Counting Down

Well, here we are in October already. It's Saturday the 6th to be precise and it's 26ºC (80ºF) outside. Yesterday afternoon we had some convectional cloud and a little thunder, along with a very brief shower, but so far here in Kiotari we've yet to have a good downpour. There's been nothing since May in fact. It makes it a nightmare to keep the car clean, since we drive up and down a kilometre of dusty lane every time we go out or come in. And since we've just changed the car (finally said goodbye to the trusty old Suzuki Swift. Quite sad about that, but an almost new Skoda Fabia with a wicked hi fi alleviates the pain to some degree!), I feel duty-bound to hose off the dust every time we get the car under the carport when we get home. It won't last, but you blokes out there will understand where I'm coming from here, eh?

Changing the car here in Greece, as you'll already guess, is just a tad more complicated than in the UK. Both purchaser and seller have to go together to the local K.E.P. office, which is a government-run organisation and the initials stand for Citizens' Service Centre. It's a bit like the Citizens' Advice Bureau in the UK but with more practical hands-on ways to assist the citizen. For example, you can renew your driving licence there. 

When buying or selling a car, though, although the staff are very helpful, there's the usual bureaucracy to wade through. Plus, as is so often the case in numerous Government offices here, if the person who does what you require isn't "in" when you call, you don't get anything done and have to come back another time. Once you finally get seated across the desk from him or her, along with (in my case, since I was the buyer) your seller, you then have to present your residency permit, your Passport, your Tax number and your green receipt from the Ethniki Bank to show that you've been and paid the tax required of all car purchasers. So I'd had to go previously to Arhangelos to pay €135 (commensurate with the car's engine capacity) in order to be ready with my green receipt before we could do the transfer of ownership.

Then the fun begins. The girl across the desk has to fill in an A4 form upon which she has to record your full name and your father's name, if I remember correctly your mother's too!! The same for the seller. Then all the relevant numbers [tax/passport/residency permit] for both you and the seller. Then she'll write your details on the existing Registration Document for the car and rubber stamp that. She'll then photocopy that and give you a copy because you can't get the vehicle insured without proof of ownership, since it'll be a week or two if you're lucky!) before the new Registration Document comes through.

Then, whilst the two of us on our side of the desk sign in the appropriate places and date the Transfer Document, the clerk will fill out a couple more A4 sheets, which we don't even get to look at. By the time we were done I was looking at a healthy pile of A4 sheets and photocopies under the clerk's right hand and asked her, "How do you cope with all this stuff?" To which she replied, "We don't really!"

Of course, I had to look forward to doing the whole thing again once I'd found a buyer for the Swift. Happy days. In the UK you just fill out the lower portion of the Registration Document with the new owner's details, you both sign it and send it off in the mail. Some days later the new owner receives the updated Document. Job done. I asked the girl if my new Registration Document would be arriving by mail, and she told me that, no, she'd ring me when it arrived so I could collect it. That made me nervous right away. I mean, how often does a Greek tell you that they'll be ringing you and then they never do. I live in hope that she'll prove my fears ungrounded.

I began this post with the intention of musing over the fact that the season is soon to draw to a close. Got a bit side-tracked as usual. 

The last few weeks have seemed to slip by as quickly as the the last grains of sand in an hourglass. Coach drivers and waiters, boat-owners and souvenir-shop owners are all now sighing and saying tiredly, "just a couple more weeks, then we can rest". The bee eaters have almost all flown South and there are baby turtles in the small lake behind the beach down near the new Hotel here, the Princess Adriana. Thankfully, as I've mentioned before, the Hotel's builders made sure to leave this body of water intact. It's a very useful little haven for these delightful little creatures to breed in. In fact, on Monday evening my wife and I stood on the tiny bridge above it and were happily turtle-spotting when a Kingfisher flew out from beneath us and along the lake toward the beach before darting to the right into the rushes which line the banks. It was a brilliant flash of turquoise-blue which certainly brightened our afternoon.

As usual the goats are getting desperate again. Every summer they seem to spend more and more time in our valley as the end of the season draws near, ever searching for something more interesting than a dried up tough stalk on which to chomp. They'll wander listlessly along the lane beside our fence, eyeing the lush vegetation just metres away. The compound down the valley, which some local Greeks cleared and fenced off a couple of years ago, and in which they've planted a clutch of fruit trees, has already been invaded twice in recent weeks and the goats have stripped the trees down to stalks just a couple of feet high. The owners turn up on Sunday morning to water and instead they have to resort to finding out where the goats got in and making good the defenses. The trees are resilient though and soon begin to sprout green leaves again. In the long run it's probably quite a beneficial prune that the goats have given them.

We really need the rain now so that the countryside vegetation can sprout and the goats then no longer need to study people's gardens in the hope of a decent meal.

My wife and I rejoice too that the temperatures are now dropping to the level at which we feel like attacking the garden with gusto once again as the sky begins to sport fluffy clouds now and then, rather like one sees on a typical British summer's day. We live in hope that before long some of these will turn darker and really drop some decent rainfall.

The prospect of long walks and quieter roads appeals, as does the chance to catch up with friends whom we've not seen too often during the summer season. November through December and into January will bring the olive harvest, long mornings spent putting the world to rights over a coffee outside a local bar and the planting of vegetables which we hope to be eating come the spring.

Yes the rhythm of the seasons plays loudly in our symbolic ears and it is good. It is comfortable. It reminds one of all that is good about life on a Greek island, despite all the woes that beset this noble and brave little country.

By the way. I've just finished Victoria Hislop's latest book, "The Thread" and can agree with my wife that it's a very good read. She even said that it was one of the best books she'd ever read. I wouldn't go that far, having found the writing style a little banal in places, but the story is nevertheless well told and it's an education for anyone wanting to learn the modern history of the city of Thessalonika, told through the lives of some fictional characters who lived through some of the most turbulent times ever in man's history. It covers a period from just after the First World War down to the present day.

Well, time to go gardening. Or shall I have a beer instead?