MY GET-UP-AND-GO JUST GOT UP AND WENT

I read an article in The Guardian just after New Year, about making New Year resolutions. The writer…I don’t remember his name…said he never makes such resolutions because…the I that has to execute the resolutions refuses to take orders from the I who made them. I stopped calling them resolutions a long time ago. I just think some…this time I’m serious…thoughts. This time I thought I needed to read more books and then got a little ambitious and decided to read in English, Greek and French. So off we marched to the bookstore in Brussels, Annie and I, past some old neighbourhoods, past the pond with the ducks and swans, past the EU parliament and we kept passing this and that and I wondered where she was taking me. But the long and the short of it was we reached the store and I smelt all those printed pages and got excited and vowed to sponge up some of that knowledge lying about. We came away with two bags of promise. When I got back to Chania, I nipped into the corner bookstore and got a couple of books in Greek. On that Monday morning, the first work day after the festivities, Yiannis arched his eyebrows and looked and me curiously, sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by these books.

He: What are you going to do?

Me: Read.

He: All of them?

Me: Don’t be silly! I’ll start with three…one in each language.

With his eyebrows still arched he left.

Now more than a month has passed and our Cretan sun that poured in through our windows in the morning like in the early days of spring, got gobbled up by some dark clouds and the rain is coming down in slants and my neighbour has left her clothes out to mop up the rain and whip about in the cold winds. She has made no new resolutions…a wise woman indeed. And what about me?…I was totally engrossed in the racy bits of the Greek book…a translation from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Until August…and then I put it on hold. The French one…a translation from Michiko Aoyama’s Un jeudi saveur chocolat…started off with equal enthusiasm and is now sitting on the desk with a red bookmark popping out of it and waiting. The English book is The Burgundians- A Vanished Empire by Bart Van Loo. Their descendants now inhabit the present day lands of Belgium and the Netherlands and that’s what got me interested in the book. But it was a grand ambition on my part, for it is a book for those with intellectual stamina to follow this warring Germanic tribe with unchewable names…Gundobad and Godegisel the sons of Gundioc who in the 4^th century, ravaged their way down from the northern lands, clashed swords with Atilla of the Huns and spilt blood and guts with the Franks and Gauls and the Visigoths and the bishop of Clermont in his Catholic righteousness condemned them as a barbaric lot that  spoke some sort of babble and reeked of garlic and rancid lard  and… I’m taking a long break. The books are all brilliantly written, worth their weight in ink and paper. But it’s just this ME…whose get-up-and-go seems to have gone somewhere and…who  can’t take orders from the other ME…who in the throes of enthusiasm made some highfalutin…irresponsible… resolutions.

I blame it on these cold dark days of February when my zing and zip have fizzled out. A few days ago when the sun, weak and sleepy, pushed through the clouds for a few minutes, I decided to shake off the sloth and drive to the supermarket. But woe betide…this elderly man…much more elderly than us…us meaning our brethren of the unyoung…decided to park his car right in front of our garage. He owns this block of flats down the road. That’s all very well but which flat did he reside in? I had no idea. My neighbour across the street shouted out helpfully that I should go through the side entrance. I trotted down the road and pushed open the gate and there was another one which I opened gingerly, wondering if there was a dog, one of those growly menacing ones that would charge and skid towards me and take a pound of my flesh. I walked up this flight of steps and stood in front of this big door that was half open. There was no sound…just silence. I uttered a…kali mera-good morning…in the tone of a question. Then it all happened so quickly…the unmistakable clicking of nails on the marble floor, fast and skidding and a yapping and a growling and God forbid!!! Before I could take to my heels, the weight of it was on me, jumping and pawing and pushing. The old gentleman came shuffling out followed by his wife, both shouting.

Man and wife: Myrto! Myrto! Ella tho!- Come here!

But Myrto wasn’t listening. I tried to push her with my hands and she whipped out her long slippery tongue and licked both my hands and stopped short when she spied the open gate…the gate that I had left open. Then Myrto, this long sausage-looking dachshund with stubby legs, full of pep and punch, dressed in a pink and grey knitted waistcoat, all adorned with bows and buttons, sprinted with a joyous waddle out the gate with the elderly couple shouting behind. The old man tried to run after her in a quick shuffle and I was afraid he would take a tumble and it would all be my fault, so I shouted out…`Be careful!’…He turned around and asked…`Why?’…Well at least that stopped him and Myrto returned shortly after. The old man accompanied me to our garage to remove his car, apologizing profusely all the way. Before driving off, he wound down the window and said…`The next time I’ll leave my number on the windscreen so you can call me.’…So I guess there’s going to be a next time.

Now coming back to my reading,…there’s only one way I can finish those books… give up my afternoon naps, on the warm sofa in the den, lulled by the rain outside…and then again…maybe I’ll just wait for my pep and punch  to come back.

So that’s all I have for now my friends…the sofa awaits me. Cheers.