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Island life
Island life is slower than in London or at home, and it is different but in ways we hadn’t anticipated. For a start the (hand held) showers don’t have curtains and many don’t even have trays but just a drain in the centre of the floor. The Greeks believe that shower curtains harbour unpleasant bacteria, concluding that the mess left in their absence is the more hygienic option. For that reason they use only small towels, the bigger the towel the bigger the breeding ground for those pesky bugs. Like many other countries, the tap water isn’t suitable at all for drinking and the hot water is only hot in the latter parts of the day or evening as it is all solar heated. We hadn’t given a thought about the use of solar energy, but clearly the benefits of harnessing all that free energy from the sun are not lost on the locals. If you like hot showers in the morning, however, you are out of luck. Then there are the toilets, conventional ones but ones in which toilet paper cannot be flushed. Without wishing to get into graphic detail, used toilet paper is put in a separate container and fetched away by cleaning staff, poor sods.
There is one thing we quite like and that is a decent afternoon siesta. Usually lasting from 1.00pm until about 5.00 it means that shops, apart from tourist ones, all close down and people just relax away the afternoon. A flow-on effect is that dinner starts about 9.00pm, meaning that for early diners like us there is never a problem getting a table. One night we chatted to three women who turned out to be from Wales, somewhere near Cardiff, the mother, probably in her late fifties and two daughters, all splendidly tanned and enjoying life to the full. The family had been coming here for more than thirty years, two weeks at the same time every year and staying in the same place on the beach. Needless to say they loved it, warts and all, but told us of friends who, persuaded by their love of the place, came over and couldn’t put up with the eccentricities of the water and sewerage systems. “We’ll never speak to you again,” some of them told her on their return. That these women were so tanned was the subject of discussion, the mother explained how as soon as the winter darkness in Wales lifts she sets up the deckchairs in the garden and they all wait, wrapped in blankets, for the sun to appear. Each time it glimpses, the blankets come off and then go back on as quickly as soon as a cloud cover sets in. The neighbours all think they are mad, but these women were proud of their tans and thought every moment in the garden worth it.
It is clear that there are many regulars who return year after year, we can’t help but earwig in on conversations between tables among those who have become familiar with each other. There are life stories to be abridged and told in minutes, details of events between holidays and changes to holiday patterns, who has and hasn’t returned and why, and the poor woman who was so morbidly fat her heartless husband left her during the year. Shell-shocked, she lost 14 stone in weight and has returned, but just with daughter.
Our hotel, which is more like a motel complex but without such luxuries as the telephone or television, is inhabited almost exclusively by English package holiday visitors. The swimming pool is the centre of village life: The solid boys from the blackstuff whose northern brogue is so thick we cannot understand them, the woman from Lancashire in her sixties who sunbathes topless all day and then the noisy kids who, if their parents heard our silent wishes, would drown them. There are those keen to socialize and one bloke who eats and drinks by himself every day, his constant companions a book and litre carafe of house red wine. Then there are those dreadful tattoos, and we were tempted to ask the big bloke with Jean inscribed in capitalized Gothic lettering across his back and two others with Debbie and Jane daubed in similar format whether the women bearing those names were still the centres of their attention. Still, it put us in mind of a business opportunity which is of selling naming rights across people’s bodies. Football hooligans could become tattoo-daubed human billboards.
If so, the spelling would need to be better than that of Yanni’s, a local horseman who we haven’t laid eyes on, but from whom we have received an invitation to ride in one of his carriages. They are distinguished from those of his competitors by a sign on the back saying “Yanni’s (Yee haa!!) Horses”. Yanni’s love of horses is inbred apparently because his family have been keeping and raising hourses for 2 generations and he has a farm where they undertake a breedding programme every year. “Anybody who knows Yannis (this time without the apostrophe) will inform you that from morning until night he works to ensure that his horses receive the best car that is available and he is happiest when he can show them off.” With such a recommendation, who could resist.