WHEN Jim and I moved to the Mani region of southern Greece for our mid-life adventure during the country’s economic crisis, we set out to live as Greek a life as possible. We went to church services in the hillside village where we first lived, and also to the vibrant saints’ day feasts, held outdoors with lashings of barbecued goat and village wine.
We tried everything, with various degrees of success – and sometimes mild disgrace – when, for example, we didn’t understand some of the Byzantine rituals of the Greek Orthodox Church and made a few gaffes. We tried olive harvesting (back-breaking!), got in a lather with traditional soap making, and even tried the peculiar delicacy tsikles (small pickled birds) to please a neighbour (never again!).
The point of our Greek odyssey was to do (often crazy) things we’d never done before, and try a new way of life, without most of the cultural norms and cliches of Britain. Christmas had been a welcome revelation in the first year. More low-key and reflective with less of the Christmas hysteria of the UK: the manic shopping, the house fronts decked out like the Blackpool illuminations. Not that we’re knocking a British Christmas, but we’ve never been that into ‘festive-to-the-max’, unlike some British expats we met in Greece early on who were, and who complained bitterly that the Greeks “just can’t get Christmas right!”.
Whenever I heard that I used to do a mental high-five, looking forward to our first taste of seasonal serenity in our hillside village, where most locals were hard-working olive and goat farmers. So it would have been risky chopping down a ‘Christmas’ tree. And there was no need to tinselate our small Greek house into a rural glitter ball. As if! But villagers were there on the day, chapping on our door like the ‘wise men’, bringing us seasonal cheer, offering sweet biscuits, cans of oil and other treats.
Jim, Marjory and Wallace the terrier at their village house
View across the Messinian Bay from the couple’s second house
In the lead-up to our second Christmas in this region, we were renting a different house, not far away, close to the Messinian Bay, a traditional Greek home with folky sofas and paintings. Our landlords, a convivial Greek couple, Andreas and Marina, called around to see us regularly and usually with ‘deliveries’ – food and household offerings in eccentric pairings I’d come to enjoy: broccoli and floor cleaner, cabbages and firelighters!?
One November afternoon the couple were on the doorstep, Marina with several bulging plastic bags and a basket with a red pointy hat sticking out. That should have alarmed us straight off! Marina rushed, bag-laden, past us into the house with her usual Greek proprietorial charm, while Andreas hung back at the door, chatting. The imminent olive harvest was very much on his mind because in rural areas the whirring sound of harvesting equipment trumps sleigh bells every time.
Winter in Greece means olive harvesting which we tried with our friend Foteini, pictured on her wobbly blue ladder
While we chatted, we forgot about Marina for a while until we became aware of furious scurrying and hammering going on behind us.
“What’s happening inside, Andreas?” I asked him, almost too scared to look.
He rolled his eyes and offered an Olympian shoulder shrug. “Marina has just decorated the house for Christmas.”
“What!?”
Jim and I spun around and walked into the open plan sitting room/dining room. Whereas it once looked atmospheric and Greek, which is how we liked it, the place now resembled Santas’s Grotto at a John Lewis store. A big red Santa was lording it over the dining table and tinsel was strung over paintings and across the top of the open fireplace. No health and safety in Greece. On every available surface: flashing Christmas lights, more santas in pointy hats, reindeer trundling across the coffee table and so forth. We gawped, feeling mildly ill. Even Wallace, our feisty Jack Russell terrier, trying to doze in his dog bed, had been fixed up with clip-on red ribbons and other festive embellishments.
Wallace the Jack Russell terrier wondering if the festive stuff was chewable
“Here,” said Marina, thrusting two fluffy festive socks towards me. “For Christmas Day.”
“But Marina, it’s barely November. Too early for Christmas decorations, surely,” I pleaded.
Andreas shook his head. “I agree Marjory, but Marina LOVES Christmas, you have no idea!”
Oh yes I did! The living room – lit up and pulsating, lacking only a sound system for Christmas carols – told me so. Silent Fright came to mind!
“This old place looks better now, don’t you think?” she said, hands on hips like the presenter of a TV home makeover show. Except we felt like the teary owners you often see, pretending to be overjoyed with an unexpected vision of home-hell. In Marina’s mind, the theme park she’d whipped up was what she thought we craved, miles from home at this time of year. Ah, bless! She meant well, in that extreme kind of Greek way.
Jim and I laughed over it later and slowly began to dismantle some of her offerings, leaving a bit of tat in place and hiding the rest in the apothiki (storeroom), haggling over santas and sleighs, wondering which things Marina would be more likely to miss on her next visit.
Marina (with Jim) trying to find new ways to spin Christmas
Whenever she came inside after that, her quizzical eyes strafed the room, doing a kind of mental inventory, but to her credit she never remarked on the adjustments. Meanwhile, with a developing artistic flair, she set about making countless Christmas wreaths wound through with fruit, veg and other Magpie finds, decorating everything from cat flaps to clapped-out welly boots, as pictured, top.
But it’s exactly what we came to Greece for. Wasn’t it!?
The story of our Greek Christmas first appeared in a slightly different form in my second memoir, Homer’s Where The Heart Is, which continues the funny, candid story of us attempting to live in Greece like locals, starting with the Amazon best-selling first memoir, Things Can Only GetFeta.
If you enjoyed reading my four Greek memoirs and my first two novels, A SaintFor The Summer and How Greek Is Your Love?), set also in the Mani peninsula, Greece, you will love my latest novel, The Greek Proposal. This time I chose the wild Messinian peninsula nearby for this story of romance, mingled with mystery and family war secrets. It has a feisty heroine, Isla, two gorgeous suitors, plus a lovable sausage dog, Lou – small in stature, big on character! It also has a stunning location, near Koroni, inspired by the year we later spent living there.
The Greek Proposal: “A masterful piece of storytelling” “Terrific characters”. Five-star Amazon reviews.
For more information about Marjory’s Greek memoirs and two novels set in Greece, please click on the Greek Books tab on her website https://www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com
Have a Merry Christmas when it comes, and thank you for reading Marjory’s blogs and books and for your ongoing support. The author always loves to hear from readers on her website and reviews of her books are also kindly appreciated.
I’m excited to tell you all that my latest novel, The Greek Proposal, is now out on pre-order on all Amazon stores and published on September 22. This is a story I loved writing and researching and I hope readers will love it too.
Set in the wild and lovely southern Peloponnese, this is a romantic story mingled with mystery and family secrets, gorgeous characters, plus a lovable sausage dog, Lou, small on stature, big on character!
Here’s a little summary of the story:
Isla Drummond isn’t looking for love on her Greek sabbatical. She hopes the sunny lifestyle will revive her health and happiness after a road accident and a car crash of a relationship. Her clifftop villa and lifestyle are near-perfect and her sexy and enigmatic landlord Pericles (Perry) is hardly a drawback either. But undercurrents are there all the same. When Isla discovers Perry’s dark family back story, concerning a malevolent grandfather, her curiosity is naturally aroused.
When a stranger arrives in the village with an astonishing, heroic World War 2 twist to Perry’s family tale, Isla feels compelled to help him unpick the truth of these opposing narratives. Her efforts draw her closer to Perry but also ignite her affection for a gorgeous new admirer. The three are pulled into a thrilling web of old wartime secrets that will test everyone’s resolve. By the time the family mystery is solved, with a heartwarming conclusion, one man will be the standout winner of Isla’s heart.
An early ARC reader said of the book: “I loved this novel – the atmosphere, the characters and even Lou the sausage dog, and the flashes of humour. It has a powerful storyline that keeps you reading on, and a feel-good ending I won’t forget in a hurry.”
The novel is set mostly in a small cliffside settlement just north of Koroni in the Messinian peninsula, opposite the Mani peninsula. It was inspired by the four-year work/adventure sabbatical spent in southern Greece from 2010 with my husband Jim and our crazy Jack Russell terrier, Wallace (see pic below): three years in the Mani, and more than a year in Koroni.
The village in the book, Ayia Pelagia, is inspired by a real settlement there, although I have changed the name. The description I gave is accurate with olive groves, a small church, and the Cliff House that is pivotal to the story is also there, though it looks slightly different. The Koroni area is a wonderful part of the southern mainland: remote, authentic, like parts of old Greece, so there was plenty there to jag my imagination. I hope you will enjoy The Greek Proposal and feel the heat and drama rising off the page.
I’ve included a few pictures of some of the locations mentioned in the story to give you a flavour of what it’s like there. I will include more in forthcoming blogs.
