Ailments

Was it Bette Davis who said growing old is not for cissies? Well, whoever it was they couldn’t have said a truer word. My handwriting has been deteriorating for some time and has now become virtually illegible. It’s a scribble I can’t even read myself. So hoorah for a keyboard! Except that now my fingers are so stiff as I sit here I am finding it even difficult to type. If I lose that ability completely, well… let’s not even think about it. This stiffness is a strange turn-up for the books because up to now my hands have been so shaky (hence the illegible writing) that holding a cup of tea without spilling any is not easy. And because of the rat poison blood thinner I take every day (Sintrom) the skin on the back of my hands has turned black and I have leopard spots all the way up my arms. It’s not helped either by the skin being like tissue paper and should one of Wagner’s claws when playing accidentally get me that means a scab – once the blood has stopped flowing - and there are a number of them. Pretty isn’t it? Pretty it is not.

Health! Now suddenly I have developed edema and it is not only the feet that are horribly swollen and ugly but the legs have doubled in size with the amount of fluid. This is not good news. I have also reached that time in life when I can suddenly lose balance and go toppling over and once you start to topple there’s no stopping it. It’s like dropping a bottle of milk and watching it in slow motion as it descends to shatter on the floor and there is nothing you could have done about it. And the worst aspect of it is that once down it is almost impossible to get up unless there is something, like a peace of furniture for example, against which one can use the strength in the arms to hoist yourself up because there is no strength in the legs and one is floundering like one of those beetles on it’s back unable to turn over. Some years ago an ex-pat, Arthur, originally from Yorkshire, (spoke Greek with a Yorkshire accent) was telling us he was reluctantly leaving Crete and going back to the UK because his wife had died and he had reached the falling over stage, Eleftheria’s late mum, Maria had a couple if falls which meant a broken pelvis and after being discharged from the hospital she was still in terrible agony. Chris and Douglas used to go over to help Eleftheria put her to bed: siga, siga; slowly slowly, every little movement so painful. Once she was in and settled that was it for the night, there would be no more movement. When Maria died we went over to the house for what I suppose one could call a sit-in. Coffee, wine, tsigouthia, biscuits, etcetera were available and there were a number of ladies seated around the open coffin and every now and again one of them would talk to the corpse as if she really could hear her. That was the first time and we have attended others since. In Crete once you’ve gone you are put away pretty quick, no hanging about. Then according to the Orthodox Church you start your long forty day journey to meet your maker. In our little corner of the world there have been six deaths which is not surprising considering they were all in their eighties. Agathe just down the road is hanging in there at 96. Her sister, Anna, one of my very very very favourite ladies of all time also had a fall that proved fatal. Unfortunately we were in Athens at the time and by the time we got back Anna was already gone. Hers was a corpse I could have talked to without feeling foolish. I still miss her dreadfully. Growing old is eventually a problem for most ex-pats because most come over here already at retirement age singly or as a couple and when one of them dies what happens to the one who is left? Especially if they have failed to integrate into Cretan society. I am not in the least bit religious. To be honest I am an atheist plain and simple; when you’re dead you’re dead, but that doesn’t stop us from taking part in certain aspects of Cretan life which usually involves the church in some way or other. Jesus is everywhere on this island. It never ceased to surprise me while I was still mobile enough to get to the church that at Easter, the most sacred time in the Greek calendar, we have been the only ex-pats at the midnight service year after year. Christ is risen. He is truly risen. Kiss kiss. And we carefully walk home with our candle lit by the holy flame all the way from Jerusalem (?) and mark the sign of the cross on the door lintel. We tie a bunch of wild flowers on the handle of the front door every first of March. And if the young papas wants to bless our house with a sprig of basil and holy water, even though he knows we’re not orthodox, why not? It’s not hypocrisy if it gives him some satisfaction.

We have two lesbian friends, beautiful people and I don’t necessarily mean physically, who have been together for 45 years. They have had this big house built with swimming pool and a beautiful garden the size of a small park and the time is coming when they will have to think on what happens when one of them goes. They want me to write something in ‘No Official Umbrella’ but if they leave it much longer it won’t happen. As it is I would have to get someone else to write the dedication and scribble my signature beneath. I am extremely fortunate in that I have not one but two who watch over me with love, diligence and a great deal of patience. They cannot be thanked enough. I am also thankful that whatever ailments I suffer at the moment none involves pain.

Talking of books, monthly returns from the printers both in the UK and the states informs me that ‘Celluloid & Tinsel,’ the penultimate Thornton King adventure has hardly left the ground. A round robin was sent to all friends, acquaintances, and associates but it seems they’re not exactly in any rush to get their hands on a copy. What does one do if even friends can‘t be bothered? Am now polishing number six which will be the last in the series, but six is a nice round number.

