ALWAYS DAWN…ALWAYS YOUNG…

We’ve had buckets of sunshine the last few days on these…`Alkionides Meres’ or Halcyon Days. Halycon is a kind of kingfisher that nests by the sea and lays its eggs in the frosty month of January. But nature in its mysterious ways, calms the icy winds and cracks open the frigid skies to allow the sun to flood through and warm the land and protect the eggs of these birds, until their hatchlings peep out. Greek mythology however spins out a deliciously romantic tale of the passionate love between Halycon, the daughter of the God of the Winds and Ceyx, the son of the Morning Star, inseparable even in death and by the benevolence of Zeus transformed into these stunning kingfishers of electric blue wings and orange breasts. They chose to mate in the harshest of seasons…the middle of January but Zeus, partial to the lovers, blew his warm breath ever so gently over their eggs and protected their offspring and species to love and multiply…forever. So there you go…myth or nature doing one of her balancing acts…from around the 15 of January till the end of the month, every year, we are blessed with glorious weather…right smack in the middle of winter.

So what did Yiannis and I decide to do? We knew these days were fleeting and numbered so we pulled on our boots and gloves and tramped into the garden that had turned into a veritable jungle…knee high in weeds and thistles. He started yanking them out by the fistfuls and I used a rake to drag them out of the damp soil, complaining all the way that the tool was a bit too heavy for me. The next day he went off to work and I grabbed a pair of secateurs and started clipping the rose bushes. He came home in the afternoon with a new rake, a much lighter one and handed it to me. He saw that I had started pruning the roses and the next day he came with a new pair of secateurs, a much sharper one and I went clicking around happily until my hand and wrist began to hurt. The following afternoon he got back from work and presented me with a pair of battery charged secateurs and said…`All you need to do is pull the trigger and it cuts through even the thickest branches.’…I looked at him through narrowed eyes and suspected him of using me as free labour and if I were a child I could have reported him to the authorities. But unfortunately no such law exists for third-agers like me.

My electric clippers were wonderful. I cut away at the thorny rose bushes and bagged the branches and then proceeded to the sweet-scented lemon verbena, snipping away the woody branches and if the sagging boughs of our orange trees got in my way, I cropped them off as well. So the whole morning it was prune and bag and prune and bag and I had filled four huge bags and my arms hurt and my back wouldn’t straighten up and my knees wobbled and my eyes itched. In the evening I swore I wouldn’t go out into the garden the next morning but come dawn when the eastern sun of these Halycon Days exploded on the horizon and deceived the birds into thinking it was spring and they twittered and sang loudly in the trees outside our bedroom window…they infused me with new energy and I felt young and forgot about my aches and pains and clipped away merrily some more. I pruned down the pomegranate tree and it was left with some woody branches with a spring of twigs poking out and a couple of leaves hanging limply from them. The tangerine tree came out like a dancer…I snapped off all the lower branches and it spread out like a ballerina’s skirt with the citrusy fruit hanging underneath.

By Wednesday evening I was totally spent and told my taskmaster that he could go and employ a gardener or ask Jimmy to come around. He laughed and said that he would finish up the garden on Sunday. In the meantime this friend of mine had been ringing me to go out with her for a cup of coffee in an open-air café and soak in all the Halycon sunshine. I rang her on Thursday morning but she was unavailable and so we agreed to meet in the evening. It was six and dark and cold outside when I was ready to trot off and meet her…Halycon days are only for the daytime for at night it gets pretty chilly. As I was leaving I wondered aloud…`I can’t possibly have coffee at this time of the day so…’ and before I could wrap up my thoughts, Yiannis chipped in as he was leaving the house…`You could have tea.’…GOD FORBID!!!!…Sitting there sipping tea was just so…AGING. Besides, I had painted my lips a glossy red and I was going to sit in an open-air café and brave the night chill and I needed something to whip up some spirit in me.

Anyway my friend and I met at the corner of the street and walked to this place on the first floor overlooking the tennis courts. We decided to sit on the balcony with a tent overhead to block out the elements. The owner was a man in his seventies with a heavy upper lip appendage…long thick Cretan moustache and a thickset body and looked as if he had yomped down some Cretan mountain village…`Sit here sit here’…he pointed to a table next to his…he was seated with some other old timers. There were heaters on the wall blasting away and we declined politely…for we feared he fancied our red lips or wanted to eavesdrop on our conversation…and so we moved to the far end…a very cold spot where we sat in out coats zipped up to the chin and where our hair stiffened and our faces felt as if we had stuck them in a refrigerator. But the best part was our glossy lipstick stayed fixed on our lips without melting and radiating through the fine perioral lines around our lips. The waiter came and she ordered a Baileys on the rocks and when he looked at me questioningly, I hesitated a little and then went for the real deal…a WHISKY ON THE ROCKS. We sipped on our spirits and munched on the salted groundnuts…never mind who fingered them before us…and as the alcohol flushed our faces and loosened our brains we laughed and divulged secrets…other people’s closeted secrets.

She told me that this woman she knew…late into her seventies and who stayed alone…was hooked on to this particular Turkish serial. The protagonist was a dashing young guy and she was totally enamoured of him. She hunted him down on social media and sent him a message and to her absolute delight he replied. As the days went by, messages were passed thick and fast, to and fro… I had so many questions to ask but didn’t want to interrupt the narrative because being the age we’re at, my friend would forget juicy bits and say things like…`now where was I’…or…`I was about to tell you something really interesting but now I can’t remember.’ So with bated breath I listened to every detail of how this social media romance budded and blossomed and the woman declared to my friend that they were in love. But the Turkish actor’s young love was restless and he made a declaration that got her tummy twisted in knots of anxiety…He was planning to come to Chania to visit her!!!!!…HORROR OF HORRORS!!!! WHAT WAS SHE TO DO!!!!!…This is when I fired a battery of questions…`Does he know how old she is?’…`Mmmm I don’t think so’…`Has she sent him a photograph of herself?’…This is when my friend giggled and squealed and and I’m assuming the lady hadn’t or worse still sent somebody else’s photo, maybe one of a lip-pouting buxom young chick.

So that’s where matters stand for now. I told Annie the story and she feels the lady should come clean. But I reckon she doesn’t want to get off this pink cloud she’s been sailing on. For after all my friends… the heart never grows old…and if she were living in ancient times, the Gods of old mythology might take pity on her and transform her and lover boy into…not halycons, that’s already been taken…but maybe turtledoves, to coo and love forever.

So cheers for now.