From top: The view of the Messinian Bay looking north from ‘Ayia Pelagia’; the huge bulwark of Koroni Castle; Marjory, Jim and Wallace at Koroni harbour; view from the castle over the harbour; Ayia Triada beach, one of the leading locations of the novel.
The Greek Proposal Kindle ebook is currently on pre-order for £1.99 (UK) or equivalent price for all Amazon stores and will be available to buy on September, 22, along with the paperback version. If you enjoyed it, please think of putting a review on Amazon and Goodreads. It will be much appreciated.
For more information about Marjory’s Greek memoirs and two novels set in Greece, please click on the Greek Books tab on her website https://www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com
Marjory, Jim and Wallace fighting off pesky black scorpions in their house rental in the Mani
WHEN we left the comfort of our Scottish village for a long odyssey in Greece, we expected tricky situations now and then, but we never anticipated loads of scorpions sharing our Greek abodes with us. And other trials were equally disconcerting and scary. All part of having an adventure in a hot location? Absolutely, but only up to a point.
In the clutch of rural houses we rented in the southern Peloponnese for four years, there were things we never imagined: finding the bones of a recently slaughtered cow in the huge refuse bin across the road from the house; kounavia (like pine martins) and rats in the attic roof space of one old house, doing circuit training on the bedroom ceiling every night; one petulant Greek neighbour regularly shooting his rifle at nearby almond trees in pursuit of songbirds. The list could go on and on. And it gave me plenty of material for my Greek travel memoirs and funny tales to dine out on much later.
Wallace the Jack Russell was not amused by scorpion incursions and tended to head for the hills
But the scorpions were by far the creepiest interlopers. In the Mani (the middle peninsula of the three that hang down from the southern mainland), the black scorpion is prevalent. Though often not as noxious as the beige variety, it is still capable of a toxic nip. They plagued us in almost all our houses, hiding under household objects, in slippers, under the bed, in the shower recess, or sitting on the front door step – ringing the bell, if they could actually reach. Our Jack Russell terrier Wallace ran a mile when he saw them, and so would we, except we didn’t want to turn our backs on them. (See my book extract).
When we complained to our various landlords about critter infestations, they were often indifferent: a shrug, an arm wave, a comical grimace. One genial Brit in our first year took delight in saying: ‘Well this is Greece, not Kew Gardens.” Indeed.
While we adore Greece, it is also a place where things are unpredictable, chaotic, bureaucratic, downright illegal too at times. Some mash-ups you could sort, some you couldn’t.
Often we had to turn a blind eye to some rural shenanigans, like one neighbour who organised a small tanker truck to siphon out his large vothros pit (septic tank), but then ordered the driver to empty the sewage over another neighbour’s olive grove somewhat further away, instead of taking it away. Why? To save on transport costs? A sniffy act of revenge? Who knows? It was an olive grove we sometimes walked through with the dog. Not any more after the effluent dispersal. Even Greeks themselves encountering weird happenings would shrug: “This is Greece. Nothing goes to plan.”
But maybe that’s the appeal of living in Greece, the idea that every day brings you an experience you’ve never had in your life before. And isn’t that what adventure is all about, going well beyond your comfort zone and maybe learning a thing or two in the process, or being mortally zapped by a petulant scorpion, viper, kounavi, or the odd, disgruntled expat?
In the interest of balance, however, we also had very many memorable and entertaining experiences and the opportunity to befriend warm, generous and eccentric Greeks, who also featured in abundance in my books. Our four-year odyssey (three years in the Mani, one in Koroni, Messinia) ended up being one of the best things my husband Jim and I had done in our lives.
My first book about our adventures, Things Can Only Get Feta, covered the first year of our odyssey and has regularly been in bestseller charts on Amazon. It is currently on an Amazon ebook promotion (99p) for December in the UK store. (see link below).
To get you in the mood, I’m sharing a short edited extract from the book, dealing with scorpion lodgers. I hope you enjoy it.
There’s A Scorpion In My Slipper
ONE afternoon, Jim came in from a walk with Wallace and found me crouched beside the open storage area under the stairs – motionless.
‘What are you doing there?’
‘Scorpion!’ I said, my voice as tight as a circus high-wire.
‘What’s it doing?’ he asked, taking Wallace’s lead off and shutting him in the bedroom.
‘What do you think it’s doing?’ I was soaked in sweat and my knees aching from crouching on floor tiles for 20 minutes. ‘Skulking in the corner, sending Tweets from its mobile phone?’
‘Very cute. Let me see.’ He crouched down beside me and I pointed to the black critter in the corner.
‘Holy Mother! It’s got an erection, if you see what I mean.’ Only a man can see a scorpion and think of sex. The poisonous black tail was certainly very up though, and jabbing in our direction.
‘I’ve been trying to keep an eye on him all this time. We can’t let him escape or we don’t know where he’ll end up.’
‘Okay, calm down. I’ll look for the insecticide,’ said Jim and he ran upstairs and rattled about in the kitchen cupboards. He took so long that I thought I’d faint.
When we first came to live in our hillside village, a few of the expats took great delight in winding us up about noxious critters– especially scorpions. And Desmond our landlord hadn’t helped matters at the beginning when he mentioned finding scorpions in the stonework here before renovation. I knew then that we were destined to meet this hideous creature that looks almost prehistoric – the outsized claws, the pitch-fork tail at the back; half-crab, half-devil.
We had heard a story from an English expat called Derek, who seemed to be something of a scorpion magnet, having been bitten twice in a matter of months. The second scorpion, beige-coloured and more deadly, bit him painfully on the stomach while he was lying in bed. Derek claimed the critter must have hidden in his pyjamas while they were hanging on the washing line earlier. His wife managed to get the scorpion into a jar for identification and it required a midnight scramble to Kalamata Hospital, where he was not in good shape – and neither was Derek. Placed on an antibiotic drip, he survived the attack.
We were warned by Desmond not to leave objects lying on the floor in the house for more than a few days because if scorpions did come into the house they would hide under them. This was the first time Desmond confessed to possible scorpion interlopers. I had been clearing out the space under the stairs and moved a gym bag that had been there for weeks when the scorpion skittered out.
Jim came running back down the stairs, a spray can in his hand. ‘Okay, let’s hit it with this,’ he said, and sprayed enough insecticide under the stairs to poleaxe a brown bear.
‘Thank God we got rid of that,’ he said, after disposing of the scorpion outside.
‘They travel in pairs, you know,” I told him, recalling something I’d read.
‘Nonsense, of course they don’t.’ But if there’s one rule in life it’s this: whenever you say a thing won’t happen, it generally does. A few days later I walked into the bedroom and screamed like a woman confronting a hooded intruder with a machete. Jim came running in.
‘What is it?’
‘There’s a scorpion in my slipper!’ I shouted. Crawling around the inside rim of my sheepskin slipper was another black scorpion, bigger than the first one, its tail up and quivering in my direction.
As it happens, I found a third black scorpion some weeks later, trying to crawl into a crack in the stonework around the front door. Only its long tail was hanging out. This was the biggest one yet. We started to live in fear of more of them.
We told Desmond later about our scorpion infestation. ‘You’ve been leaving objects on the floor for too long and not moving them around the house like I told you to,’ he muttered like some grand master of the telekinetic arts….
For more information about Marjory’s Greek memoirs and two novels set in Greece, please click on the Greek Books tab on her website https://www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com
THIS month it’s 10 years since my first Greek travel memoir, Things Can Only Get Feta, was published and I’m thrilled to say the book is still going strong: a best-seller in various Amazon categories, despite a publishing drama early on. However, it has soldiered on with vigour and even found its way recently onto the syllabus of a Greek university course. But more of that later.
If you’ve followed my blog over the past decade, you’ll be familiar with how the book, about living in Greece during the economic crisis, came about. But if you’re just tuning in for the first time, in short: my husband Jim and I, and our famously bonkers Jack Russell terrier Wallace, left a Scottish village in 2010 for a mid-life adventure in southern Greece. It was during a British recession and a downturn in the newspaper industry, in which we both worked as journalists.
Wallace, above, and again with Jim and Marjory in Koroni
And what an adventure it turned out to be, settling in a rented stone house in a hillside village in the remote, wild Mani region. It was a working village, raw in places, sometimes well beyond our comfort zone but perfect for our aim of living a Greek kind of life while we freelanced for various publications in Britain and Australia to help fund our odyssey. Greece was on the brink of meltdown due to its devastating economic crisis of 2010. The country, with massive debts, had to accept a bailout from the EU and punishing austerity to go with it. An ideal time for journalists perhaps, but not for a trouble-free stay in beautiful Greece.
