maggieasingleton's Blog

The whitewashed wall outside the window glows pink in the early sun

Sparrows. We wondered where they had all gone from our English gardens.

They are all here. Declaring the lightening of the day with their banter. Demanding attention.

The church bell tolls seven times.

The cockerel crows harshly to his hens. The hens reply softly. They are about their scritchy scratchy business.

The clocks in the house tick tock. All tell a different time and sing a different song

Later the pilot will give us his unseen aerobatic display somewhere over the hill in the sky blue blue sky.

The black weeded women will shout their conversation through their windows and in their yards. Insistent. Serious. No laughter. What do they say?

The brown and grey men will sit in earnest nodding discourse over coffee and cigarettes at the tables outside cafes and tavernas. They stare as we try to catch their words as we pass. What do they say?

A new sound in this ancient land. Of solitary voices, shouting earnestly into mobile phones. Unseen listeners.

The sounds of domestic industry, and now a pigeon coos gently for its mate. Where are you. Where are you. And then a tractor tearing down the narrow lane. Raw sound interrupting the gentle domestic hum. A two wheeled motorcycle roars by. No helmet safety here. One hand on the handlebars, one clutching phone or frappé, shouting greetings. Always greetings. Through car windows. No care for traffic or schedule. Chatter chatter. What are they saying?

The sea sings a quiet song as the small tide holds it tight at the shore. Short verses fit snug around the small waves. Sand, from fine yellow white, through course flat autumn hued grains to pebbles rendered smooth by the relentless wash of wavelets and drilled by brother stones to make lucky Suffolk ‘wilkies’. These form the orchestra to play the song of the waves. Lullaby sounds. No crashing cymbals here. Brush on timpani. The ocean is a distant cousin to this almost landlocked sea. The moon stroking the water on a tide that reveals only a ribbon-strand of freshly washed shore. Brush on timpani. Muffled by the weed from sea and the leaves from the shore. A blanket carelessly dropped here and there to cloak the cool sand and stones beneath.

The clock bell calls once again. Relentless. Time passing in small segments reminding us that this day will pass into tomorrow and is not forever. We are not forever.  The cockerel less instant now. More distant. Satisfied his hens are all accounted for. So far.

On Friday and Sunday when the bells play a calling tune, a come to church tune, a dog howls in sympathy. Does he want to go or does he want the congregation to stay?

In the groves the cicadas sing to their olives. Grow green and fat and shiny. Grow purple and black and round. Shine sun, shine. In the heat of the afternoon they crescendo as all else falls silent. Until the white fluff of cloud gains height and colour and uses round hammered drum-rolls on the timpani to herald warm thirst quenching rain for the trees.

Four cats always waiting for our return. Feed me calls. Plaintive mews. Outside the door all the way to their den of beds and food. Spiky wet and dusty dry. Hungry for company and full bellies.

We four women making plans, making work, making chitter chatter laughter as we go about this old renewed house. Kitchen chatter, cleaning chatter. Gossip and opinion and advice. Rich archives delved. New material examined and stored away in ever overcrowded libraries. Four women. Four voices.

Again the clock chimes it’s time. For tea. For rousing women and cats. For plans and tasks and new sights and sounds. The song of the Greek day has begun.

.

This is the story of our trip to Messinia to stay with Jan in Xarakopio. Ann Su and Maggie. I am for once not posting in chronological order as inspiration and availability of my Asus Pad have determined the randomness of the blogging. But here we go. An adventure of a different nature for me as I have not before experienced mainland Greece. I know so little of the history and the geography of the place so please forgive any misunderstandings or misinterpretations.  As ever the observations are mine. We may start in the middle, but I will return to the beginning in due course. Enjoy. I do.

4 Women. Ready by 10 for the 10 to 10.30 start. Unheard of. Great smoothie today. Carrot, cucumber, apple, banana, peach and ginger. I know dear readers that you don’t need to know this but it is just SO good it needs to be written down. I promise I won’t mention smoothies again.

So bye bye cats and house and off to the Filoxenia Spa Hotel at Kalamata. There were, inevitably, jobs to do en route, the first of which was to dispose of the euphemistic “poo bag”. (I should explain that there is a RULE that no paper may be disposed of down the toilet as the Greek sewage system cannot deal with it, so all paper items must be placed in a well lined bin and disposed of daily, and since it is our bin and our paper we must be responsible for said disposal. Su seems to be the main ” Carrier of the bag” shouting “bin” or “poo bag” in time for the car to stop and the bag to be hurled inside.) Sorry – jobs – to get the tyre pressures checked (which we did not), to get petrol (which we did) and to get to Kalamata in one piece. (Which we did – obviously). We also agreed to stop outside Kalamata to buy lunch for later at a patisserie called Athanasiou. This most revered establishment sells the classiest selection of cakes, pastries, rolls, sandwiches, cookies, biscuits sweets etc that I have so far encountered in Greece. It could be compared to the patisserie in Fortnum’s transported to a hot dusty service station in Greece. An error was narrowly avoided when we realised that Ann’s order for 2 baklava had resulted in the preparation of two entire trays of this delicious stuff being prepared for departure, and not 2 slices as required.  Mind you we could have dispatched it. Given time!

Jan knew where she was going. Just as well. On the subject of RULES, it seems to me there are very few on the Greek roads. Junctions are a mystery. Faded road markings and no “after you”  “no, no, after you” nonsense, makes the entire experience rather stressful to the outsider, and whilst there are speed limit signs now and then, they appear to be generally disregarded. As Jan rightly pointed out, driving through towns and villages needs to be undertaken with great care to avoid running over livestock and humans, not to mention negotiating crazy hairpin bends with large abandoned holes where road works have been started but are as yet unfinished. In Xarakopio the mysterious water works are underway and there is a hole outside every property. Neat square hole with an exposed water pipe in it. Mystery. And no red and white tape. Elf and Safety notwithstanding! I’m usually a good back seat \ front seat driver, but I am nervous in Greece. Probably because I don’t know the RULES!!

