WASHED UP ON THE SHORES OF CRETE……..

Reinventing yourself seems to be the buzzword these days, more so than ever. Turn your life around, rise up to your full potential, think positive….. begone you negative thoughts…… eat super foods, work out, make dynamic choices, stamp your face on social media etc etc………

I ask myself………have I ever taken my life into my own hands…… like soft putty…… and kneaded and squeezed and reshaped it? Reinvented myself, so to speak? In all honesty…….no……. slothful me was dragged away by the tides to certain shores. I never planned, strategized or tested the waters………I just let it take me, sometimes resisting and kicking part of the way…….but mostly…….. I let it take me along……and this is how I was washed up on the shores of Crete. The currents brought me here…….. ……from the banks of the muddy Muar river……..no no don’t get me wrong……..not like Moses in a basket floating on the Nile. What I meant to say was……. I was born in Malaysia in the south of the peninsular…… was dragged around north, south and centre with my siblings……………then got blown by the winds of fortune to England……………met my Cretan husband and…….. was borne away on the wings of love to this sunny island.

 I came to Crete in December of 1983 with my head in the clouds. The first thing that hit me …….. ………was the intoxicating smell of herbs……………oregano, thyme and sage…… I never knew that drinking in the smell of herbs can have a similar effect to a glass of wine…..that delicious sense of euphoria that clouds your brain ever so slightly….but enough to bring out this other you….the you that can take on any challenge…. even this totally alien language and culture. My spirits were further raised by the beauty of the landscape as we left the airport…….Souda bay appeared on our left like a Mediterranean fiord with ships resting gracefully in cobalt blue waters. As we descended further down, the town of Chania sprawled out to our right, looking out pensively into the sea. The setting sun had painted the rooftops, the domes of churches and the lighthouse a golden yellow, the colour of the evening sun in winter. I was enthralled……..lucky me…… getting washed up on the shores of this picture postcard world.

 The only Greek Yiannis taught me……. when we were in Leeds in our very cold house in Meanwood where the spiders froze in their webs……… was this little ditty of a rhyme…………..spiti mou, spitaki mou, spitokalivaki mou. Hard to translate but it goes something like this………..my house, my little house, my little hut of a house………he was probably missing his sunny island with all the sh……ty rain and drizzle in England. So, armed with this ditty and my buoyant spirits, I sat at the dinner table at his parents home, the first night. There was a splendid welcoming meal laid out…. of lamb and potatoes cooked in herbs with a squeeze of lemon juice, cheese pies, other starters and salads with a drizzle of olive oil………….all washed down with this rich, aromatic…… with whiffs of dried fruit, sweetish, alcoholic wine……… which came right out of the barrel…….wine tasters would be pulling their hair out now…………where would they place it in their taxonomy of wines?….. My father-in-law, the ex- general poured it out generously into my glass and I drank deeply……..and the ditty escaped my lips and I recited it. They were so sporting……..they laughed and the men joined in with some smatterings of English they knew. The uncle, the ex- bank director with his humorous twinkly blue eyes, lifted the heavy dish of lamb that I was reaching out for and said……..` let the boy do it, let the boy do it……’ The ex- general, caught up in this wave of spontaneity, lifted his wine glass and said…………` the aeroplane in the sky’…….the only English, military school had taught him. From then on he threw it into conversations when they got too serious and like magic it set us off into ripples of laughter.

Then……. I was dunked into the reality of Greek life…….celebrations of name days come foremost in my mind.  You visited the celebrants of the saints they were named after, sat in their living room, nibbled on their homemade biscuits, munched into their little square cheese pies and drank their wine copiously and chatted endlessly. In the early days others translated the conversations and when they forgot to do so………. I just sat and imbibed their wine and smiled and now and then they smiled back. It was all Greek to me. Another of my indelible memories……..is that of mothballs. My first visit to an Orthodox church was on Epiphany day, January 6, a few days after my arrival. Strangely enough most Greeks don’t go to church at Christmas, except for certain old ladies who come to nod away while the priest drones on in ancient Greek. Most Greeks attend mass in droves on Epiphany day and Easter………..very well-balanced in my opinion……. unlike the Catholics, trudging to mass every Sunday. We stood at the back of the dark church…..there were very few pews in those days…….and watched the old ladies drifting in, in their heavy black coats……. trailing clouds of naphthalene………. ……….the stuff of mothballs. I thought they had thrown them out with DDT a long time ago……but somebody forgot to tell the old dames. Throughout the service we inhaled naphthalene and incense and candle smoke. This reminds me of this English friend married to a Greek from the village. We were having coffee and we stumbled onto the subject of mothballs. In villages there is always a great big wooden chest in every house where the dowry………..embroidered tablecloths and bed sheets and bed spreads spun off the loom are stored with a handful of mothballs chucked in. When my friend’s mother-in-law presented her with a bag of mothballs which she had never seen the likes of before, she told me in exasperation………` I thought I had to throw the blooming things at the moths.’

In the early days I often caught cold which I attributed to this overwhelmingly strange turn my life had taken……..my system was just trying to adjust. But there was a family conference and my mother-in-law’s sister said that I was probably stricken by the evil eye. There I was sitting in bed with a fat thermometer stuck under my armpit……..which was another bit of a shock………I was used to slim ones stuck under the tongue………and in trooped my mother-in-law, two aunts and Katerina, the woman summoned to cast out the evil eye in me. Every neighbourhood has a Katerina to perform this ritual. She whipped off the belt from my dressing gown, placed the end against the tip of her elbow, stretched it to the tip of her fingers, pinched it, chanted some prayers, measured that same length and then……….. horror of horrors……..showed the ladies that the end she had pinched had now gone beyond the tip of her fingers by a few inches. They all went…….`po! po! po! ‘…….an exclamation of shock……… that was how much I was under the spell of the evil eye which she then cast out into the night. If there was no Katerina to perform this service……. your cleaning lady would willing do it…………..strangely enough all cleaning ladies were blessed with this gift.

Then the ex-general appeared………. he thought the ladies had outstayed their visit and he quick marched them out. Before he left he turned to look at me and uttered………..` the aeroplane in the sky’……and that set me off into eddies of laughter and methinks……….that……. blinked out the evil eye.

Feel free to comment and dredge out your own adventures.