However, we went regardless and found ourselves in an ideal location, living amongst big-hearted goat and olive farmers. We made friends with many, particularly the inimitable Foteini, the eccentric goat farmer with her famously endearing taste for thick, clashing layers of clothing and rural mayhem. Ironically, it was my curious friendship with Foteini (pushing my imperfect Greek to its limits) that helped steer our path in the village. She also became an unlikely literary muse – who knew?! Her touching stories and her antics inspired me to start writing Feta, to record a rural way of life in the Mani peninsula (one of the three that hang down from the southern mainland) that I was sure was about to change forever.
Marjory with the unforgettable Foteini
The village of Megali Mantineia, where the author spent the first year of her Greek odyssey
Jim (back row, right) with the wonderful villagers and two of its priests at a celebration in Megali Mantineia
The first year in the village of Megali Mantineia, beneath the Taygetos mountains, exceeded all our expectations. It was challenging, fascinating, often hilarious, and sometimes downright frustrating. We dealt with macabre local customs, a health drama for Wallace, a hospital visit for Jim, critters (scorpions, lots!), eccentric expats, but mostly it was a lesson in surviving Foteini’s ramshackle farm compound, her strong mizithra goat cheese, and a slew of scatty, but endearing animals. At the end of the first year, we decided to stay longer in Greece, which grew to four years in all, living for the final year in the nearby Messinian peninsula, near Koroni. I wrote four best-selling books about our life in Greece, and two romantic suspense novels, also set in the Mani.
Some of the press coverage for the book in 2013
I started writing Feta in the freezing winter of 2010/11 in our stone house, my desk wedged up against the loungeroom window with a view of the snow-capped mountains. But I also had a view of the rickety back entrance of Foteini’s old village house, where she spent her evenings. Sometimes, she must have seen me at the window. Or perhaps she just sensed I was writing about our village antics, many of them hers, and she’d phone, particularly if she hadn’t seen us for a while. It was usually with the same humorous lament. “Ach, you’ve forgotten me already, koritsara mou (my girl)!” she’d say. “When are you coming for coffee at the ktima?”
The idea of sitting in Foteini’s draughty farm shack in foul weather beside a dodgy petrogazi (small gas cooker) didn’t always appeal. However, we did go now and then in winter, which I wrote about, including the memorable day Foteini came close to blowing up the shed.
Foteini on her donkey Riko, taken at her farm compound in Megali Mantineia
I had plenty of material for a book, from the adventures and mishaps of the first year, and I continued to add to the narrative over the next three years. Things Can Only Get Feta was published in 2013 by a small London publisher, during a long intermission in Scotland before we returned to Greece again. From the beginning, Feta did very well and sparked great interest, particularly in Greece in the summer of 2013. After doing a phone interview with the editor (Sotiris Hadzimanolis) of the Australian Greek newspaper Neos Kosmos, about our life in Greece and the book, Sotiris filed a similar piece to a Greek news outlet and from there, the story of our exploits went slightly viral.
Versions of it turned up in a slew of Greek publications and internet news sites with variations of the headline: “Scottish journalist besotted with Greece”. While there are many authors today, focusing on a much trendier, revitalised Greece post-crisis, 10 years ago the story of a foreigner having a love affair with Greece in turmoil was certainly more unusual. More than that, it struck a chord with long-suffering Greeks who had hitherto heard nothing but negative, often beat-up, reports in the international media. There were harsh criticisms of the country’s fiscal attitudes and work practices, whereas the story about Feta was a good-news story.
We had scores of messages sent to our website with notes of thanks for my Greek ‘ardour’ and my favourite comment of all time is still: “For your information, Greece loves you back.”
However, despite the book’s success, two years later, while Jim and I were now living in Koroni, I had a falling-out with my London publisher when he seriously broke the terms of our contract. (In publishing, be careful what you wish for!) Rather than allow the book’s success to be sabotaged, I legally forced the return of the book rights to me, and republished it myself in a very short time. This was no small feat, working on an old laptop computer from a hillside house with just a mobile phone and poor wi-fi, or often, no wi-fi. But nevertheless, once re-published the book had a fresh gust of wind under its wings and continued to do very well. Not long afterwards, I published the second memoir, Homer’s Where The Heart Is, and there are now four in all (see links below).
But Feta will always be close to my heart and I’m proud to say it was to become (and the sequels too) one of the very few books to be written in English about life in the economic crisis by a non-Greek living in the country during that time. It prompted Greek author Stella Pierides to suggest: “This book might become a future reference source about life in unspoilt Greece.”
It may have been a presentment of sorts and in 2021, I was thrilled to be contacted by a charming Greek girl called Panayiota, who told me that Feta and the following two memoirs had been offered on the syllabus of a literary course she attended in a northern Greek university, under the theme of how foreigner writers viewed Greek life during the crisis. She had written a paper on the subject. When I first started writing Feta in our Greek rural village during a cold winter, I wouldn’t have believed it would end up on a university syllabus. Or that Wallace may even have been the subject of some literary scrutiny. About time!
Wallace, up to his usual mischief on the first week of our Greek odyssey in 2010
I’m grateful to all my blog readers on this site (some of you have been following my Greek blogs since the beginning) and others who have read my books and shared my stories and had a laugh over some of our more daring, crazy exploits and those of the famously crazy Wallace. I’m grateful to those who still write to me to offer their feedback. One Facebook friend recently told me she has read Feta 10 times so far. “Feta is my comfort-blanket read.” That’s a first! Many reviews and comments have been humorous. “More than Feta, this book is a whole picnic hamper of delights,” said one Amazon reviewer.
It would be true to say that going to Greece and writing the books changed our lives for ever, and only for the better. The only note of sadness in our otherwise happy life was that dear Wallace, one of the stars of Feta, passed away at the age of 16 in 2017 after we moved back to Britain. We were devastated, as Wallace had been through all our adventures with us and had been a talisman, as well as a welcome distraction at times. Few Greeks we lived amongst will ever forget his antics I’m sure, and neither will the many readers who wrote to me after Wallace died with kind thoughts and wishes.
The main consolation I have in Wallace’s passing is that he had a wonderful life and hopefully his memory will live on in my Greek books.
The main stadium at Ancient Messene, which was no match for the shenanigans of Jim, Marjory and Wallace
Feta extract
If you haven’t read Things Can Only Get Feta, here’s a funny extract from the book of one of our crazier exploits, when Jim and I set out to visit the archaeological site of Ancient Messene (10th century AD), north-west of Kalamata. The only problem was we had Wallace with us and, as we’d discovered on an earlier attempt on Messene, only guide dogs were allowed inside this large gated site, even on a near-deserted January day. While we sat in the car eating chicken sandwiches for lunch, we mulled over how we could blag our way inside with the dog. Jim finally came up with a daring strategy. Inspired by the once-warring Spartans who’d also dreamt up unlikely ways to sneak into Ancient Messene, Jim planned to get inside with Wallace hidden in his rucksack . . . . .
“Okay. But there’s one big problem: how do we get Wallace to stay quiet in the rucksack and not start barking?” I said.
Jim thought for a minute. “It sounds a bit gross but we’ll put him inside with the last chicken sandwich. Then we’ll zip the bag at the top and leave him a little air hole. He’ll be busy eating. You know what he’s like about chicken.”
Wallace always had a thing about chicken because Brigit, his kind but eccentric breeder in Edinburgh, fed all her puppies with roast chicken, which was a disaster for feeding programmes later. It explained why chicken was the only food that the fussy Wallace liked unequivocally. He was so besotted with chicken that we had broken every rule in the dog-rearing manual by using the word ‘chicken’ on occasions where danger loomed and every other command was flatly ignored. I turned and looked at Wallace on the back seat. He was panting. He’d definitely heard the ‘chicken’ word.
I expressed serious doubts about the plan but Jim was more optimistic.
“Don’t worry,” said Jim, soothingly, “He’ll be okay in the rucksack. Remember the time we carried him in it when we were hill walking in Scotland and he hurt his paw and was limping? He was good and quiet then.”
“What would the staff do if they caught us with Wallace?”
“Call the cops, put us in the cells for the night. Feed us two-month-old mizithra cheese and village bread.”
My teeth started to ping. “Ach, let’s go for it!”
If nothing else, at least we’d have a bit of a laugh. And in a cold January in Greece, you can get like that, wanting a laugh, any laugh.
“Let’s try him out in the rucksack first,” said Jim, unzipping it and taking things out. First, we threw in a couple of Wallace’s dog biscuits and lifted him inside the bag, which was roomy. He didn’t like it at first but when he caught a whiff of the biscuits, he squirmed around inside to retrieve them, thinking it was a new game, better than hiding biscuits in shoes.
