No Kites Today

It seems that bank holiday weather is a Greek curse as well. After a wonderful day of warm sunshine we have now had two more rainy days and today is a public holiday prior to the beginning of Lent. You are supposed to go out into the countryside for picnics and kite flying. Well, it has been windy enough this afternoon but raining as well, so not so good for picnics. Unfortunately, it was also raining over the weekend and on the carnival parades. Not my cup of tea but a shame for all the people who have gone to so much trouble.

Syntagma Square, Athens

So it’s off to Athens tomorrow to catch the plane for Heathrow and visiting the family. There has been a lot of preparation, almost as bad as having a week off work. You do so much before you go and then there’s loads to do when you get back!

Persephone's Day

Sand and stone awaiting the cement mixer

No wonder the Greeks believe(d) in myths. After a month of grey, wet days today was glorious, a real new beginning. This morning the sun and bright blue sky girded us into action and it was off to the builder’s yard to order sacks of sand and stone for the next round of wall building. It was just like emerging from the underworld as we have spent the last few weeks indoors. Time has not been wasted however as I have been making doll’s clothes for the grand-daughter and scanning in all the old family photos.

We took the dog with us in the back of the car for the short journey, in order to try and get her used to traveling without being sick. Yesterday she went to the vet in Lefkas for the second of her three 3-weekly injections against Leishmaniasis. The vaccine has only just become available here and is rather expensive but not nearly as dear as the treatment for the actual disease, as our neighbours found out when their dog contacted it. Fortunately, after the first year it will only be an annual injection. So yesterday the dog had a tablet against motion sickness and all went well. As the tablets last 24 hours (and at 5 euro each they need to) perhaps she still had some benefit from it this morning as she wasn’t sick, there or back.

Nice clean ppool

It was warm enough to have meals outside but as we have the French windows barricaded against the dog scratching at them to come in we didn’t! For the first time since we moved here we are using the front door, but even that we have to stop her jumping up at as she is scratching it with her claws. Whose brilliant idea was this dog? Things will have to change as the spring moves forward.

Trimmed rosemary bushes

There were butterflies and big black bomber bees flying happily about outside in the sun. I happily cleaned the pool in T-shirt and jeans. It wasn’t too mucky as there has been a huge improvement now we have finished the wall at the end of the pool and drastically pruned the olive tree at the other end.

Later in the day I trimmed some rosemary plants as they are growing rapidly. I left one with long shoots as I will be able to take cuttings in a week or so. Most of the plants seemed to have survived the winter as it has not been nearly so cold here as in other parts of Lefkada. A bit more sun then a bit more rain and everything will be growing like crazy and there will not be enough hours in the day to get done all the things we want to do. And we are, of course, both another year older.

We have both had birthdays since Christmas and feeling our age like mad. The upside of this is we have leftover Christmas pudding to eat tonight as it is a family tradition for Ray to have it on his birthday and we didn't quite manage to eat it all on the night!

Meanwhile I am getting ready for a trip to UK to deliver said doll's clothes to said grand-daughter. Hope my protective angel is still on duty and I've not pissed it off completely.

Cars in my eyes #4

The weather here seems to have taken a turn for the better. The end of this period of cold and rain, I hope. Although I could still see snow on the top of Mount Elati while I was sitting in the warm sun on the jetty during walking the dog this evening. It reminded me of when we bought a ruined house near Avignon, France in 1971 and the locals told us it hadn’t snowed for 100 years, until we got there of course!

We lived in a large compartmented tent parked adjacent to the ruin when we first moved there until it blew away one night in a violent storm. Gerry and I were both holding on to the tent poles for dear life but we were no match for the Mistral. Renovation of the house moved along a pace after that. We had the three dogs with us and obtained two cats, two geese and a goat. The geese held us all at bay and the goat kept leaping up onto everything, but the cats were sweet.

