Thursday morning Chris drove me into Souda as I had an appointment with the lung specialist in IKA only to find there was a strike on so it was a waste of time and petrol. I really do not know what they hope to achieve by this continued striking because they will not influence the government one bit. It has to reduce the national debt and there will be no change of mindset. Chris kicked up a fuss and the girl at reception made an appointment for Tuesday. I had a pee while we were there and as usual found the toilets to be in a quite disgusting state which for a major health centre is not saying very much. The floors are awash, even the seats appear to have evidence of bad aiming and the bins for paper are overflowing.
The heat outside was fantastic. I am sure it must have been near forty degrees and I couldn’t wait to get home again and into the cool though we stopped off at the Kalami Parking Café for drinks and a sandwich. The café is in a delightful spot overlooking Souda Bay; there is plenty of shade from tamarisk trees and a lovely cool breeze. But the minute one stepped out of the shade the heat came blazing down again. The car of course every time you got into was like an oven, metal work virtually too hot to touch.
Tamarisk trees are quite amazing, surviving the whole summer without water and capable of growing even in beach sand.
Before leaving Souda we called in at the first of two Chinese emporiums as I needed summer shorts. I couldn’t believe the size of the place or the amount of clothing, shoes, jewellery etcetera there, racks and racks and racks of it for men, women and children of all sizes. The first light shorts Chris looked at were polyester and Chris wanted cotton so we approached a young Chinese floorwalker who, believe it or not, spoke not a word of Greek nor English but did a fairly good line in grunts and we eventually on another rack found cotton shorts and bought two pairs. The clothing in these establishments of course is very cheap (5euro a pair) which is their chief attraction and the Chinese are really taking over. Apart from these two massive establishments there is yet another in Kalyves.
The United States wants that beastly mad mullah Abu Hamza, currently serving seven years in England for incitement to murder, extradited to the US but yuman rights has reared its head once more because Hamza and three others complain that, if they go to America, they face long sentences and yuman rights advocates believe that is a form of torture. Why oh why don’t the Strasbourg Courts and the authorities just let them go and be done with it? It would save an awful tot of money in exchange for a few terrorist outrages and, if caught, they would once again claim their yuman rights, ignoring the fact that those they killed lost their yuman rights then and there. Madness wouldn’t you say?