I wasn’t totally convinced, but Jim still seemed confident, and I guessed it was just a bit of a boy thing.
“Okay,” he said. “Get ready to leave now. Get all your stuff. As soon as we unwrap the chicken sandwich and drop it in, we’ve only got a few minutes or so to get through the gate and on our way.” He checked his watch at the same time, as if this was a finely tuned military raid.
We got out of the car and locked it. Jim put on the rucksack with Wallace in it and I dropped in the chicken sandwich, torn into several pieces, which was the messiest part of the plan, and zipped up the bag, leaving the air hole. The minute the sandwich hit the bottom, Wallace was down there like a deep-sea diver and the bag was wriggling like mad, then all went quiet. I could almost hear his lip-smacking enjoyment over the chicken. We walked quickly through the main gate, Jim stood to one side while I went to the small cabin window. I remembered the attendant from the first time we came here, but assumed she wouldn’t recognise me after a summer of foreign visitors. I asked her what time the site closed.
“Are you together?” the woman said, pointing to Jim.
“Yes?”
She looked at him with narrowed eyes. “Can I ask what’s in the rucksack the man is carrying?”
“Just lunch things,” I said in a nervous, squeaky voice. I glanced at the rucksack and thought I saw the edge of it was wriggling. Maybe she saw it as well.
Jim sensed the hitch, aware that Wallace was growing restless, eager for another chicken soother, so he started walking down the dirt track that led between broken columns and the outlines of ancient buildings.
“My husband’s impatient…big archaeology fan. Been reading all about Ancient Mess…”
“Okay,” she said, cutting me off. “But you must be back by 3.30 when the site closes.”
I turned and legged it down the track, smiling to myself. When I caught up with Jim I could hear Wallace starting to whine and the zip was coming further apart at the top as he tried to get his snout into the cool air. Jim walked faster. The site sloped down to an old amphitheatre and from there it was a short walk to a cluster of olive trees. Once there we were safe, out of sight of the entrance cabin.”
. . . . . or were we? Find out how the smuggling strategy panned out finally, one of many amusing adventures in Things Can Only Get Feta
To celebrate 10 years of Things Can Only Get Feta, the ebook will be discounted to 99p UK/US for three days on Amazon stores from Monday July 17. I hope enjoy it.
The book is available as an ebook and paperback on all Amazon sites. The other books in the best-selling Peloponnese series of memoirs, Homer’s Where The Heart Is; AScorpion In The Lemon Tree, and A Donkey On The Catwalk, are also available on all Amazon sites, the paperbacks also through Barnes & Noble, Booktopia in Australia, and independent bookstores.
Marjory’s latest book Wake Me Up For The Elephants is a travel memoir with a broader canvas: Africa, Fiji, Australia, Scotland, Greece, Ireland. It’s a collection of candid and hilarious tales based on real journeys many taken by Marjory as a journalist and described by best-selling author, Peter Kerr, as “Travel writing at its best.” The book is in part a prequel to the Greek series of memoirs on what the author’s adventurous life was like even before she embarked on the Big Greek Odyssey.
The ebook and paperback are available on all Amazon sites. To buy the Kindle version, in either the UK or the US, click on one of the links below:
If you have liked Marjory’s books, do consider putting a review on Amazon sites. It helps a book become more visible and is always appreciated by the author.
IT’S been a while since I’ve written a blog piece. Like many of you, I suspect, the last 12 months has felt like being thrown a curved ball – or more of a demolition ball really. The pandemic experience has been troubling and strange, and downright frightening at times, locked in our domestic prisons, experiencing strictures none of us have ever come across before. I have heard my family talk about living through wartime Britain, and although the pandemic is not quite that bad, I could understand for the first time how terrifying and restricted their lives must have been.
Despite having plenty of time to write regular pieces, such as blog posts, I failed at the beginning of the lockdown last March to gather up the motivation when other issues seemed much more important. And the future looked uncertain.
I’m sure the past year has tested everyone’s resolve, our faith in government, in religion, our small place in this terrifying world. If anything good can possibly come of this pandemic, it must surely be to appreciate the simple, true things of life more. If we once complained about our lot: not having the perfect life; enough money; a big enough house; or any of the dozens of things we obsess over in the western world, perhaps we won’t – any more.
Beautiful Kynance Cove in Cornwall, on the far edge of care
Now we know how happy and well-off we really were, all this time, and just didn’t know it. Many of us have gone back to basics, spending more time being quiet, watching instead of talking, thinking instead of acting, appreciating nature, cherishing health and love above other things. I don’t know about you, but I have found how easy it is to live with less, as long as you have health and love. I’m sure we’ve all realised this now. And I do hope you have all survived the pandemic without too much loss or sadness.
For my part, I know that what made the past year easier to bear was the fact I now live in Cornwall, near the sea, a beautiful part of the world and a place where you can really feel the power of nature. With its wonderful coves and big skies, it has felt like the best possible place to be in lockdown.
And I have not been completely idle these past 12 months. After a bumpy start, I did start another book last summer and once it picked up speed, I found it was a superb way to shut out the world and its cares a while. That’s the beauty of writing. It’s your own world for as long as you’re doing it. Yours, and no-one else need see your efforts, or interfere, or take it away from you for that period of time. It’s between you and the page or computer screen. And that’s magical, to have some control after all, to have a refuge. There is nothing else like quite like it!
Foteini with her donkey Riko and a copy of Things Can Only Get Feta
Wallace looking cool in Greece
So, finally the book has just been published, on May 5. A Donkey On The Catwalk: Tales of life in Greece, is the 4th in the Peloponnese series. For those of you who have read my Greek memoirs, starting with the Amazon bestseller Things Can Only Get Feta, this book will seem a little different because it’s separate tales and travel narratives rather than one long narrative. However, the theme is still Greece and most of the tales are set in the wild Mani region of the Peloponnese again, with a return of some of the characters you have loved, like Foteini the inimitable goat farmer with her eccentric take on life. And Wallace, our Jack Russell companion, is still creating mayhem. How could he not? For those of you, however, who haven’t read my memoirs, you can read this one as a standalone, as with all the memoirs really.
As well as tales from the Peloponnese, there are stories from other Greek locations my husband Jim and I have visited, including Pelion and the islands of Santorini and Corfu. This book also offers tales from some of my own earlier trips to Greece, which I have not published before, including a year in Athens during a dangerous time of political upheaval, and a sabbatical in Crete, with a touch of romance in an idyllic setting.
To counteract the times in which I was writing this book, I’ve blended a lot of humour and lightness into these stories because, as psychotherapist Sigmund Freud once said, “Humour is a mature response to human suffering”, or words to that effect. Or rather, there’s nothing like having a laugh when life’s going pear-shaped.
Marjory outside the Ayia Playia taverna in Falanthi, near Koroni
There’s more fun and craziness with Foteini and a strange shoe creation; a comical interface with a religious relic in Corfu, a house minding stint in southern Greece above a taverna with escapades we didn’t expect. But there are other stories too that are thought-provoking and chip away a bit more at the Greek psyche and lifestyle.
I hope you enjoy this book and if you do, please let me know. I always love to hear from readers. And do post a review of the book on Amazon if you care to. It always helps to introduce an author’s work to new readers.
Thanks for dropping by. Stay safe. x
The Greek books
To buy the new ebook (paperback to follow soon) on all Amazon stores, click on this universal link: https://mybook.to/DonkeyOnCatwalk
Marjory’s other best-selling memoirs deal with her time in Greece with her husband Jim and Wallace the terrier, living in the wild southern Peloponnese. She has also written two novels set in southern Greece. You can find them on her Amazon page.
THIS Saturday is the feast day of Ayios Dimitrios (Saint Dimitrios), pictured above in his usual guise, a jaunty character in a green cape, riding a sorrel-coloured horse.
It’s a big feast day in Greece (October 26) and the ‘name day’ for anyone with the moniker Dimitris, Dimitrios, or Dimitra for women. There will be a service early at churches named after the saint and then usually a yiorti, a celebration, nearby, especially in rural areas.
I’ve featured a few of these feast days and celebrations in my books as well as the local characters who frequented them. They are one of the best ways for foreigners to get a unique insight into Greek life with some of its pomp but mostly its spontaneity and eccentricity. It’s Greek people in their own world, enjoying the simple pleasures of village and family life with a rural papas, priest, or two in the mix as well. Tables will be spread out under the olive trees, as it was in the hillside village of Megali Mantineia, where we spent our first year in the southern Peloponnese. Locally sourced goat or lamb is often roasted in the village fournos (woodfired oven), or a spit-roast barbecue set up, or food brought from local tavernas. It’s always a nice occasion, unless you’re vegan perhaps!
