saying has it, they don’t make ‘em like that anymore. After all that reality television does anyone in England still know how to produce quality? That might sound cynical but is it all that far off the truth?
Have at last finished reading Richard Ellmann’s biography of Oscar Wilde and fascinating it has been. It seems to have taken forever to get through it but that was only because it has been my bedtime book and so was read a couple or more pages at a time before going to sleep. Was there a streak of madness in the Queensbury family? If Queensbury himself was a most disreputable character, Bosie was equally if not more so; a vain, completely selfish, mendacious, spendthrift, probably as violent in his temper as his father. Well, in order to possibly get a different perspective on the man I’ve ordered a biography of Lord Alfred Douglas and we will see what that has to say about him.
Have also finished the Sophia Tolstoy diaries. Got through that in no time at all and was finding it rather repetitious towards the end. It did paint an interesting picture of their lives in nineteenth century Russia but what a strange woman! At one point she remarks on her full and happy life and the next moment she is suicidal yet again. This suicidal bit happens with alarming frequency. It seems a remedy for it was to go and play the piano for a few hours. I do have the feeling that this obsessive love (if you can call it love?) for Lev Tolstoy wasn’t quite normal and he, in his own way, seems to have been as big a shit as Lord Alfred Douglas.
My loo book has been “So long and thanks for all the fish” by Douglas Adams, described as “the fourth book in the Hitch-Hiker trilogy”. Well, as much as I enjoyed The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I simply couldn’t get on the wavelength with this one so I am afraid have given up three quarters of the way through.
We have had ten days of intermittent rain, well more than intermittent actually. Looking out of my window now I see only blue sky but I saw that yesterday for a brief moment before it poured down again and continued through the night with occasional thunderstorms. On Sunday there was a welcome home party for Douglas and it was chucking it down in buckets, so much so I honestly thought no one would come and it would be a complete washout, but they did come, bar three or four. They braved the torrents, arrived dripping wet, and we had a wonderful five hours party. It ended up forty in all. There was plenty of food (Chris had been baking for two days) and drink and it is the custom in Greece when visiting anyone’s home to bring a little something so there was more – cake, biscuits, chocolates, wine, tsigouthia. One Greek couple brought goat which we had for dinner yesterday evening, another brought an enormous bag of oranges and one of mandarins! What are we going to do with them all? And interestingly, an English couple brought two books: hospital reading they said for Douglas who is going back in a couple of day’s time. One, a massive tome, is on Ellen Terry and Henry Irving and the other a book called “The Actor Manager” by Leonard Merrick. A book republished by Bibliobazaar in South Carolina. I don’t know the original publication date but nineteenth century or very early twentieth. I don’t know about hospital reading for Douglas but they will certainly take the place of all the books I’ve just finished.

As examples of trust, here are three: the tank for the central heating oil is virtually empty and winter has a while to go yet but we have no money. To fill the tank will cost somewhere in the region of 750 euro. ‘Pay me when you can,’ says Haralambos. ‘It won’t be for a while,’ we say. ‘Then berazi’ says Harralambos, ‘it doesn’t matter, whenever.’ And it was a couple of months before we had the wherewithal to pay him. Medicine needed but again no money. ‘Pay when you can,’ says Eleni the pharmacist, ‘it’s an emergency.’ Somehow I can’t imagine that happening at the chemist in Hebden Bridge. Douglas is in England undergoing his treatment and here one of the cats is taken ill so has to go to Michael the vet. ‘Just pay for the medicine,’ Michael says, refusing all payment for the consultation. ‘You need the money for England.’ Once when the bank was on strike and we were complaining to him about not being able to get any money his answer was, ‘You live in a village. You have neighbours don’t you? You have a garden. You grow potatoes. What do you want money for?’ The fact that the only year I tried to grow potatoes it was an abject failure was beside the point. We knew what he meant. During yet another bank strike, and because of it, Judith and Dimitri who run the bookshop Papyrus in Kalives were unable to deposit takings so offered them as a loan to tide us over.
I can’t remember when last we bought olive oil. With the first pressings come the first gifts from our neighbours, beautiful green virgin oil. We are given wine, tsigouthia (raki), fruit, eggs, cheese, traditional Cretan cookies and goodness knows what else such as glika (sweets made from fruit) and moustalaveria, a delicacy made from pressed grapes. It evidently takes at least two days to make and is quite a complicated process but the end result is delicious.
This is not to say that generosity doesn’t exist elsewhere. I have already mentioned this in part but I think it’s worth my saying it again if only to reiterate our gratitude for generous friends who came to our assistance last year without being asked or us even thinking of asking in the first place. Despite the Greek National health Service which is excellent and the British one that took care of Douglas, falling ill can be very expensive and deplete the coffers pretty fast which is the reason for our gratitude. Douglas’s brother and sister in law, William and Susan also have to be thanked for taking such care of him and how lucky that they live in Torquay not that distant from the hospital in which he was being treated, and Tom Austin for providing a much needed taxi service if nothing else. Such good friends and much appreciated.