I digress. Jan had business in the city so we girls were let loose for a couple of hours. Not to be trusted unfortunately!

But, we navigated to the recommended coffee shop, successfully ordered our refreshment, logged into the free WiFi (always cause for celebration) and enjoyed ourselves in the shade of the old Bizantine church (11 – 12 C).  The church was dark and peaceful. We lit candles and offered prayers to our chosen creators.

There were two adjacent sandal\shoe shops nearby. Deserving of a look. We were harangued by a rather tipsy but friendly local man who appeared to be encouraging us to buy local. He did a passable impression of a cow to indicate the authenticity of the leather, and found many words of German, French, Italian and English to decorate his slurred Greek. The storekeeper shooed (no pun intended) him apologetically away. We lingered over the sandals. Mistake. I was seduced into the shop to look at the tricolour strappy sandals, asking for a size 43. But these were clearly women’s sandals and women, as we know, don’t have big feet. A 42 was produced and the desperate store keeper forced my pale sweaty size 9 into the narrow size 8. My toes hung over the top. Perfecto!

“Nein” I said, “Ne” forgetting that I was English and not German (why is it that we break into any other language that we have even scant knowledge of when English seems not to work?) And forgetting that “Ne” is “Yes” in Greek!  He bustled off to another pair. “How do you say ‘no thank you'” I asked Ann. She told me and I immediately forgot. He returned with a different 42. Again much stuffing of hot foot into too small sandal. “How do I say ‘no thank you’ Ann?” She told me again and again I immediately forgot. Su helpfully contributed with “just leave”. Most helpful. He had just returned with a huge brown men’s sandal for me to try. We just left. Cracked up in the street. Can you imaging his conversation with his wife over supper. ” these three crazy English women. One with huge feet. Like a man. Pale. Sweaty. Horrible! Wanted sandals. Ha! ”

My brain won’t remember word. I can do a plausible mimic of the accent required but the words won’t stick. I can break into a Welsh accent as soon as we hit the Severn Bridge but as for the language. Not a chance. Same here. On dear!

There are so many cats. Ornamental cats, painted cats. Sculpted cats. Even ‘Banksy’  style graffiti cats on the buildings in the city. Cats.

In a country with an apparent feral cat problem, the cats are almost revered in art. Why is that? The hippy shop remembered by Su had loads of cats and lovely things for we hippy tourists.

We made it to the appointed meeting place in the square by the fountain in good time. Via the Cheese pie shop. And Jan found us. We were immediately approached by an old lady begging for money. She was very insistent. She carried a tatty card which she showed to each of us in turn and seemed to think it would authenticate her pleading and enhance our generosity. Ann succumbed with a euro but this just encouraged her to renew her plea and push her face further into ours. She pointed into her toothless mouth and mimed a throttling action as though we would be personally responsible for her demise. We encountered her again later. Still just as determined. I do feel a terrible urge to give to these refugees but if they are here “without recourse to public funds” as they would be here, supporting them under the wire, do we then encourage more people to come via the dodgy routes we read about and end up on the streets of European cities being blamed for messing up the economy and stealing jobs from the legitimate locals. Please discuss. Yet again.

Final job before the Spa was a visit to Jumbo where we needed a large cafetière. Obviously. They had none, but we left with a sofa cover, two scary eye bracelets, some olive soap, some latte cups and some batteries. You may well wonder why we needed these items for our night at the Spa……

So onto the Hotel!!! Under cover (bamboo roofed) parking, palatial colonnaded entrance, all marble and palms. Ann had a posh wheelie case but the remainder of us looked like bag ladies.  Hot sticky bag ladies.

By way of an aside on the RULES, I meant to mention the pedestrian crossings. They’re not. They’re just stripes on the road. Pedestrians beware because cars are not programmed to stop. More likely to stop for a tortoise. Reminded me about the pelican crossing in Western Australia. Another story. And red lights. Well not necessarily to stop at apparently. Sometimes the red and yellow flash together. What does that mean. Anyway…..

Back to the Hotel. We are escorted to the lift by a lovely young Greek lad, possibly Georgio as nearly all the men are.  “What floor are we on?” ” Floor 2″ ” I can’t see the buttons. Where’s the 2?” ” Next to the 1″ For some reason this was hilarious and continued to be so every time we used the lift. Especially on the one occasion when I cane down the stairs instead and the girls were stuck on floor 2 because they kept pressing the 2. I think I was blamed. Ha!

Georgi  must have raced up the stairs 4 at a time to reach our rooms before we did. He showed us which way up to put our key cards to open the door and make the lights work (yes I know) and explained far too quickly the air conditioning controls.  Far too quickly. We set the temperature to the lowest at 16°. That’s what I have my central heating set to in the winter!

Jan may need a blanket at this rate. (Indeed she did request a blanket at reception later and this too arrived at the room before she did).

The rooms were lovely. Marble floors, bath robes, baths (Su extremely happy.) The balconies overlook the garden and pool. Beautiful.

We are disappointed to hear that the Spa is not open tomorrow. So I hastily booked a massage and Su a Sauna. We also learned that the Spa pool and jacuzzi aren’t heated. Not very inviting. We gathered at the main pool instead. It was lovely.

Continue reading →