The start of a love affair

Coming to the end of yet another horrid, wet, English summer which in my book is the second which has beenmruined by all the problems we have had with this house move, I have to face that it's highly unlikely that I will be going to Greece again this year. The downturn in the building trade here means that WH has to work while he still has work and so has been unable to finish our new place. Having given up over 5 months last winter to the build, which with hindsight was a total waste of time given the vagaries of the weather (again) and his fellow workers who let us down in droves, his customers won't wait any longer. I don't mind this, after all he is earning when other local builders are not. What I do mind is having had no real taste of warm weather other then during Grandad's Holiday in late May. I am also missing Greece itself and our usual leisurely stays in the back of beyond places we both love.

My love affair with Greece began as a teenager. My required O' Level English reading, along with a million other kids, was My Family and Other Animals, Gerald Durrell's account of his family's sojourn in Corfu in the 1920's. I was instantly drawn to this strange sounding country where interesting wildlife abounded, the people were strange, views were magical and you were never more than a few miles from the sea. The descriptions of exotic plants which my father had planted in our garden and which we fussed over to keep alive in the English Midlands but which grew wild in Corfu fascinated me. In those days I didn't like the heat so wasn't really bothered on that score. I read and re-read that book a hundred times in my late teens and twenties.

It was not until I took up with WH that I actually got to go there. In 1994, the girls were whisked off by their mother to Ibiza for a fortnight giving only 2 hours notice to WH. He freaked as he had done the previous year when a similar thing had happened and so, like the previous year when he was advised by his GP, we decided to go away ourselves. His house would not seem so empty if we ourselves were not there either. In those days, pre-internet (for us anyway), we abandoned looking for cheap deals on Teletext and called the agent direct. We stood in WH's porch listening to the phone between us, WH did the talking. By then of course, I was sick and not able to walk far, the first holiday he was offered was in Paxos, a villa in the Olive groves up a steep hill. He declined. Further unsuitable offers were also turned down. Finally he was agreeing to one, from Birmingham later that week. By then I had tired of standing and was sitting on the bottom of the stairs unable to hear the 'other end'. Having given all his credit card details the call abruptly came to an end. WH was not over impressed but it was a holiday after all and a cheap one at that. "I don't know what the accommodation will be but they assure me it will be on the flat. Allocation on arrival or some such name, they tell you all the details when you land. Oh it's Corfu, don't know what that will be like". My heart leapt, I was finally going.

We went in late May in a heatwave. Our accommodation proved to be a 2 bedroom apartment in a block of 6 overlooking a meadow of wild flowers just off the centre of Roda. We also had a full sized kitchen, two bathrooms and a shower with a curtain, unheard of in those days. It was on the ground floor, had a terrace giving onto the field and which was planted with bright flowers amongst which lived a whole army of little lizards. In two minutes you could be on the beach; round the corner, down the main street of the old village, past the church, on past the old ladies sitting in a row of hard chairs along their house walls, past the kafenion with it's whiff of ouzo, strong coffee and cigarette smoke and the old men arguing outside and walk through a gap between two cafes, the sparkling water visible through the little alleyway. I loved it. We had a bakery on 'our' corner and we went every morning for bread and pastries, sugary, vanilla-ey and cinnamonney scents teasing our taste buds. In those days a loaf was 270 drachma, about 54 pence, a yardstick I still measure the prices with today, only now the currency is the Euro (Evro) and bread is more than 60 cents (lepta).

We didn't do much on that first trip, we were too much in awe of the place and money was tight. We did hire a car for a couple of days and WH began to hone his skills as a Greek driver. 14 years later he slots in effortlessly. We drove around and everywhere we went Cistus sunroses abounded along with fields of myriad wild flowers. Little churches sat on hillsides, old cottages with tumbledown roofs had yards full of geraniums planted in blue painted feta tins, old ladies in black followed herds of goats for miles on the roads in the hills, men carried bundles of sticks whilst riding side-saddle on dusty, sad looking donkeys, chickens flapped out of hedges. Taking a picture in Sinies village one mid morning the whole school of 14 children fell out in to the street and posed for camera unbidden, along with a tiny sandy puppy clutched by a waif like 6 year old with dark eyes and a coy smile, "Hello" they chanted, "English? Thank you" as if by rote. One of the most brilliant sights was on the road along the the sea front in Roda itself, a piece of waste ground next to a moped rental lot. There were a couple of scrubby trees and chickens pecked amongst the dirt and greenery underneath them, taking to the branches in the heat of the day. One day the place was transformed, the greenery had flowered to become a vibrant square of brilliant red poppies.

That was the week which really kindled the fire. We have returned to Corfu 6 times since together and WH even took the girls on an 18 to 30's holiday in Kavos on another occasion, just Dad and 3 teenage girls. Together we have always stayed in the north and love the quieter more laid back spots. We've also been all over Greece since some years going 3 times. We want to live there eventually but sadly probably not in Corfu. We love the quieter, totally Greek places now and somewhere sleepy on the mainland beckons, maybe somewhere in Pelion although that is getting quite touristy now, maybe on the Amvrakikos gulf, Amphilochia perhaps, where we once had a wonderful Sunday lunch and not a Brit in sight (or sound), maybe near Volos airport at Nea Anchialos, the centre of a growing wine region. Wherever we end up it will always be that first holiday to Corfu we will remember the most, the week that sowed the seeds of a dream.