After our brief flirtation with spring it isn’t April showers, it’s April solid rain and April unfortunately can sometimes get you like that, so it puts an end to my gardening for a while. The first time Douglas and Chris came to Crete on holiday it was early in the year and it rained solidly for the first week. You hear of rather silly holiday makers who complain to the tourist operators about the rain. ‘Nobody told us it rains in Crete.’ Quite aerated they get about it as well as though it were all the holiday company’s fault. Then in the height of summer they come out, take absolutely no notice of warnings, walk around hatless, spend the first day or two lying in the sun and the rest of the holiday is spoilt in an agony of sunburn or even sunstroke. Anyway, no chance of that today, today it is back to switching on the central heating and keeping the fire in the breakfast room going. I thought I would light it by getting rid of a whole lot of waste paper. To quote a George Leybourne song, that’s where I made my mistake. All I succeeded for the first ten minutes or so was produce so much smoke, doors had to be opened to the outside world which defeated the object of the exercise. Had to think a while there whether or not to add “of the exercise” but object standing by itself somehow just didn’t look right.
It is nine months since Janis Maradakis, our neighbour from across the way, died, and this morning it is his memorial service of the period. Had the weather been clement I would have gone but as it is we decided I stay at home and keep the animals happy! I have to admit I didn’t need too much persuasion, no persuasion at all in fact.
Last night watched H.P. and the Philosopher’s Stone, there being nothing else worth looking at on Greek television, and noticed a big bloomer near the start of the movie. When Bumbledore places Harry on the doorstep at Privet Drive he is a babe in arms, three months? Four? More? Or Less? Whatever, he already bears his distinctive scar. When in flashback we come to the death of his parents, he is a frightened toddler, one year? More? And has no scar. Whoops! What happened to the infant? What happened to the scar?
When I came to Crete I didn’t think I would ever be putting on my coaching/teaching/directing cap again but one of our ex-pats wishes to perform a monologue in an ex-pats meeting in May and has asked me to coach her. She has had one session and I reckon one more should last her a while. There’s talk of my taking workshops with the group but I really am not too sure about that.