January to June 2023

Sitting in a cool breeze, I wonder where to start; a friend pointed out that it was time for one of my blogs and I realised that the half year update was overdue.

Summer arrived a couple of weeks ago. But going back to the beginning of the year – Christmas. The few days prior to Christmas it was all go – finding Christmas puddings, a few presents and tidying up.

I had invitations – Tudor’s house for Christmas lunch for which I was providing Christmas pudding and upstairs with Antony and family for New Year’s Eve.  Of course there was brandy butter to prepare involving an aching arm and most of a small bottle of Metaxa which I delivered with the pudding to Tudor’s house on Christmas Eve.

Tudor is a British artist and craftsman. He bought a rambling mansion on the top of the hill to the west of the town and has renovated and converted it into self contained apartments. It has outside terraces and a small garden and is perfect for entertaining.

Arriving for the late lunch I found the dining table laid out beautifully. I was introduced to a few people, Italian and German friends of Tudor, along with others who I already knew making up a party of twelve. All very civilised and the food was great. The pudding and brandy butter went down well and Wolfgang played his guitar after, accompanied by Marja singing some old favourites.

It was time to relax after that.  Tudor was interested in some of Brian’s remaining tools and came to collect them – one being a huge angle grinder which Tudor found perfect for cutting stone. Another of the artists, Sally, is using my now emptying room to store some of her paintings as she doesn’t have much space, and she makes sure I am invited to Tudor’s parties.

Nikoletta, Anthi, Dimitri, me, Antony, Vaso and Peri the dog

On New Year’s Eve I trotted upstairs for Antony’s party. He, his wife Vaso and their three children were there as well as seven of their relatives, including a 4 year old boy, Michaelis who I guess is a nephew.  Antony’s two eldest, Anthi and Dimitri are away at university, one in Thessaloniki and the other in Crete.  The youngest, Nikoletta, has one more year of school before the PanHellenic exam – the equivalent of the baccalaureate.

Vaso had cooked enormous amounts of food as usual. I was plied with wine and chatted to Antony’s sister Despina as well as the others who I had never met before. I tried to catch their Greek conversation but they spoke too quickly for me.  At midnight we all cheered in the New Year, then Dimitri dressed up as Father Christmas hid on the balcony, then came in to give presents to the very excited little boy. Only then did I discover that present giving is more of a New Year thing here. Vaso gave me a soft fluffy blanket that I wrap myself in when it gets cold.

The week after New Year I spent sorting out more stuff in the “workshop”, clearing out things I would never use despite good intentions (yes, I know, road to hell and all that) and giving away more tools. The gym was open again (except on Friday 6^th which is always a holiday here), and I went back to stumbling along with my Greek lessons.

We were fortunate to have a relatively mild winter this year. There was less rain than usual, although a few thunderstorms kept life interesting and a short earthquake towards the end of January was a little disturbing. One Friday, the wind blew the big metal sliding door of the gym off its tracks! Yes, that one.

I keep in contact with Grace (the belly dancer) and one day suggested that we go to Fethiye in Turkey for a few days. I wanted to buy dress fabrics as there is only one shop here which has limited stock and is very expensive.  Grace was very keen and before long we had booked the ferry and the hotel for five days in March.  Another friend (Claire) runs a boat guardianage business in Fethiye and we arranged to meet up with her. Two days after we had made the arrangements, the horrendous earthquake in eastern Turkey and Syria happened. Many people living along the Turkish coast in Mugla come from that area to find better work. Claire said that everyone was wandering around in shock.

By the end of February there were signs of spring – the dog daisies in the archaeological remains were flowering and I saw a skein of ducks flying north. The chiff-chaffs had been doing that chiff-chaff thing for a while.

On Sunday 5^th March Grace and I set off to the harbour to catch our ferry to Fethiye. When we got there the small ferry was bouncing up and down on the swell, even inside the harbour. This didn’t bode well. After hanging around for a while, getting multiple passport and customs checks, we boarded and found seats – the ferry was only about a quarter full. A couple of families with children sat at the front facing the window.

