{"id":3704,"date":"2012-11-19T14:00:25","date_gmt":"2012-11-19T14:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/?p=3704"},"modified":"2013-06-07T16:39:45","modified_gmt":"2013-06-07T16:39:45","slug":"back-on-spetses-to-quieter-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/?p=3704","title":{"rendered":"Back on Spetses to Quieter Days"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Old Harbour, Spetses (Peloponneses mainland in the distance)<\/p><\/div>\n

Following so many late nights out and our time away with Ray and Heather, life has taken on a more leisurely pace.\u00a0 The weather patterns too have changed … although it is not yet cold and wintry as it was at the same time last year, a high percentage of the days have been overcast and every passing week sees\u00a0the temperatures slowly dropping.\u00a0 Our level of social activity has wained to a trickle, especially now that Ray and Heather have left the island, as they do every year, to return to Aberdeen for the winter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sunday, a week ago, the day after we returned home from Galaxidi, Ray telephoned inviting us to lunch at their home.\u00a0 Costas was over socialising and did not want to go, however, I went to enjoy the afternoon … late in which I hopped on the quad with Marilyn and together with Ray and Heather we headed down into the town for a couple of drinkies.\u00a0 Costas joined us early evening, we played Pool, then just as the night before, we were in bed by 2230 hours.\u00a0 The next day I cooked one of my special English breakfasts with everything …\u00a0in the afternoon Costas walked with the boys whilst I decided wisely to stay at home and that evening,\u00a0we lit our first fire for the season – lovely!\u00a0 Our night together at home was interrupted at 2030 hours when Antonis from The Poseidonion telephoned … Costas went out to meet him, coming home with two black and white framed\u00a0photographs of himself and Chris’s dog Surita running in the Spetses Mini Marathon.\u00a0 It had taken place the first weekend that I was on Crete … next year I hope to be here so that I can also take part … from all accounts, this annual event is a lot of fun.<\/p>\n

Tuesday afternoon\u00a0we both decided that we would walk up\u00a0in the mountains\u00a0with Panayiotes, Christos and Dimitris … all younger than ourselves and each one over six feet tall.\u00a0 It was to have been a walk of an hour and a half’s duration … ended up two and a half hours for us door-to-door.\u00a0 The day was gloriously sunny and as we trapsed along what were often no more than steep goat trails, I was sweating profusely and at the same time, I could feel the cool breeze on my skin … a potential recipe I thought for a chill, however, I wished to believe otherwise.\u00a0 That evening was\u00a0to be our last opportunity to\u00a0spend time with Ray and Heather before their departure on Thursday … again Costas did not want to go but I was feeling okay and so\u00a0I met up with them and other friends in Votsalo Bar around 2000 hours – home by midnight.<\/p>\n

Late the following day I had developed a sore throat and my body was aching.\u00a0 Thursday morning\u00a0Costas met Ray and Heather at Filippos to farewell them as we usually do.\u00a0\u00a0I stayed in bed all day, being told if you want to get well, you must eat, that’s all there is to it!\u00a0 My idea of what I should eat and Costas’ idea were not one and the same, however, I won\u00a0on the\u00a0day, being served chicken soup for lunch and rice pudding in the evening.\u00a0 Friday, once again I stayed in bed all day … we had a lunch date with Antonis, I did not go, however, Costas went early to Spetsiotiko, bringing me a takeaway of my much loved Barbounakia (small red mullet) and Horta (edible wild greens).\u00a0 In the evening Costas\u00a0met up with Panayiotes for a few quiet drinks … by Saturday he was also full of a cold.\u00a0 Feeling a need to leave the confines of the house, that night we walked to Paxni for dinner, home by 2200 hours in time to watch the movie “True Grit”.<\/p>\n

On our walk on Tuesday, we passed Gorgoepikoou Monastery,\u00a0one of two working monasteries on the island.\u00a0 Here the nuns follow the Old Calendar – the slightly inaccurate “Julian Calendar” that the Western World ran on until the 16th and 17th Centuries and which is now 13 days out of alignment with the sun.\u00a0 Nowadays it is only used by some parts of the Eastern Orthodox Church and in a few Berber tribes in North Africa.\u00a0 The rest of us use the new “Gregorian Calendar” that was first introduced in 1582.\u00a0 I now understand why most years, Easter (Pascha) in Greece is celebrated at a different time to the Western World … the Eastern Orthodox Church still use the “Julian Calendar” for calculating the dates of movable feasts.<\/p>\n

I will finish this Blog with a reference to an article which appeared in the New York Times recently titled “The Island Where People Forget to Die”.\u00a0 It is about the longevity of many of the residents of the Greek Island of Ikaria (I was there for a short stay in 2010), including a Greek War Veteran, now 97 years’ old, diagnosed in America in his\u00a0mid 60’s with lung cancer.\u00a0 He declined treatment, returning to\u00a0Ikaria where funeral costs would be\u00a0minimal as opposed to thousands of dollars in America, leaving more of his precious savings intact for his wife.\u00a0 Initially confined to bed, slowly he became more active, planting a vegetable garden and surviving to harvest\u00a0his produce.\u00a0 Stress free living on an island where the elderly follow a simple diet of goat’s milk, wine, coffee, bread and honey for breakfast … pulses, wild greens and vegetables from their gardens\u00a0at lunchtime cooked with lashings of local olive oil,\u00a0goat’s milk and bread for their evening meal – meat consumed mainly on feast days and shared with family and friends.\u00a0 A place where wearing a watch is not necessary, even their clocks tend not to show the correct time … they\u00a0rise when they wake, work\u00a0in their\u00a0gardens, vineyards and olive groves, take naps in the afternoon and\u00a0in the evening enjoy a\u00a0little wine with\u00a0family and friends.\u00a0 Being a very mountainous island,\u00a0by necessity\u00a0they must walk a lot every day, breathing in clean air and drinking clean water.\u00a0 When, after some 25 years, the Greek War Veteran decided to return to America to ask his doctors why his diagnosis of lung cancer had not taken his life within the\u00a0nine months’ time span they had\u00a0given him …\u00a0there were to be no answers – the doctors were all dead. \u00a0If by now\u00a0I have wetted\u00a0your appetite, then I encourage you to Google this article to read much more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following so many late nights out and our time away with Ray and Heather, life has taken on a more leisurely pace.\u00a0 The weather patterns too have changed … although it is not yet cold and wintry as it was at the same time last year, a high percentage of the days have been overcast […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3704"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4011,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3704\/revisions\/4011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}