Manolis number one was a different figure altogether to Manousis. Short and stocky, muscular and black bearded, at first glance one thought, hey I’d hate to tangle with this one, as he swaggered about punching the air, punching the palm of his hand. He didn’t actually go so far as shadow boxing and you realised it was a bit of an act when you saw the grin and twinkle in his eye and realised he was a bit of a joker as well as being what the Greeks call a palakari. We can’t really think of what the English equivalent would be for palakari but maybe the closest definition would be “hero”. His wife, Roula, a little brown hen with thick ankles, losing her hair and a voice like a corncrake - actually I don’t believe I’ve ever seen or heard a corncrake, I just liked that expression - fussed over him like a real mother hen with her chicks. She fetched and carried and to start with, carefully laid out a cloth on top of his locker on which she placed an icon of Madonna and child which looked strangely out of place surrounded by water bottles and fruit juice cartons. Another embroidered cloth was placed on the lower shelf to hold the special goodies she had brought and his pillow supplied with a pretty floral pillowslip. Roula was another chatterbox and I don’t think Manolis heard half of what she said. He would give me a look which meant, what can you do? She slept on the bed with him and hospital beds are not all that wide but it’s something couples do. I gathered he was in for an angiogram but after two days he was suddenly discharged so we had more air punching, much shaking of hands, smiles from Roula and off they went, home to Rethymno. Douglas slept on the middle bed for a couple of nights before moving to his shared room in the hostel.
Manousis meanwhile had made friends, or found an admirer rather, with a visitor from next door, a small rather clown like figure we never saw without his flat cap so that is what we called him, flat cap. He was looking after his sour-faced wife but obviously couldn’t or didn’t intend sharing her bed which meant he would have been sleeping on a chair. So Manousis at two in the morning invited him to take the bed vacated by both Manolis and Douglas. He didn’t stretch out for long though because less than an hour later, nurses arrived with clean linen, chivvied him off, made up the bed and Manolis number two was wheeled in and hooked up to his drip and the oxygen. There’s nothing to say about Manolis number two that I haven’t already said.
The first day I was there a cheery lady came around with a set of steps and took down all the curtains, never to be seen again except laundered, folded, and lying in a storeroom so there was no privacy in the ward for any intimate bodily function. At one point independent Manolis got shakily out of bed, lifted a bottle in a plastic carrier bag and stood facing my bed to urinate. I dutifully closed my eyes but couldn’t resist a peek to see how he was doing. He kept everything well and truly hidden inside the plastic bag. At one point in the night a doctor arrived at his bedside, turned him on his side and, liberally covering his gloved hand with lubricating jelly, shoved two fingers fairly forcibly up uncomplaining Manolis’s bum before covering him up again.. Why, do you suppose, as nothing else seemed to take place?
And talking of doctors, I have to mention young Doctor Kostas who seemed to be here, there and everywhere, at everyone’s beck and call at all hours of the day and night. One night he responded to a call form Manousis at about midnight, having been seen around all day, and nine o’clock the following morning there he was again.
‘Kostas,’ as he passed my bed, ‘don’t you ever go home?’
‘No.’
A couple of minutes later on his way back (to Manousis’ bed of course) ‘Kostas, do you have a home to go to?’
‘No.’
A short while later he stopped by to say he was leaving for two weeks holiday and then, rather shyly I thought, informed me he was getting married. He was quite chuffed at my enthusiastic congratulations. Chris and Douglas had suggested we give him a copy of NO OFFICIAL UMBRELLA and he was even more chuffed about that. He went straight down to the desk to log on the internet and find out all about me, coming back to the ward with the print-outs. ‘Is that you? Is that you?’
Yep – that’s me. Phone numbers were exchanged. I wonder if we will ever use them.

If anyone should be curious enough to ask ‘why “No Official Umbrella”? The answer is it is the title of my unpublished autobiography. That still doesn’t completely answer the question though, does it? So here we are … It is taken from a quotation in a book called KAI LUNG’S GOLDEN HOURS by Ernest Bramah and reads … “It is scarcely to be expected that one who has spent his life beneath an official umbrella, should have at his command the finer analogies between light and shade.” I read the book when I was still a teenager and decided that, as one day I was going to be famous (ha ha!) that would be the title of my biography. I could have used “Between Light And Shade”. That sounds good. Maybe I could use it for something else. But I chose the first extract because I knew even then I would never spend my life in some secure stay where you are occupation and that’s how it has turned out. Another quote in my life has been the motto of my high school, NIHIL HUMANI ALIENUM. The full quote is Ego est homo, nihil humani alienum est. I have a feeling that is not very good Latin because I have seen Terence’s motto written far more elegantly but, whichever way it is written, all it means is “I am a man, nothing that is of interest to man is alien to me.” A pretty good motto I think and one I have probably lived up to more than most of my schoolboy compatriots. Anyway, the biography has not been published. One publisher who returned it described me as “a most charming memoirist” but obviously charm gets you nowhere. I have been reading a book called THE ILLUSION OF IMMORTALITY that has been on the shelf for goodness knows how many years and, in it, I read that some years ago a New York publisher received a manuscript purporting to be the autobiography of Jesus Christ sent down to the earthly amanuensis from the other world. He turned it down. Well, if God can’t get His book published and your biography isn’t one of abuse and misery, then forget it. I was never abused as a child and growing up a white boy in South Africa led a fairly privileged existence. Still if 120000 books are published every year in England those are pretty frightening odds in getting yourself noticed even if you haven’t lived beneath an official umbrella and even if you have been interested in everything concerning mankind.