DECEMBER
WEATHER ...
Not too bad on the whole, with rainfall on 12 days. Some days had
spells of warm sunshine, with temperatures getting up to 20 degrees on 5 days. However nights
were chilly, with a low of 2 degrees on the 27th.
Latest
Crete Weather Link.
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The Night before Christmas
Thousands
of people attended a Christmas Eve service in the cave church of St John the
Hermit (see below for story and more pictures).
Copyright Richard@cretanvista.
Village Life...
All
of us here at Cretanvista hope you had a wonderful Christmas and New Year.
Wilf and Pam are back in the
UK
to visit their grandchildren so, although they certainly had a happy time, we
doubt whether it would have been very peaceful!
We (Richard and Ann) started December in style with the police searching for
us! It all happened because we had gone on holiday to
India
and omitted to notify absolutely everyone in the
village about our plans. We had thought that by announcing it at the kafenio
– the Cretan equivalent of “News at Ten” – and telling our friends,
the main family in this part of the village, that would have been sufficient.
However, on our return we learned that a near neighbour had noticed our car
was still in the driveway (we got a lift to the airport) and hadn’t seen us
for a few days. She came down to the house, peered through the windows and
couldn’t see any signs of life. So she called the police, who came down to
the house and peered through the windows. Seeing nothing, they carried out
door-to-door enquiries in the village - until they happened on someone who did
know where we were!
Not much chance of dying quietly at home here, and being eaten by rats!
(See further rat reference below...)
The
middle part of December was taken up by our olive harvest. We picked 295 kilos
of olives, and took them to the local press. We got back 51 litres of oil,
which we thought was pretty good. However, the village elders were most
concerned that we might have been swindled, saying that we ought to have got
back about one litre of oil for every 5 kilos of olives. “That’s 8 litres
short, Anna,” they tutted. But, on reading the local newspaper we learn that
the olives this year contain a high percentage of water, due to the heavy
rains we had in October, and therefore they are yielding less oil. However,
the village elders still think we are sissies for not kicking up a fuss at the
olive press! (We are still not yet very good at complaining in Greek, as we
normally have nothing to complain about…)
The consumer Christmas so familiar in the UK
is beginning to spread its greasy tentacles over here, and the build-up in the
shops is starting earlier each year. However, Christmas on Crete still has a long way to go
to catch up with the commercialism in the UK,
as we learned when we invested this month in a Sky TV box!
We were quietly preparing our vegetables on Christmas Eve for dinner the
following day, congratulating ourselves that we had finished all our shopping,
when I happened to glance out of the kitchen window – and saw a rat on the
terrace by the front door. I came over all ‘girly’ and Richard was
dispatched outside wielding a broom. He chased the rat away from the front
door and down into the garden. The poor man was then sent into town to buy rat
poison. Now you may remember that Christmas Eve was a Sunday - but fortunately
a number of the shops were open and he came back flushed with success, and we
duly laid out a Christmas treat for our small furry visitors.
This is the first time we have seen rats near the house since very soon
after we moved in, when an excellent specimen would stroll across the drive at
about 7.30 each morning. We solved the problem on that occasion by deciding
not to get up until 8 o’clock….
Later on Christmas Eve we went with daughter, son in law and grandson to see
the traditional Nativity scene in the cave
church
of
St John
the Hermit at Marathokefala, near Kolymbari. The special thing here is that
their Nativity scene has real animals – including a spiteful donkey that
gave me a nasty nip! Our
four-year-old grandson, Alfie, had earlier in the week had a (reluctant) role
in a Nativity play at his school, when his rather tearful angel stole the
audience’s heart, and got the biggest applause of the day. Naturally enough,
he couldn’t understand why there were no angels around the manger here; we
explained they would be coming later…
Our plans for New Year’s Eve were simple;
log fire, bottle of bubbly, early night.. until the doorbell went at
8.30 p.m. It was the local
‘kalanda’ singers – the equivalent of carol singers - out collecting for
church funds. We invited them in, lots of raki and nuts all round, plenty of
“Kali Xronia”s, then off they went. We huddled back around the fire
and the bubbly. Then the phone rang. “Come up to the kafenio,” ordered
Mama, the village matriarch. So off we trotted, and sat down for a session of
raki, nuts, seasonal biscuits, and an hour or two of cards.
Sometime
after 11 pm we made our excuses, saying we were expecting telephone calls from
family in
England.
We got home to find the fire had gone out, the bubbly was flat, but the
electric blanket was on. Yippee!
Happy
New Year!
________________________
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