With Douglas in hospital in England we hadn’t any thought of celebrating Christmas this year. Were quite prepared to just let it all go by but our Norwegian friends have invited us over to their place on Christmas Eve, they have an old house in a little village called Kufi, some eighteen kilometres away at a guess, and Helen and Kristos have invited us for lunch on the day itself. There will just be the four of us as they are having a very quiet Christmas as well.
The last time Douglas and I were in Athens we visited the temporary setup which was opened in advance of the wonderful new museum’s completion, a sort of trailer as it were or starters so people good nibble at the goodies before the main dish. I notice the new museum when it did open came in for some criticism, I can’t imagine why because I feel it is not only a beautiful building but the most wonderful space to show off all those antiquities; a hellava lot better than that awful cucumber in London and its time the British Museum gave balk the Elgin Marbles; but back to the temporary one. We were shown around by an archaeologist lady who attached herself to us as our own special guide. During the course of looking around we came across two objects in a cabinet that were most intriguing. They looked rather like Toby jugs and about the same size give an inch or so between them and, mainly because the faces were very pretty with curly hair peeping out from under a sort of toque. We thought the faces were those of girls; but the good lady said no, they were definitely boys and it was the headdress that gave it away as these were worn only by boys. She couldn’t actually tell us anything about these objects as no one seems to know anything about them. Only two have ever been found in the whole of Greece and it is believed they were something to do with a cult. We left the museum and both agreed that those two objects gave us the creepiest feeling. We decided then and there that there was a story to be written about these boys
Half an hour or so later I had my heart attack.
So now I am writing THE MUSEUM MYSTERIES. Douglas had already started it and written twenty pages so I am filling in, expanding, and will take it on from there. I wondered what I was going to work on after THE CINELLI VASES and now I know.