Villagers, and two local priests, enjoying a yiorti celebration in the southern Peloponnese in front of a mad, smoking fournos
Ayios Dimitrios was a martyr saint who, in the 4th century AD, was imprisoned and tortured for helping the citizens of Thessaloniki in northern Greece to rise up against the pagan teachings of the Romans. The feast day of Ayios Dimitrios has an added charm because if the weather has turned especially warm in the last two weeks of October, the Greeks call this The Little Summer of Saint Dimitrios. It’s a mellow, euphoric end to the summer season. Traditionally, October us the time for farmers to bring their flocks down from the hills to lower pastures for winter grazing, so the Little Summer is always a welcome occurrence.
The Little Summer of S D featured significantly in my first novel A Saint For The Summer. The Saint in the title has a few different meanings in the narrative but the main allusion is to Saint Dimitrios because his feast day celebration in a Taygetos mountain village is instrumental in the plot, bringing an intriguing World War II mystery to its nail-biting conclusion.
Jim, Marjory and Wallace in the town of Koroni, one of the places featured in Marjory’s Greek trilogy
In my three travel memoirs, I describe other saints’ days because when we first went to the southern Peloponnese on our four-year odyssey we never said ‘no’ to these occasions. St Dimitrios was a favourite because my husband Jim was given the name Dimitris (the Greek equivalent) by villagers, and I was christened early on as Margarita by my goat farmer friend Foteini because she couldn’t pronounce my real name. These names stuck the whole time we were in Greece and seem to fire up again every time we return.
The feast day celebrations were always convivial and Greeks were generous in embracing outsiders in what is essentially a very traditional Greek day. We had good company, great local cuisine and plenty of wine and gossip. More importantly, as foreigners, we learnt a lot from these celebrations.
The tiny chapel of Ayios Yiorgos (above) in the hills behind the village of Megali Mantineia with its flower decked icon. A centuries-old fresco of St George in a Mani monastery (below)
One memorable celebration was for the feast day of Ayios Yiorgos (St George), possibly the biggest of the saints’ celebrations in Greece. St George was another great martyr saint and a tribune living in the first century AD who is always depicted on his white horse, spearing a dragon-like interloper. You can just see the beast above at the bottom of the icon where age and water damage have diluted the colours.
It was at this celebration in 2011 at a small chapel in the hills above Megali Mantineia that we met a businessman called Tassos over lunch who was curious about our odyssey in rural Greece in the midst of the economic crisis.
“Why come to live in Greece now?” he asked. “If weather and the beach is the main reason, there are sunnier and easier places to live than Greece.”
Greece has lovely unspoilt coves like these at Otylo in the Mani but it has many more hidden assets
It was hard to convince him that it was Greece we wanted for this mid-life odyssey and nowhere else. Still puzzled, he then asked: “What do you really seek to find, my friends, in our country that you cannot find in your own?”
It was a very good question. What indeed? And the question remained with me throughout my years in Greece, informing my own search for meaning and fulfilment in this country as well as informing my writing. The scene with Tassos found its way into an early chapter in the second memoir, Homer’s Where The Heart Is, as we took on more adventures in southern Greece and experienced the chaos of an increasingly bitter crisis.
His query is something that many expats ask themselves, if just in the form of ‘What is it about this complex country that I’ve fallen in love with?’ Of course, there’s no simple answer to this. For me, there were many things I sought and found, and loved, about Greece, as you will discover if you read Homer, and the other memoirs of course.
For the feast day of St George, tables spread under the olive trees for villagers, and the priest (left), of Megali Mantineia
It could be that being able to access these unique celebrations on feast days, like the one for Saint Dimitrios, is part of it, an ability to enjoy simple pleasures in beautiful surroundings, embraced by warm, inclusive communities. In our four years in southern Greece, in the Mani and later in the nearby Messinian peninsula, we went to many of these feast days. They were all different in location and intensity, and we enjoyed every one of them.
If you’re in Greece and you get the chance to attend a feast day, or indeed any of the other larger celebrations of Easter and August, do go, and also to the church services preceding them. You don’t have to be especially religious to attend because the services offer unique insights into much more than just the Orthodox faith. It is here that you gain insight into Greek traditions and social life, and rituals that are gloriously diverting and rooted in the Byzantine world. These are rituals that have changed little in the past 500 years. You won’t be disappointed. And Greek people, I promise you, will admire your interest and curiosity.
I’VE been going to Greece all my life and I had never seen a live octopus in the sea, or come close to seeing one, though I’ve snorkelled a lot in all the right places. But when Jim and I were on the beach late last summer in Koroni (southern Peloponnese), our attention was caught by a German family in the water, and one of the kids shouting the word ‘Octopus!’
Jim and I looked at each other as we splashed about in the warm clear water. We thought it must be a childish wind-up, but the father dived in with a snorkel mask on and after a while the whole family were in a circle, the kids getting fizzy with excitement. It was pretty infectious, so we swam over to have a look and luckily we were wearing swimming goggles. The German guy was friendly and pointed out a flat stone on the sandy bottom in about five feet of water where the octopus had apparently built a lair. It wasn’t much to look at, though it did have a curious arrangement of smaller stones across a gap under the stone and a bent stick wedged across it like a barrier. Where was the octopus? we asked the guy, who it turns out had a nearby holiday home and was familiar with the beach, having swum there for years, and was familiar with octopuses, it seemed.
The beach we visited just north of Koroni town
“It’s hiding under the rock. Give it a moment. It will come out,” he said, putting his foot on the sand right next to the entrance to the lair. By now the kids had skittered off, rather bored, and it was just us three, flattened out in the water in a magic circle, staring at the octopus lair, willing it to come out. After a while there was movement – the tip of a tentacle groped its way out, then more of it, until it was tickling one side of the guy’s ankle. Then another tentacle appeared and finally out popped the whole octopus. It was medium sized and dark brown. The guy seemed pretty relaxed about things, even when two tentacles fastened themselves round each side of his ankle in a strange hug.
Video grab of the German tourist being embraced by the octopus
“He’s pulling me,” the man said excitedly. “He’s really strong. He’s trying to pull me towards his house.”
He wasn’t kidding. We could see the octopus’s tentacles drawing tight, the suckers gripping and his body edged backwards. Was he just playing with the man, or did he fancy having him for lunch? After a bit, the man’s foot was pulled closer to the lair, the creature backing into the opening and then the octopus finally gave up when task became (comically) insurmountable. We felt incredibly privileged, however, to have witnessed this strange encounter.
Back on the beach we chatted to the German guy for a while about octopuses. He was a keen explorer of this local coastline and an underwater amateur photographer as well. This wasn’t his first experienced of being hugged by this octopus. He had already taken footage of a previous episode. He gave us the video link, which we watched when we got back to our holiday apartment. It was outstanding and almost identical to what we had seen that day. (To watch it, click the link below.)
We went back to the beach the next day, hoping to see the holidaymaker again and watch another man/octopus interface, but as fate would have it, he never reappeared and must have returned home. His parting gift to us, however, had been the amazing introduction to this curious little creature we named Oscar. And we were left wondering how we could lure him out of his house and experience the hug for ourselves. Obsessions can grow on long indolent holidays when the imagination is given a long rein.
With the October weather in southern Greece being exceptionally good, we went back for the next few days to replicate the German’s stance next to Oscar’s lair. Jim would stand with his foot next to it to entice Oscar out. While I was desperate to do the same, I was too short to keep my foot steady on the sea bottom without drowning! Even for Jim, it proved harder than we thought because the currents were slightly stronger than previously and it was difficult to hold the foot in one place for very long, so I had to add extra weight to his efforts by leaning on his shoulders. I imagine we looked like a funny pair to other holidaymakers, though there are never more than a few bathers on the beach in this slightly remote spot.
We tried this out for a few days, hoping to entice Oscar out of his lair, but he was having none of it. We guessed that after a few weeks of interaction with the German, Oscar had got to know him, as strange as that sounds, whereas we were only on nodding, not hugging, terms yet. We could see him curled up inside the lair, often one eye visible, guarding his turf, but nothing else was stirring.
“One day we’ll get hugged,” said Jim. “You wait and see!”
