enough to bring us back if the money had not arrived. Also we had no difficulty in coming to a conclusion that if it came to a choice between buying a bottle of wine and a bottle of petrol we would rather walk home.
So to Gythion in style the next day where I drew all 2,000 drachmas out. One thousand of these were spent on food stocks to see us through a month, including a few luxuries like instant coffee, tea bags and tinned milk because there were few things more reassuring in an alien land than a nice cuppa and rural Greeks never madeone; there were tins of sardines and meat, olive oil, of course, and a final extravagance of a piece of Dutch cheese. Nor did I forget the hens with a kilo of wheat. The wine we had in celebration was not reckoned an extravagance. Not when you could get pleasantly merry for twenty drachmas.
Chapter 7
It Was All Going a Bit Too Well
It was against the advice of the locals that I planted my vegetable seeds as soon as I had enough space available. They insisted it was one month too early but I preferred to believe in the evidence all around me. The sun came up each morning like an over-ripe blood orange turning as it rose to a hot yellow that brought to flaming life the winter-dormant flora of the hills and valleys. As long as I supplied the water that sun would surely bring to life my seeds as well.
February had not moved into March but I was naked to the waist as I hoed and heaved my garden out of the wilderness and planted it with lettuce, cabbage, beetroot, peas, beans, pumpkin, watermelon and even a few rows of sweet corn. Down at the beach-house where the soil was sandy and easy to work we established another vegetable patch and added potatoes and onions. All these were supplemented by rows of wild greens which we hoped would thrive immediately to fill in the hunger gap until the sophisticated stuff was ready for picking.
It was not that I thought that I knew better than my neighbours â though I soon discovered how committed the Greek peasant was to the methods of his great-grandfather. It was simply that I had to have vegetables as soon as possible. Then I sat back and waited â as I have done so often since â for the miracles to happen.
To say I sat back and waited is a little euphemistic. The twice daily treks to the well, bringing back eight buckets of water each time from 400 yards away, were hardly a sedentary occupation. Nor was the firewood. To keep the stove going for three meals a day and the evening warmth I had to saw wood for at least an hourevery morning in addition to supplying the wood to saw. When the weather was bad and the rooms full of cold damp, another hourâs work was necessary.
This was an excessively mechanical and boring occupation though very good for the biceps. So I developed a method of sawing â holding the wood firm with my feet â which enabled me to read a newspaper or book while my arm moved like some automatic piston. It worked fine. I had early reward for my labours when small green sheaths of fertility and future food thrust themselves out of my well-watered soil before anybody else around me had even planted. And the second hen came into lay.
It was all going a bit too well. I had forgotten isostasy. The invisible forces of compensation were marshalling against us and were soon to reveal their tactics. One morning I had fried egg and chips for breakfast, went down to the well with the two buckets which now had become virtually extensions of my arms and trudged back up the hill for the beginning of the daily watering. Instead of the green-flecked seedbed I found the two hens contentedly fluttering in sandbaths, splashing dust over their feathers and happily pulling up the green shoots and swallowing the unexpected dividend at the bottom of each one.
They hadnât quite eaten everything and I made frantic plans to save what was left. Wire netting was too expensive and I could not keep both hens cooped up in their
So to Gythion in style the next day where I drew all 2,000 drachmas out. One thousand of these were spent on food stocks to see us through a month, including a few luxuries like instant coffee, tea bags and tinned milk because there were few things more reassuring in an alien land than a nice cuppa and rural Greeks never madeone; there were tins of sardines and meat, olive oil, of course, and a final extravagance of a piece of Dutch cheese. Nor did I forget the hens with a kilo of wheat. The wine we had in celebration was not reckoned an extravagance. Not when you could get pleasantly merry for twenty drachmas.
Chapter 7
It Was All Going a Bit Too Well
It was against the advice of the locals that I planted my vegetable seeds as soon as I had enough space available. They insisted it was one month too early but I preferred to believe in the evidence all around me. The sun came up each morning like an over-ripe blood orange turning as it rose to a hot yellow that brought to flaming life the winter-dormant flora of the hills and valleys. As long as I supplied the water that sun would surely bring to life my seeds as well.
February had not moved into March but I was naked to the waist as I hoed and heaved my garden out of the wilderness and planted it with lettuce, cabbage, beetroot, peas, beans, pumpkin, watermelon and even a few rows of sweet corn. Down at the beach-house where the soil was sandy and easy to work we established another vegetable patch and added potatoes and onions. All these were supplemented by rows of wild greens which we hoped would thrive immediately to fill in the hunger gap until the sophisticated stuff was ready for picking.
It was not that I thought that I knew better than my neighbours â though I soon discovered how committed the Greek peasant was to the methods of his great-grandfather. It was simply that I had to have vegetables as soon as possible. Then I sat back and waited â as I have done so often since â for the miracles to happen.
To say I sat back and waited is a little euphemistic. The twice daily treks to the well, bringing back eight buckets of water each time from 400 yards away, were hardly a sedentary occupation. Nor was the firewood. To keep the stove going for three meals a day and the evening warmth I had to saw wood for at least an hourevery morning in addition to supplying the wood to saw. When the weather was bad and the rooms full of cold damp, another hourâs work was necessary.
This was an excessively mechanical and boring occupation though very good for the biceps. So I developed a method of sawing â holding the wood firm with my feet â which enabled me to read a newspaper or book while my arm moved like some automatic piston. It worked fine. I had early reward for my labours when small green sheaths of fertility and future food thrust themselves out of my well-watered soil before anybody else around me had even planted. And the second hen came into lay.
It was all going a bit too well. I had forgotten isostasy. The invisible forces of compensation were marshalling against us and were soon to reveal their tactics. One morning I had fried egg and chips for breakfast, went down to the well with the two buckets which now had become virtually extensions of my arms and trudged back up the hill for the beginning of the daily watering. Instead of the green-flecked seedbed I found the two hens contentedly fluttering in sandbaths, splashing dust over their feathers and happily pulling up the green shoots and swallowing the unexpected dividend at the bottom of each one.
They hadnât quite eaten everything and I made frantic plans to save what was left. Wire netting was too expensive and I could not keep both hens cooped up in their
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