The grey skies had been pouting and threatening to pour it all down when I called my friend last Friday to ask whether she wanted to resume our sulky weather habits…to sip on some alcoholic beverage to warm our chilly bones and just catch up…we’re always catching up and I’m not sure what we’re catching up on. Sometimes I think it’s more like dipping into bygone years and lovingly plucking out threads from the multi-coloured tapestries of our past.
As the heavy clouds sagged in the darkening sky, I hurried to our meeting point which is always on the corner of my street, just opposite the greengrocer’s. It was six in the evening and the lights were on in the little shop with its racks and racks piled with vegetables and fruit and there was my drinking buddy waiting on the opposite side of the road…I’m always on time and she is always early…and that makes me in her eyes…late.
The clouds cracked open with a streak of lightning and we quickened our chatting and our pace to the Municipal Garden Café or simply as the locals call it, the Kipos Café, one of the oldest coffee shops in Europe. The garden where the café is located has been revamped. Some old big brooding trees that had cast a gloom over the place, have been cut down, much to the annoyance of the older residents of Chania, who claim that those ruminating evergreens, are as historic as the garden itself, which traces its roots way back to 1870, towards the end of the Turkish occupation. It is always a bone of contention between my friend and I. She grew up in Chania and the garden and those silent sentries, with their massive trunks and thick buttresses spreading like a maze, were landmarks in her childhood. But I, a foreigner, have no such sentimental attachments to them. I just remember how their frowning canopies blotted out the daylight and how the place always appeared dank and depressing, especially in winter. But now with some of the trees gone, the sunlight streams in and warms the colourful flower borders and green shrubs. There are walkways where we make way for dogs tugging on leashes, giving their owners a run for their money and a shrieking children’s playground with swings and slides and grassy patches for little boys to dribble a ball. But there are still quiet spots under shady arbours with comfortable wooden benches with backrests, where you can read a book or stare into space or at night watch the fountain all lit up.
The interior of the café evokes memories of yesteryears…floors and old furniture of dark wood polished to a gleam, pictures and framed photographs on the walls writing out the history of the town, framed posters of musicians of the 50’s, 60’s and even earlier, run the length and breadth of the deep cream coloured walls. As we pulled out our chairs, the sound of the saxophone wafted from the speakers…presumably from one of the musicians that graced the walls…and set us in the mood to meander in lengthy conversations with no beginning or end. The waitress who knows us well, gave pause to our verbal outpourings, smiling from behind her glasses, waiting for our orders. My friend who has a sweet tooth asked her about the confectionaries and they rolled off the waitress’ tongue…profiterole, crème brulee, cheese cake and other delights and I could see my friend drooling.
Waitress: So what would you like?
Friend: Uhh…( appearing to ponder and reflect on those irresistible choices which would send a surge of dopamine to her brain)…uhh…a Bailey’s.
Oh how we sputtered with laughter, the waitress and I. Those sugary names were enough to flood her brain with happy hormones. I ordered my usual whisky and we retold each other snippets of our past. When she was a child, her mother sewed her a masquerade costume for the bal masqué, held right in that very café and she still has that wonderful relic from the past, all wrapped up in plastic with mothballs to boot. I dredged out the same story of my needlework class, of the apron and booties we were supposed to sew and I how implored mum to do it for me, as all the other mothers were doing it for their darling children so they’d get a good grade…and mum flatly refused…telling me to do it myself or face the music. Face the music I did. I withered in shame as the teacher examined my handiwork, crooked and puckered and put a red mark next to my name.
The rain didn’t fall that evening but did so copiously on Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday night, walking towards the Chinese restaurant with our hoods pulled down low, I was telling my Saturday night friend about how I felt like a horse with blinders under a hood because it impaired my side vision and true to my words that is exactly what happened on Sunday. Yiannis and I decided to have lunch at this wonderful Spanish tapa place in one of the narrow streets, called Potie, of the old town. It started raining in starts and stops and I clutched the hood around my face and we marched in unison. I knew my bearings and didn’t need to glance left or right and… couldn’t anyway. Approaching Potie, I felt a solitariness in the crunching of my boots. Where was the second pair? Where was Yiannis? I turned a full 90 degrees …and he was nowhere in sight. He had disappeared. I had lost him in the familiar streets of small town Chania. I retraced my steps and fumbled for my phone…and just then he popped out of a little alley, holding his phone to his ear. He spotted me and roared out in his contractor voice.
He: Where did you go? Didn’t you see me turn into the side lane?
What did I tell you about the hood! Anyway we found a cosy corner, had dishes of delicious this and thats and sipped our rioja and watched the rain through the glass doors, coming down in slants, splashing the cobbled street of the alley… and talked about the impending visit from the family in Brussels and our so looking forward to seeing them for the Christmas holidays and… especially little Louise.
So cheers for now
