SEASONAL MUSINGS…

As the summer buzz and dust are washed away by the first rains, I find myself slipping into the quiet pace and beauty of autumn…the rich hues of russet and gold of our vine leaves and the ripening of fruit, sweet and juicy…our pomegranates, apples and oranges. The skies are sometimes grey in the morning and even when the sun shines…a mellow sun… it rarely does in a cloudless sky. The swallows have flown away south…wherever that is…and doves flutter over rooftops. There’s very little watering to do and we allow the seasonal plants to wither and shrivel into the ground. When the autumn winds sweep in a little wistfully, they shake up our bougainvilleas, sending their leaves and flowers swirling and settling in heaps in corners of the garden. It’s the time of the year when the new school year starts and memories of classrooms and the chatter of children sneak into the cracks of my retired brain and I always tell myself…it was good and all engaging and intense…but it had a shelf life…thank goodness…and I’ve moved on… People ask me…`Hey I hear you’ve retired. So how do you pass your time?…The implication is I must be bored to death trying to fill up the long stretching yawning hours…But where are they, these elusive hours??? They seem to pass me by hurriedly, winking at my total ineptitude to keep up and rightly so…for at the end of the day… I have often achieved very little and have no great big plans for the morrow.

I don’t make any shopping lists because I’m afraid my brain cells would perish even more rapidly.  Instead of going to the supermarket around the corner, I drive to the one a few km away so I can listen to music which always sounds much better in the car. What’s more, when I park the car I can see the running ridges of the Cretan mountains in the background…standing bare and brown in autumn, just waiting to be clothed with the first snow drifts of early winter. On the glass panes of the building, they have all sorts of products advertised and one always catches my eye…big bold words that flash…`KAI TOU POULIOU TO GALA’…`AND BIRD’S MILK AS WELL’…which is to say they sell just about everything…things foreign to the island from faraway lands… and it is this `bird’s milk’ that I seek…never mind the toilet paper, detergents and other boring stuff…I make a beeline for the ingredients from these exotic lands…mango chutneys, tikka masala, korma and other curry sauces, all in jars to empty and bubble in a pot. My favourites are the different soya sauces, the dark thick oozy ones and the light runny ones and the wasabi and the mirin and the sesame oil, nutty and fragrant and the chilly sauces, the sweet and the spicy hot. I buy a mixed assortment of…EVERYTHING. In fact, I could just line the trolley next to the shelves and sweep them all in with one swipe of my palm. Then I go to the rice section and buy huge packets of Basmati and Thai Jasmine rice and wild rice and then on to the salts, the pink Himalayan and the grainy sea salt and then the vinegar…What vinegar?…Grape? Apple? Balsamic? Shushi? Then grab a couple of wedges of cheese before I go to the wine section. By the time I reach the unripe mangoes and pineapples for a Malaysian salad, it’s almost lunch time…I could always get the boring stuff from the corner supermarket… and I speed off home carting away my precious `bird’s milk’ to toss up a quick lunch.

The week before last, just when I felt like whiling away my time with music wafting from the kitchen radio, staring into space, doing absolutely nothing…a kind of meditation for slothful creatures like myself during her golden years of retirement…the cleaning lady suddenly announced  that she was going to visit her daughter in Cyprus. I didn’t do anything for the first week…dust settled on the furniture and staircase and brown watermarks from wet shoes and dripping umbrellas took interesting  shapes on the white marble floor with trails of dirt from the garden…and the ironing piled up upstairs.. Sister number 1 once told me that her friend just cleans the pathways when the maid’s away. That’s exactly what I did with the vacuum cleaner and a damp mop…a quick run around the pathways…and the furniture could wait. The ironing, I tackled like I do my hair…just the front. Yiannis went to work with shirts and trousers all pressed in front and the back…he couldn’t see anyway and I’m sure nobody noticed. I rewarded myself the next day by going to the shops to see what the girls at the makeup counters would suggest for a little pampering. While the girl who normally attends to me was busy with another customer and… before she could gently steer me away from my obsession, my wobbly-kneed weakness to sniff out lip colours…I grabbed a nice red Dior liquid lipstick that you paint on and it stays on… and when she finally approached me smiling, I had already paid for it and slipped it into my bag. I said I wanted a body cream and she slathered my arm with one from Rituals…bitter almond and Indian rose…the words were deliciously evocative and the fragrance intoxicating. Then a few drops of oil of the same heady aroma from a deep red glass bottle…`Ohh look at the sheen on your skin!’…my skin with the first crinkles creeping in…` It looks so beautiful!’ said the girl…How could I resist such beguiling half truths wrapped in sheer luxury…and I came away with both the cream and the oil. As I left she sprayed me with scents and dropped a sample in my bag and I walked home trailing clouds of Elixir des Merveilles…elixir of wonders…with bitter sweet notes of candied orange and patchouli.

 What about the morning calls from Annie from Brussels? I look forward to them, especially when I get updates of little Louise. They are one hour behind us and she calls me with her morning coffee before rushing off to work. The other day she was furious…fury and youth…oh how I remember those days of yonder…I could almost hear my younger version in her. The prologue to her vexation…`The baby was bitten!’…`BITTEN!!!! BY WHAT?????’…`There was a blue mark on her arm.’…`BY WHAT????’ I imagined A DOG,A CAT, A RAT, A WHAT?…`She was bitten at the crèche [nursery].’ I repeated the question with a little panic throbbing in my throat…BY WHAT????…`By another baby.’…I had to gulp down this urge to splutter with laughter. According to the women who run this baby establishment, little Louise is a gutsy baby who knows her own mind. When she lays claim to a toy, no one can prise it from her clenched fist and she sends would-be attackers scurrying away with her high pitched…`eeeeeeeee’ This other baby tried and failed but undeterred by the screech, sank her toothless gums into Louise’s arm. Yiannis was grinning in the background but I straightened up and did feel sorry for little Miss Bitee until her mother continued…`We’ll have to get to the bottom of this, especially if it’s a serial biter!’…`SERIAL BITER!!!’ I exclaimed and this time there was no suppressing my laughter which came out in mouthfuls. Anyway the bottom of the whole thing was the Serial Biter’s name was never disclosed…client confidentiality I suppose… but the parents promised to discipline the little offender and Miss Bitee who picks up new skills very fast, is now practising on her mother’s arm for the coveted title of …THE NEW SERIAL BITER.

So my friends, coming back to passing time or time passing me by… all I can say is…for the time being in my GOLDEN YEARS…I’m enjoying the small stuff…the random this and the thats of life. So cheers for now.