As soon as we left the harbour, the swell became very bad – about 3m I would guess.  The ferry was small and struggled. The children at the front initially squealed and cheered as the waves crashed over the bow – then started being sick. Oh dear. As did a large number of the adults. The crew were great in rushing back and forth with sick bags and carrying kids to seats in the centre where the movement wasn’t so great.  I was fine, and managed to keep Grace talking to overcome her own queasiness.

Finally the ferry docked – over an hour late. We found Fethiye streets covered in detritus from the storm that had passed over.  We finally found our small hotel, grabbed a bite at a local fast food place, and sank into bed.

After a very good breakfast we waited out the storm outside which cleared up by late morning. We set out to investigate the old town, change money, window shop, have a big lunch and remind myself of previous visits. The sun, once out, was hot and we walked the seafront promenade for miles.

We booked a spa and Hamam session which was something Grace was determined to treat ourselves to. After changing, we relaxed in a sauna before being led into a huge room dominated by a massive circular marble waist high slab that was heated.  We were dowsed with water, spread our thin towels on the slab and lay down for ladies to massage us with rough cloths. After having been pummelled for a while, we were then slathered with foam and again given a massage – it was wonderful and exhausting.

Grace was searching for upholstery fabric and eventually found something suitable. There was only one small shop that had the dress fabrics I wanted – stacked from floor to ceiling on both sides of the narrow premises. After hunting through the selection I ended up with lengths of one blue/green and one khaki sprigged cotton, and Grace found a very jazzy bright fabric for me. 

Several times we stopped at a restaurant called Locanda for coffee and meals. It is one of a chain where you select your food from the array of dishes on display at a long counter, your selection is plated up and brought to you by a waiter. Very civilised.  We agreed that service in Turkey is far better than in Greece.

We met Claire one evening at the new plaza for a lovely seafood dinner. She has obviously made friends there and we were well looked after.  It was good to chat to her and find out a bit more about her business and life in Fethiye.

Having concluded our purchasing we decided to get the bus to Kas, where Brian and I had spent three winters at the marina.  I keep in contact with a couple we had house-sat for and arranged to meet for lunch. The two hour bus trip brought back many memories of our frequent trips along the road to Gocek and Fethiye. The last third of the journey is along the coast, with massive cliffs and turquoise seas. Beautiful.

We arrived in good time, met with Colin and Carol for lunch and wandered around the town. It hasn’t changed much apart from losing the harbour front café where we used to meet up for the Sunday walking trips. Then it was time to get the bus back, return to our hotel, book a taxi for horrid o’clock the next morning and pack our bags.

The ferry trip back was smooth.  I spent the next few days recovering from our exertions and heard the first screams of the swifts, returning for the summer.

Oops, there was too much mixture for the big tin. A pyrex bowl served well for the leftover.

I had been thinking about making a simnel cake for Easter and gathered all the ingredients together – lots of orange and lemon zest and crystallised fruit. It turned out really well, so I made another for my birthday and took it to the gym where it was much appreciated.  I had also used the lemon glut to make the lemon slice cake that I had made before. Very rich and very tasty. Of course I can’t eat these cakes all by myself, so Antony and Vaso get a big portion as well as Margarita next door. However I have found that the lemon slice freezes OK, so I have treats tucked away.

The remainder of March and into April I got out my sewing machine and made some adjustments to summer clothes as well as deciding what to make with my newly acquired fabrics.  I had a pattern for a dress that I had made forty years ago and which I had really liked, so that took care of one, using the blue/green fabric.  It was a real pain doing all the pin-tucks on the bodice. I had to read the manual to work out how to do the buttonholes, and serendipitously found out how to do invisible hemming – wow!   I used the jazzy fabric to copy from a dress bought here and which is very comfortable in the heat of the summer. One piece of fabric remains for next year.

The China Ball trees lining the road at the end of our street were severely pollarded for the first time in my memory. Normally they are just trimmed with lanky branches left to provide shade.  Now they have re-grown nice dense tops.  Having been cut just as the flowers were coming out, this year we won’t have the yellow berries littering the pavement below.  More and more bushes and trees started to flower.  By the middle of June the oleanders lining our street were in full pink bloom. At the end of the street purple bougainvillea festoons the pine trees bordering the council plant nursery – amazing.