To be honest, we had never really thought much about octopuses until we read a feature, ironically, just before our Greek holiday. It was about a fascinating new book called Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life (HarperCollins) by Peter Godfrey-Smith, full of anecdotes that shed light on this amazing creature that has the intelligence roughly of a dog or a three-year-old child ‒ and the mischief to match.
The octopus is a cephalopod related to squid and cuttlefish that developed from a snail-like creature about 290 million years ago. It compensated for losing its shell by developing a large brain. The octopus is capable of playing, recognising different humans, as well as other octopuses; it can ‘see’ through its skin and change its shape and colour according to its moods. The Nobel Prize-winning biologist Sydney Brenner once said that the octopus was the “first intelligent being on earth”. And Godfrey-Smith shows that they’re still one of the smartest, but with their eight legs, three hearts and blue/green blood, he also describes them as the “closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien”.
Octopuses inspired the imagination of mankind long before we understood much about them. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote about them and they were admired also by the Byzantine Greeks, who feature them in many of their church frescos, especially the Ainoi (The Praises), with Christ encircled by the sun and moon, the zodiac and various creatures from elephants to scorpions – and octopuses.
A section of Byzantine fresco showing an octopus from the monastery at Homatero, Messinian peninsula
Octopuses are not only smart, however, they are also adept at interacting with humans and manipulating the environment to suit themselves. Godfrey-Smith refers to one study at the University of Otago in New Zealand, where octopuses were kept in tanks in a laboratory. It was found they could turn off the lights (they don’t like bright light) by squirting jets of water at the light bulbs when no one was watching, short-circuiting the power supply. Or they could squirt water at lab assistants they didn’t particularly like. In another international experiment, where the octopuses were routinely fed on shrimp instead of crab (which they much prefer), one octopus rebelled and would shove his shrimp into the outflow pipe as the lab assistant passed by his tank towards the exit, as a gesture of disapproval.
Godfrey-Smith, a philosopher of science and keen scuba diver, has done much of his own investigation of octopus behaviour, particularly off the east coast of Australia, where there are large colonies of octopus. He has had many similar encounters to our German acquaintance.
“If you sit in front of their den and reach out a hand, they’ll often send out an arm or two, first to explore you, and then – absurdly – to try to haul you into their lair. Often no doubt, this is an overambitious attempt to turn you into lunch. But it’s been shown that octopuses are also interested in objects that they pretty clearly know they can’t eat,” he wrote.
He also reports that a fellow diver, Matthew Lawrence, had another curious encounter with an octopus while diving off the Australian coast. The octopus grabbed Lawrence’s hand and “walked off with him in tow. Matt followed, as if he were being led across the sea floor by a very small eight-legged child”.
After about six consecutive days on the beach on Oscar patrol, during which there had been mostly cloudy, windy weather with poor water visibility, the weather cleared suddenly and became hotter and calmer again and we were able to check out Oscar’s lair properly ‒ and found him still inside. Maybe it was a case of finally putting a name to a foot, but Oscar seemed more responsive this time to Jim planting his foot by the lair. With our heads just in the water, watching through our goggles, we were finally rewarded with the sight of one tentacle emerging, groping its way to Jim’s ankle and attaching itself, and then another tentacle round the other side. Then, as we’d seen before, Oscar moved completely out of his lair and stood beside Jim’s foot, the two tentacles straining, the others locked into position behind him.
The beach near Koroni with its clear water where Jim had his first octopus hug
“He’s pulling my foot. My God, it feels weird! He’s really strong,” said Jim, with an edge of hysteria in his voice. “I hope he doesn’t pull me into the den!”
“Nah, you wouldn’t fit!” I snipped, because I had octopus-hug envy really bad by then. Why couldn’t it be me too, I thought? It would have been right up there with swimming with dolphins or snorkelling with whales.
After a while, Oscar, bored probably with trying to lug a goliath into his house, slithered back inside, watching us all the while with his dark, shrewd eyes. Maybe he only offered the hug to shut us up; get us off his back finally, but though we returned a few days more and swam around his lair, he never emerged again. Game over!
One night, not long after the Oscar hug, we were having dinner with a Greek couple we had met in Koroni a few years earlier. Tasos is a genial guy who likes a good wind-up and having been a fisherman early on in life, he was very interested in our octopus story.
“You were lucky to find one. They are quite rare in these parts now. The eggs get eaten by some African fish that’s breeding now in these waters. If you tell any other Greeks where you saw the octopus exactly, they’ll go out and catch him, so don’t say a word. Okay?” We nodded, horrified.
“But you can tell me,” he said with a wink. “Just out of interest.”
Ho, ho! “No way!” I told him.
But that got me thinking. Before our encounter, barbecued octopus was one of my favourite meals in Greece, as it is for most people ‒ but not any more. I haven’t, and won’t, eat octopus again. They live for just a few years, are too smart and too rare in places, too cute all round to devour. Most of all, I’ll never be able to forget the sight of small Oscar giving Jim that shy, watery hug. It’s something we won’t ever experience again. Unless … he’s still there this summer when we go back to Greece!
Marjory has just published a new book, a novel, set in southern Greece, called A Saint For The Summer. This is a contemporary tale but with a narrative thread back to the Second World War, a “tale of heroism, faith and love” described by a recent reviewer as “entertaining, enthralling”. For more information, see the books page link, above.
If you have liked any of the books please think of adding a small review on Amazon sites which is always very welcome. And comments on the blog are also very welcome. Thanks for calling by.
Greek Easter service at Ayios Dimitrios, Koroni, Messinia
WHEN I think of Easter in Greece, I think of dyed red eggs, euphoria and feasting. I also think of mutant incense, terrier rebellion and ‘Ecclesiastical Knee Syndrome’.
The Holy Week (Megali Evdomada) is this week, and it’s the most significant date in the Greek calendar. From all my many years of visiting Greece, Easter leaves indelible memories for its sense of drama and anticipation. Much of the drama is supplied by the daily church services that are like small one-act plays of varying intensity and nail-biting climaxes that progress the story of Easter, which seems unique to the Orthodox Church. Even if you’re not religious, it’s a wonderful chance to see Greeks at their most reverent, and at their colourful best, with plenty of pomp, circumstance and sometimes unplanned slip-ups showing that the best rehearsed productions can be derailed.
When we were living in the hillside village of Megali Mantineia in the Mani (southern Peloponnese), the sombre Easter Friday service ran slightly amok when Wallace, our naughty Jack Russell terrier, disgraced himself, slipped out of our village house and raced along with the procession, turning a timeless ritual into a cross between a riot and a Crufts obstacle course for Jack Russells. The Friday service is the grand procession of the Epitafios, where a flower-decked bier, representing the crucified Christ, is carried through villages and cities everywhere in Greece, and is a magical event to witness.
Our village procession started at the main church, went up to the graveyard, so the papas could offer prayers for the dead, and looped back along village lanes towards the church again, with the papas and elders at its head. Wallace managed to invade it early on. I don’t think the villagers had seen anything quite like the hyperkinetic Wallace, weaving his way through the procession, a blur of white fur, and retrieving him required a bit of a miracle. It became one of the chapters in my first memoir Things Can Only Get Feta.
Marjory with naughty Wallace, the Easter procession buster
The services in this Easter week are awe-inspiring for their organisation, their props and those amazing psaltes, chanters, who advance most of the service and seem tireless. Even during the tough economic crisis, no detail was ever spared and for that you can only admire the Greeks. Yet sometimes nerves get the better of everyone. On one of the Thursday services in our first year in the Mani, which is a particularly long and devotional service, the poor deacon, standing beside the local papas, turning over the pages of the old hymn book, overlooked the massively smoking censer in his hand.
“The incense started off with fragrant puffs but quickly increased to billowing acrid clouds that shrouded the first few rows of seating. We started coughing and choking. If this had been an aeroplane, oxygen masks would have dropped from the ceiling by now.” (Things Can Only Get Feta, chapter 25).
Easter Sunday with the family who featured in Marjory’s second travel memoir, Homer’s Where The Heart Is
I have experienced Easter in many locations in Greece, from tiny islands to cities. In each location, the church services have been handled with aplomb. I have also found the same level of hospitality and kindness from locals, with many invitations to share the traditional Sunday roast with an extended Greek family. One of my first Greek Easters was in Crete, which I first visited in the 1970s on my first long odyssey to Greece. I had been living and working in Athens, but before I left I had taken a few weeks’ break in Crete with a friend. We were offered a tiny holiday house by an Athenian colleague. It was opposite the beach in a completely authentic, untouched area of the northern coast, east of Hania. While the area is, sadly, unrecognisable now from what I remember then, it was a glorious piece of old Greece, with a few nearby houses, a taverna across the road, a deserted beach and not much else.