We also had the Aston Martin and a Mercedes we bought from Germany together with the bus, now out of service on the India run. I only went on the first trip to Calcutta but there were other trips. However, it was not successful enough to keep doing the arduous journey and eventually we parted company with our friends and left the farm to travel south to France. The Aston Martin had been purchased second hand out of the India business proceeds and I remember driving it through the narrow lanes of Cambridgeshire desperately trying not to scratch it on the overgrown hedges. The unmade lane to the French house was not ideal for a car so close to the ground and we got through a few exhaust pipes despite having a grader flatted the hump in the middle of the track. The bus was much too big to drive up to the house so it stayed parked in the village until the police came and said either we would have to pay the import tax or take it out of the country, tomorrow. Gerry made me phone my father to ask if he could loan us the tax money but of course he couldn’t. In those days you had to go to the post office and book a call to England and then sit and wait until the operator could get you a line. So the bus went off somewhere, not sure where now.

July 1971 France

 Meanwhile the Aston Martin and I were put to work driving up and down to Geneva airport to collect Gerry or Billy, our Australian friend, coming and going on their business trips to India. There’s no better feeling than flying along the motorway with all that horsepower under your bonnet. The engine’s deep throaty rumble was well named ‘such sweet thunder’.

Cars in my eyes #3

I learnt to drive circling the barren field around the house in the Australian outback, often with the baby in the back to get him to sleep. It was an old blue Holden which I had purchased, along with some curtain material, out of a modest inheritance from an old great aunt when I reached twenty-one. No photos remain but I remember it fondly.

I didn’t actually take my driving test until we were living back in England on a farm near Saffron Walden. We had quickly advanced from the Ford Anglia we first had to a dark green Jaguar, the kind Inspector Morse drives. Again, no photo survives. However, I took my test in the driving instructor’s car in Cambridge at lunch time, which was a nightmare as there were bicycles coming at you from all directions. It had been impressed on me that you couldn’t overtake a bicycle if there were double white lines no matter how slowly it was traveling. Try telling that to a Greek!

One of the first cars I drove was a Bristol. It was not a happy experience. I picked it up from the local garage where it had been taken to have some work done on it. As I was driving down the hill into Saffron Walden I saw a ‘sludge gulper’ in the distance so I braked, but nothing happened and I crashed into the back of it. Fortunately the baby was strapped into a car seat in the back but I got a nasty crack on the nose from the steering wheel. No airbags in those days! It turned out that although the garage had done the work they had not reaffixed the brake tube correctly so it had rubbed against the wheel and lost all the brake fluid. Eventually the car was declared an insurance write-off although, apparently, I should have asked for it back as it was still worth a lot of money. In retrospect I expect we probably were cheated but it never occurred to me at the time.

Not long after we operated a bus service from Amsterdam to Calcutta. We bought an old Bedford bus and removed the last few rows of seats to make a living area for our family, now 2 children, and the co-driver. The first trip left in July 1970 arriving in Calcutta in September. I didn’t drive the bus but did my share of navigating as well as cooking and looking after the children; baby born in April and a 3 year old. I had a super system for washing the baby's nappies in the boot consisting of a drum, with a tight fitting lid, full of soapy water getting bounced up and down as we drove along.

Time for a photo: the bus in Calcutta showing its innards with our Indian friend Muni Chand holding the baby.

Sept 1970

Cars in my eyes #2

Here begins my lifelong affair with VW’s. It’s 1967, Melbourne, Australia. I am now mother-of-one and about to pack up in the van with my ‘husband’ for the road trip to Perth, Western Australia. Across the Nullarbor Plain with all our worldly possessions, a six week old baby, a cat, a dog and two hitch hikers!

1967

All went reasonably well, apart from loosing the cat on one overnight stop, until near Adelaide where we had to have a new engine. In my experience the only thing that goes wrong with VW’s is that you have to have a new engine!

To my disgrace, I don’t remember much about the trip, it must have been winter as I am wearing a coat and Gerry's wearing a jumper! Last year I found a postcard I sent to my mum at the time, dated 2^nd July 1967. The news that we had travelled over 2,000 miles and were going to have a holiday before we settled down must have been received with joy. We did eventually move to Wongan Hills in the outback, but that’s another story!