Original construction

A contractor came to do some severe trimming to the lemon and mandarin trees in our back yard.  I had been admiring the spider webs suspended from the electricity cable running across the yard and anchored to their branches.  With the anchors cut away, the webs unravelled and disappeared, only to reappear later as the spiders re-created their homes on a much grander scale. Now, all of a sudden, the whole edifice has collapsed and is draped over the mandarin tree. Perhaps a bird flew through the supporting structure?

Expanded renovation

Recently I have been feeding Caroline, the tortoise, who lives in the back yard. Her owner fell in the supermarket and broke her hip, necessitating surgery and a couple of weeks in hospital. Now she is home but unable to get about yet, so I continue to devise tasty tortoise suitable snacks each morning. She loves tomato, courgette and crispy lettuce, with the odd bit of cucumber thrown in.

Zoriana, a Ukrainian who has lived in Greece for some years, re-opened her bar/café called Hamam in the Old Town.  It was originally a hamam but had been converted for various previous uses. A bunch of us went to celebrate with her.  It had been shut last year much to our dismay and she had opened a small café near the beaches. Now she has re-developed Hamam to meet all the necessary regulations and we are all enjoying her comfy chairs, tasty meals and cocktails.

At Easter Tudor organised another gathering. He has great luck with the weather, it was a hot day so sitting on the lawn was perfect. One of his friends played the saxophone as we chatted.  He organised a mid-summer’s day event too – seeming to enjoy entertaining and barbeques. I found out a bit more about some of the people who I vaguely knew. One is a secondary school headmaster but also plays excellent guitar and his artist wife (Effie, mentioned in the previous blog) teaches primary school. Another plays for the Rhodes symphony orchestra and later I found out he is a keen dancer at the Walk Inn music nights.

I invested in a sunbed which I set up on the east facing balcony, for sunbathing for an hour or so in the morning to mitigate the shock of summer. I only use it once a week but it has helped me to acclimatise to the hot sun. My mornings get full of other things like Greek lessons, gym and other vital stuff like drinking coffee, browsing the internet and reading.  The west facing balcony faces the street so I think it would be a bit naff to lie out in full view in the afternoons.

Having my own sunbed removed the need to go to the local beach for sunbathing, but I have been to the further beaches a couple of times with friends and had my first dip in the sea last week – very pleasant.

I spend a lot of time reading on my Kindle e-reader, not having a TV and not really enjoying watching videos on the laptop. Somehow I prefer the ability to use my imagination rather than be presented with someone else’s interpretation. The Kindle I had been using finally started to degrade with a little pinprick letting light through the screen.  After a bit of rooting around on the various Amazon websites, I found that the UK one would send me a new one to Greece via their European warehouses.  So that arrived, a new model to get used to and somehow not quite as comfortable to use as the old one.

Morning Glory on my route to the gym

When discussing this with a friend, he enthused about his current book – the Count of Monte Christo.  So I downloaded it and got caught up with that for quite a while – Alexander Dumas wrote great pot-boilers!

Despite my preference for books, I do occasionally check out the local cinema.  Screenings are rather late for me, but the other week I did manage to go to see Guardians of the Galaxy III. Not having seen numbers one and two, it took a while to catch on, but it was fun and very silly, but the music had some great tracks from our youth.

In early May the screams of the swifts were joined by the burbles of the bee-eaters as they arrived.  They hung around for some time, so I wondered if they found suitable nesting sites in the walls of the Old Town.  On the rare days that we had cloud it was great to watch them fly around as you could then see their bright colours.

Peaches and nectarines started appearing in the market at the end of May and by the end of June were piled high.  I discovered that the small watermelons were perfectly good. I had always thought that they might be all skin and not so juicy but that isn’t the case and I have been enjoying a slice or three with my evening meal. One small 2kg watermelon lasts me over a week. Caroline the tortoise gets a sliver too.

Margarita’s jasmine in spring

June was strangely cool and wet. This was a good thing as the winter had been dryer than normal.  So we were all waiting for summer to start – which it did around the last week of June. Now we are all complaining of the heat of course, but it is very pleasant if sweaty. Even the cicadas have not really started buzzing as much as in previous years.