My friend and I had planned to have a quiet Easter as we knew no-one there and we knew very little about Easter customs and protocol. On Sunday morning, however, there was a knock at the door. It was the farmer who lived up the hill behind us. He vibrantly announced Christos Anesti which I knew meant, Christ Is Risen, the salutation after the Saturday night service. He told us that for the traditional Sunday feast he was roasting one of his lambs and that we must come and join his family. There was no way we could refuse. He insisted.
So we went up to his house, where the lamb was turning slowly on a spit outside and the olive groves around us were filled with succulent meaty, herby aromas. A big family had gathered: grandparents, kids, everyone excited to be eating a proper meal after weeks of the strict Lenten fast. We had lunch at a long table surrounded by these wonderful, big-hearted people, whom I could barely talk to as I spoke only limited Greek then. Somehow we managed okay and enjoyed all the conviviality, the laughter and lusty cracking of the dyed eggs, an ancient Orthodox ritual that symbolises eternal life and becomes a contest to see who can crack everyone else’s eggs without cracking their own.
Boiled eggs are dyed red for Easter and decorated with other symbols of the season
Jim and Marjory enjoying the egg-cracking contest at a memorable supper with their Kalamatan friend Kostas and his lovely family
This Sunday lunch experience was during my first long but youthful foray into a foreign culture and I had never come across such inclusiveness and kindness before from strangers, even having grown up in friendly, knock-about Australia. This was unique and the memory has lingered.
Every Easter I have spent in Greece has taught me something more about the Greek spirit, the sense of filoxenia, hospitality and this unique culture. It has also offered me some unexpected, occasionally humorous, outcomes, and the odd devious medical problem which Jim and I came across during Easter, 2014, for our second odyssey in southern Greece, in Koroni. We had decided that we would set ourselves the task for Lent of going to every evening church service of Megali Evdomada, in a different church each night, which we had never done before.
Some of the chanters at an Easter service in Koroni, Messinia
We made it through the first part of the week no trouble, but by Thursday, which is a very long service, nearly three hours, depicting Christ’s crucifixion, we were starting to run out of steam. Jim developed a painful problem which he called Ecclesiastical Knee Syndrome (EKS) because there is so much standing up and sitting down during Greek services, and at this time of year, churches are slightly cold and bone-numbing.
“The service was longer than I ever remembered any to be, full of Greek I couldn’t decipher, and as I glanced around the church I saw many Greeks looking pale and wilted, with many of the men discreetly slipping outside for a quick cigarette in the cool evening air. As foreigners, we felt the need to stay, and endure, lest we be considered slightly soft or disinterested. Nine-thirty came and went in a strange agony of chanting, incense and a babble of high Greek. Unlike Jim, after a while I welcomed EKS, and every opportunity to stand up and feel my legs like an economy passenger on a long-haul flight to Australia which is what the service began to feel like.” (Chapter 2, A Scorpion In The Lemon Tree).
A Byzantine church in the Mani hills
But the Thursday service actually ended with a surprise, slightly controversial, climax that was worth the wait, despite distressed knee cartilage. And it was a dramatic lead-up to the finale of this week, which is the Saturday service. This is something that everyone should experience once in their lives, which in the Orthodox Church represents the resurrection of Christ. And on a less illustrious level, it also represents the end of the Lenten agony for many devout Greeks, who have lived for six weeks on boiled greens and water, or near enough. It represents the end of an ecclesiastical marathon. I have experienced this Saturday service in Greek cathedrals and also in tiny island churches and it never fails to be affecting and inspiring.
The moment when the church is plunged into darkness at midnight and a single lighted candle is brought out of the sanctuary by the papas and its light slowly shared to every other member of the congregation until the church is luminescent is a simple, yet thrilling spectacle. And if you are lucky enough to also hear a particularly good rendition of the hymn Christos Anesti (Christ is Risen) then you are truly blessed.
Happy Easter!
Καλη Aνάσταση! (Kali Anastasi) Have a good resurrection, as they say in Greece!
(To hear the Vangelis rendition of Christos Anesti performed by Greek actress, Irene Pappas, please click on the link below.)
Bell-ringer Marjory at the Byzantine church of Ayioi Theodoroi
FOR our second long odyssey in Greece, my partner Jim and I spent 14 months in Koroni, Messinia, which became the basis for my third travel memoir, A Scorpion In The Lemon Tree. While the Mani had been our first choice, we ended up in Messinia, the left-hand peninsula in the southern Peloponnese. If you want to know how that happened, you’ll have to read the book. But this remote peninsula didn’t disappoint. It’s a laid-back corner of the country, with a great climate and some fascinating, often hard-to-find, corners, where we encountered some spooky sites and hidden places, most of which were mentioned in the book.
The strange ‘Hand of God Tree’ at the Homatero monastery, near Koroni
The Hand of God Tree.
This is one of the most curious things I’ve ever seen. It was Wallace, our dear Jack Russell, with his typical questing nature, who really discovered this strange tree, dragging us over to see it in the grounds of the small, deserted monastery of Ayioi Theodoroi, near the village of Homatero, west of Koroni. We had searched out the papas that day, who oversees the monastery, and were given the key to the church and instructions on how to find this fascinating place tucked into the side of a wooded ravine. Dating from the 12th century, much of its outer buildings lie in ruins but the Byzantine church, with its pantiled roof, is in good condition.
It was the tree, however, in the back garden that first captured our imagination with what appeared to be the shape of a huge closed hand on a large section of the trunk. From a distance, it looked man-made, sculpted, and yet on closer inspection we weren’t quite so sure because there was a large amount of bark left over the ‘knuckle’ of the hand.
Marjory beside the strange shape on the carob tree
Or was it something else entirely? As I wrote in Chapter 16 of the book:
“(The hand) was over a foot high and two feet wide and too smooth for a human carving, but with all the signs of being something natural, fashioned by the wind and the rain perhaps over many decades. We called it the Hand of God Tree, given its surroundings and found it curiously appealing.”
Later on, when we met up with Papa Theodoros at his village house and showed him our photos of the tree, he smiled at the title we’d given it and I asked him what the story was behind it. He told me the tree was very old, a carob tree, but if you what to know what his explanation was, and what he thought about many other fascinating subjects you can read about them in A Scorpion In The Lemon Tree. You can also read about the history of this monastery in past centuries, which was brutal at times, and probably accounts for the slightly chilly and forlorn atmosphere we encountered there.
If you’ve read Scorpion, let me know your opinion of the strange Hand of God Tree.
Old pantiles on the roof of the Byzantine church
Two of the frescos inside the church
The rest of the monastery did not disappoint and inside the old church was a fascinating collection of frescos dating back to the 16th century, including some typically bizarre frescos depicting the fate of non-believers. If you look carefully at the example above you’ll see a bizarre half owl/fish creature on the mast of the boat.
The front of the atmospheric taverna, the Ayia Playia in Falanthi
Icon of Saint Pelagia, taken on her feast day in May
Brigadoon meets rural Messinia
There are many villages on the outskirts of Koroni that are charming, but one of its secret places is the sweet village of Falanthi on a road that leads west to the Homatero monastery and some other smaller villages. Falanthi was once a thriving settlement, with a successful mining operation, but now supports a small rural population, an olive press and several lovely churches, including the small white chapel dedicated to Saint Pelagia which, curiously, has a spring rising up from under its altar and its outlet is in the courtyard of the taverna next door, called the Ayia Playia ( or Agia Plagia). If you happen to find yourself there on the feast day of Saint Pelagia in early May, when the church is open, you might be lucky to see the spring flowing under the altar, as we did.
This was one of our favourite tavernas outside Koroni (which also has many fine establishments some of which I mentioned in my book). Set by the main road and beside a small stream with a stone bridge over it, it has a retro/timewarp magic about it, with a nod to Brigadoon, the mythical Scottish village that was supposed to appear for one day, every 100 years. Except that this fine establishment is open all year, apart from October. What makes this place such a find is not just the quality of the food but the convivial owner Yiorgos (George) Bossinakis, who is a popular local character, and the place attracts a great number of people from Koroni. For more information www.agia-plagia.gr and bookings: tel 27250 41565.
The church of the Eleistria, looking down on Zaga beach, Koroni
The church of visions and miracles
The Eleistria church, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, nestles just below the southern flank of Koroni castle, with a stunning view of Zaga beach. This church was built in the late 19th century after a local woman, Maria Stathakis, saw several visions of the Virgin Mary, claiming there were sacred icons buried in the area where the church now sits. When Stathakis enlisted the help of locals to start excavating the site, sure enough three small icons were found in the fissure of rocks and a church was built. The icons have been incorporated into one large icon, which is on display in this church and is at the centre of an important feast day in Koroni every spring. The church has documented many healings that are claimed to be associated with the icon.
