I must confess it has been most pleasurable getting back to blue skies and temperatures around 20. When we left Athens for London (Stansted) we left on a sunny day with the temperature at 15 degrees and arrived in the dark and wet at -3! At least that is what Roger Beeching’s swish Jaguar, a car that does everything except give you sensual massage, told us: outside temperature -3.There was an interesting incident in Athens before leaving (no, not more riots) and another on arriving back (no, not more riots though they were now happening in Patras) but on our first night in the flat at about four in the morning someone torched a car a few yards up and on the opposite side of the road. The noise woke Douglas who went out onto the balcony to see what was happening and I soon followed. It was quite a spectacle of fierce flames, three or four dull thuds of something exploding and a billowing tower of dense black smoke. Someone was already there trying to put out the fire with a small extinguisher that was having no effect whatsoever. Soon there were half a dozen police cars and finally a couple of fire wagons and the fire was fairly quickly put out. What surprised me was the fact that so few people came out onto their balconies or leaned out of windows to witness the conflagration considering the noise that was being made. Maybe Athenians merely ignore this sort of thing. When we stopped by the car the following morning we saw it was nothing but a metal skeleton though, surprisingly it appeared the tyres were untouched, and the white car parked in front of it and only six inches away seemed to have suffered little damage, a slight discolouration of a small patch of paint and a broken tail light. Three weeks later the wreck is still sitting there. I wonder what all that was about?
Our return journey started off uneventful enough. Stansted doesn’t appear to be the busiest airport in the world and we were fairly early checking in so we wandered around W.H.Smith’s for a while but not for long. There was just too many books, so many paperbacks to choose from it was almost bewildering, books on shelves, books on tables, books on the desk, buy two get one free or half price and I gave up almost before I started, more chick-lit than is good for one. Our last evening in London staying with our friend Ray Peters, we held a dinner party for fourteen – Ray loves doing this and a dinner party always ends with everyone receiving an assortment of presents. Among mine was a book, a biography of a writer I had never heard of. Seeing all those books displayed at Smith’s is it surprising? Andrew Harvey, a reviewer, wrote of him, “He was a writer no one who cares about literature can afford not to read.” The writer in question (and I am now half way through this fascinating biography by Nicholas Shakespeare) was Bruce Chatwin. It seems a great shame that this dedicated work, considering the amount of research required let alone the writing of it, should have been picked up at £2.99 off the remainder table. Ray never did remove a price tag. Chatwin died young off AIDS related illnesses and is buried, having converted to the Orthodox church, in an unmarked grave in Greece. He wanted to retire to Crete. I will now have to read some of his work. Anyway, getting back to our return flight, all was peaceful until we left the immigration and customs area at Athens airport when the second unusual incident happened. Douglas, me following behind as usual, was suddenly confronted by three youngish guys the first of whom flashed an identity card and asked if we carrying anything illegal, did we pack our bags ourselves, which bag was his, which bag was mine, did we mix things up etc., and then they would like to search our suitcases. We were marched away and told to sit on a couple of chairs an area away form the madding crowd. Another grey nomad (well white-haired) was already ensconced on a chair opposite and looking a wee bit nervous, or that’s what the smile he gave us conveyed as he obviously waited his turn.
The guy, in his mid-thirties or thereabouts I would say, who had flashed his identity now stood over us and said something to the effect that he believed we were carrying something and if there was anything in our cases it would be better for us if we admitted it then and there rather than wait for the contraband to be discovered. He was almost gloating and there was little doubt he believed he had a couple of drug smugglers bang to rights and our arrest was imminent. I was growing more and more irritated at being kept there by having to continually deny there was anything in the suitcase, Douglas was growing more and more nervous. Confronted by any authority he tends to plead guilty even before the charges are read out. A young Oriental guy came smiling out of the search room and the grey nomad opposite was ushered in. Then it was our turn. Cases were lifted on to two different tables and Douglas, now beetroot red and all fingers and thumbs couldn’t remember the combination on his lock. He knew it was to do with his birthday but he couldn’t remember in what order the numbers came. Eventually though it was sorted out. In the meantime my case was opened and it seemed this was the one they were particularly interested in. I sat watching all this and complaining loudly to quite a sweet girl who was inspecting passports and asking the usual Greek bureaucratic questions. Douglas was silently wishing me to shut up. Having, to their obvious disappointment, discovered nothing and the cases having been repacked and closed, off we went into the night and to catch the train into Athens. It was only when we had settled down that Douglas suddenly said, ‘It was the tea!’ It hadn’t occurred to us before but, when my case was scanned, obviously some very suspicious packages, eight in all, each about eight inches in length and uniform, came to light. They could quite easily have held hash or even something more sinister. Word was flashed to Athens and they were waiting for us.
The minute they saw Douglas lift the red suitcase off the carousel and pass it to me we were targeted. When the guy searching my bag saw a carrier bag from the Drury Tea Company and packets labelled Lapsang, Earl Grey, Darjeeling etc., he didn’t even bother to open one up. That could have been a mistake. What if the tea labelling had been a cover up and the packets really had contained drugs? We would have got away with it.