The icon which incorporates the three small icons found after the visions of a local woman
It’s a very atmospheric church, quite apart from its airy setting. The grotto where the icons were discovered has been preserved and forms part of a small chapel underneath the church and is worth a visit.
Tsapi beach
A beach at the end of the road
Tsapi beach is a place we discovered by accident. It isn’t well sign-posted on the road from Finicounda to Koroni and a couple of small signs say ‘Tsapi camping’ and ‘Maria’s taverna’. The road is good but winds down a hillside for 15 minutes to a secluded beach facing the Ionian Sea. On a stretch of coast with plenty of nice beaches, what’s great about this one? Despite the low-key camping site, two small tavernas, and a tiny white chapel overlooking the beach, there’s nothing here and it feels like the kind of place you discover on islands. It is enclosed on either side and has a long sandy beach, and the water quality here is dazzling. It’s a great place to swim safely, quite shallow, and great for snorkelling. It was one of the nicest places we ever found to swim and the tavernas are a real bonus. Laid-back and unfussy, they serve mostly fish dishes and you can sit all day over lunch and not feel any pressure to leave. There are several nearby beaches, which are totally deserted and you can only walk to them or visit by boat, like tiny Marathi.
Imposing battlements of Koroni Castle
What lies within – Koroni Castle
There is little left of Koroni castle now because it has been targeted down the centuries by a great slew of invaders to this southerly outpost, including the Turks, Franks and Venetians. And the Germans occupied much of it during the Second World War. Its walls remain and a scramble of ruined buildings but it has serious spooky cred and atmosphere and is worth rambling over, as it has set the scene for so much of Koroni’s history.
One of the tiny doorways at the monastery
Ayia Sophia beside the remains of an ancient temple
View up the Messinian Gulf to Kalamata, from the monastery
The castle itself is hardly a secret, dominating the whole town, but what is sometimes overlooked is the gorgeous monastery within it, of Timios Prodromos, which hasn’t changed much since the 19th century when it was built near the site of the ancient Temple of Apollo. It is set within some of the castle walls with walkways, turrets, tiny chapels and an orchard full of fruit trees. At harvest time the friendly nuns here will invite you to help yourself to fruit and offer you slices of loukoumi sweets and cool water. This monastery also played its part in protecting the citizens of Koroni during the German occupation, as I described in the book. The nearby ruined Temple of Apollo sits beside a Byzantine church. The temple was plundered in past centuries but the surrounding walls have been decorated with some of its remaining carved marbles slabs. See if you can spot them.
Palaiokastro near Pylos
Stunning Voidokoilia beach with Wallace in the left foreground
Snake Castle
Palaiokastro is an imposing castle on a high bluff overlooking Navarino Bay, on the west coast of the Peloponnese near the town of Pylos. It also overlooks the much- photographed, horseshoe-shaped Voidokoilia beach. Despite its sturdy walls, the 13th century castle, built by the Franks and later added to by the Venetians, is mostly in ruins and has a slightly creepy appeal to it, not to mention a degree of danger. Signs on the outer walls warn the structure inside is unstable but a friend in Kalamata warned us it has become a breeding ground inside for snakes, which will add to the appeal perhaps for some visitors … but we wouldn’t recommend walking inside.
Wallace at Palaiokastro
The castle was thought to be impregnable and had a strategic position on this part of the coast but was bombarded by cannon fire by interlopers, including the Turks and Venetians, which explains why it is now a ruin. The best part of visiting this castle is the walk up to its main entrance of sorts, along a narrow track from a small lower car park (beyond the bird-watching sanctuaries) near a sandy beach.
The path winds up over the sea cliffs of the Sykia Pass, and is a wild and exhilarating part of this coastline looking out towards the Ionian Sea. And when you reach the outer walls of the castle finally, they look rather appealing in this remote setting.
Another great find in this area is the nearby village of Gialova, on the edge of Navarino Bay, with a row of beachside tavernas and a nice laid-back vibe. Or if you want to push the boat out, there’s the nearby chic Costa Navarino golfing and spa resort.
Wherever you go in Messinia, there’s a sense that this region is not well-trodden and there are still many other hidden corners waiting for you to discover.
Our recent odyssey in Messinian, which was the inspiration for my third memoir A Scorpion In The Lemon Tree, was featured in a recent article in the Australian Neos Kosmos newspaper. To read click here
For a recent review of the book, see the popular WindyCity Greek site in Chicago.
For more information about this book and the two previous books in the series, charting our adventures in southern Greece during the crisis, go to the books page on the website www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com or the books page on Facebook www.facebook.com/ThingsCanOnlyGetFeta
Hello, blog readers. I am happy to announce that my third travel memoir, set in southern Greece, is now available for pre-order on Amazon.
Called A Scorpion In The Lemon Tree: Mad adventures on a Greek peninsula, the book charts my second long odyssey in the southern Peloponnese with my partner Jim and our crazy Jack Russell dog, Wallace.
While the first two books were set in the Mani, the central peninsula, this one takes place in and around Koroni at the tip of the Messinian Peninsula, where we stayed for 14 months from early 2014.
Marjory, Jim and Wallace in Koroni.
At the window of Palio Spiti (the old house), described in the new book.
Why we ended up in Koroni, when we had our heart set on living once more in the Mani, forms the basis of the book and reveals how you can plan your life down to the last detail but it will be derailed in the end, especially in the wonderfully spontaneous, and sometimes chaotic, place that Greece is. There are more perilous and funny adventures along the way as we try to find long-term rental accommodation and finally come to terms with living in a house that we didn’t expect we’d end up in. If you read the book, you’ll find out why.
A lemon tree at Villa Anemos overlooking the Gulf of Messinia.
You might be wondering about the title, A Scorpion In The Lemon Tree. There are specific reasons why I chose this title and apart from being unlucky enough to have these pesky critters calling on us quite a bit, the title is a kind of metaphor as well, and you can make your own mind up about what the scorpion represents in the context of the narrative. And in case you’ve missed it, there is a scorpion in the lemon tree on the cover illustration. Can you spot it? Wallace the dog should give you a clue.
View of Koroni from its old Venetian castle.
The artwork was produced by the talented London artist Anthony Hannaford, www.anthonyhannaford.co.uk, who created the fabulous covers for my first two books. Once again, he has managed to capture all the colour and vibrancy of Greece. And cheeky Wallace got a front-row seat this time. I also have to thank Jim Bruce for his great editing and formatting of this edition www.ebooklover.co.uk
In this memoir we will make friends with a new cast of heart-warming characters, while connecting again with old friends in the Mani, including our dear friend, goat farmer Foteini, with whom we have several humorous encounters, as always.
Long sandy beaches along the gulf side of Koroni.
While we may have started our latest odyssey disappointed at not being able to live once more in the Mani, we fell in love with Koroni in the end. What’s not to love? It is in a remote part of the (left-hand) Messinian peninsula and I was surprised that there had been so little written about it in the past, so I am thrilled to be able to highlight this region and I hope I will entice more of you to visit. It is a haven of peace and quiet where you won’t see the outward signs of economic crisis, or the effects of recent migration to Greece.
Koroni is set beside a lovely old harbour, with a castle on a high acropolis above and narrow winding streets ascending to it. It is atmospheric and unspoilt, with the Messinian gulf on one side and the Ionian Sea on the other. On either side of the promontory are wide sandy beaches, old churches, and thriving villages within easy reach.
Over the coming months on the blog, I will focus on other aspects of Messinia, as mentioned in the book including some of the hidden corners of this area, and a few curious and unexplained phenomena, like The Hand of God Tree. Watch this space!
I hope you enjoy this memoir, the third in my Peloponnese series. Like the other two books, the narrative is such that you can read it on its own and understand what our travels in Greece have been all about, but you will get a better understanding of how we connected with this region, and its people, if you read the other books as well, starting with Things Can Only Get Feta. The first two chart our adventures from 2010, when we first left our Scottish village to relocate to a remote hillside village for a year, despite the economic crisis. But the year became four in the end. Four of the most fascinating years of our lives.
Enjoy the new book, which is currently available as an ebook and a paperback on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other outlets. I thank you all for your ongoing support of my work. I always appreciated comments on the blog and if you have liked the books, a small review on Amazon will also be most welcome. It is the lifeblood of authors.
