Hoopoes and Swallows, Asparagus and Taramosalata...

 

When Lisa wants to go for a morning walk, all winter I’ve been used to piling on whatever warm clothes come to hand, a woolly hat over unbrushed hair. But this morning I ran into several neighbours, two of them dressed smartly in black for church. It’s the start of Easter week and more people are back on the island.

Also back are the lovely hoopoes – I’ve seen several, not noticing the medium-sized brown birds until they take off in flight and show their flamboyant black-and-white-striped tail feathers. I’ve heard the whistling sound of bee-eaters – it seems early for them – but not seen one yet. Much more evident are the swallows, swooping low and fast, midnight-blue plumage on top and snow-white underneath, tail like two long, fine tines of a carving fork.

Yesterday morning, four young goats were playing on the old drystone wall in front of my house, two of them trotting over the rocks and head-butting each other. Despite the abundance of fresh vegetation everywhere, they stand at my fence and look greedily at the garden.

Goat farmers are much in evidence too, guarding their stock and fattening them up. ‘Don’t let the dog out of the car here!’ snarled one when, having seen him with his flock, I stopped to ask where it was OK to walk. We’re avoiding Plaka and Lethra until Easter is over, when there’ll be a lot of confused mother goats saying, ‘I haven’t seen young Johnny for days…’ ‘Meh, and my Matilda’s disappeared too… And what’s happened to that nice man who kept bringing treats?’

Livadia and Megalo Horio will also be off-bounds for the next week while firecrackers are exploding – I heard the first yesterday, while in between downpours we walked along Livadia seafront. More rocks had been washed up by powerful wind and waves from the south recently. As we walked around the bay, the pebbles looked brilliant white against a clear aquamarine sea and a brooding sky. Lisa, of course, went in for a swim.

We’ll stick to places far from firecrackers, the fields in the Eristos valley where Lisa loves to sniff for rabbits, occasionally making one leap out of a bush and safely away, while I keep an eye out for other prizes. Perhaps because we’ve had plenty of rain, or perhaps I’ve got better at looking for them, I’ve found more fresh wild asparagus than ever before, and more exquisite orchids – sending photos to my orchid-ID gurus Eleftheria and Gerry. And in the hillside terraces closer to home, I look out for tiny fragments of old pottery with an unusual pattern or glaze. Yesterday afternoon, I found a little of everything so didn’t mind that my feet were squelching in my boots from walking through wet grass. Lisa had a wonderful time, enjoyed a huge dinner and watched neighbours walk by while I pulled up weeds from the garden, enjoying the evening sunshine. By the time I lit a fire for a cosy evening, she was in a deep sleep.

 

I’ve been using the excuse of Lent and long walks to eat halva every day. My favourite from Drapetsona in Piraeus was made with carob syrup. During the ‘fasting’ periods leading up to Easter when some give up meat, certain traditional foods appear. After eating delicious white taramasalata at tavernas in Rhodes and then Astypalea during trips last month, I decided to try making my own. The pink packaged stuff is terrible in Greece compared to good supermarket taramosalata in the UK. For the first time, I bought the salted roe from the minimarket and got instructions: mashed potatoes (or bread), olive oil, lemon. Mine tasted bland until I added finely chopped onion. The ladies at the minimarket said not everyone likes it with onion.

Before this last rainy week, we had weeks of dry weather, good swims, even lying in warm sun. But the heavy rainfall this winter has been a blessing for the island.

Now big leaves have now grown back on my fig trees, and sparrows are knocking down the hard green figs, discarding them when they find they can’t eat them, looking instead for other things to eat in the soil, taking baths in Lisa’s water bowl.

For the last months, I’ve been working on revisions of the new manuscript. It’s something I was writing on and off for ages, and finally felt driven to finish last year. With the help of an excellent editor, I hope I’ve knocked it into shape. It’s about my adventures on Tilos with Lisa since we moved to this house at Ayios Antonis with its fig trees and vines, surrounded by mountains and sea, life in an amazing place with an amazing dog, woven in with stories of island life past and present. Maybe AN ISLAND HOME AND A SALTY DOG?

Ahem, says Fishbags, aren’t you forgetting someone?

The amazing salty dog just came to look at me through the open kitchen door, suggesting it might be time for another walk or another breakfast. Ah, and the power’s just gone off again – for about the tenth time in two days – so this will have to wait until later…

Just a very quick post...

 

I recently launched my new website, www.jenniferbarclaybooks.com, but I realised that all my books direct people to this blog, which hasn't been updated for ages. Hence this little post, which will have to suffice for now.

I'm writing this on a calm, beautiful evening in late October, from my home on Tilos. All I can hear right now is the sea, waves crashing on the shore.

I am trying to finish a new book about life here with Lisa my dog since I moved to this house. I've booked an editor to work with me from the middle of November. I'm hoping to have it in a fit state to self-publish by early next summer. 

Life has been challenging this year since I lost my dad. But this is what I love doing, and I've met so many lovely readers over the last few months who appreciate reading about island life, that it feels like a positive goal. 

Thank you for your support. I wish you all health and happiness!

Delivery, Small Island-Style

 

A dozen years ago – can it really be? I’ve never lived in a place for so long! – Yorgos Orfanos showed up one day at the Honey Factory to deliver all my belongings I’d shipped from England.

Now I’ve been in my own house, equally unbelievably, for five years. When I bought it, I’d agreed to buy it with all the contents and I didn’t want to change too much about this authentic little island house by the sea. But my house is finally entering the twenty-first century – which feels OK now that it’s 2024 and all.

It started with a trip to Rhodes a few weeks ago to take the car for its MOT (KTEO), meet my mum at the airport, and take Lisa to the vet; then since I had the car, we went for a drive out of town. I’m pretty sure last time I visited the IKEA in Rhodes there wasn’t much of a showroom. That may have been several years ago.

This time, it was rather more impressive, and I’d been thinking a few of my old things really had to go. Maybe I was ready for a new couch (I have two, both second-hand, or maybe third-hand). And some new outdoor furniture. And a thick rug would be nice under my feet in the winter. Oh, and some lightweight, stackable chairs. And…

The sales assistant at IKEA at first insisted they didn’t deliver to Tilos. But luckily I knew that they did. We insisted. They checked. They did deliver to Tilos. We placed the order.

Back in Tilos a few days later, the next thing that happened was that another hotplate became unusable on my old cooker. This stove was also in the house when I bought it five years ago, and already very old, but two of the hotplates and the oven still worked. Why change it…? I even painted over the rust a couple of years ago with white enamel. Really. And painted little icons to show which knob was for which hotplate.

But recently it seemed the oven only had two settings, off or burning. And there were no numbers left on the knobs, so only I knew how to work it. To be fair, I have considered buying a new one, but the little hotplate for the briki, the Greek coffee pot, has been something of a sticking point – and not because it hasn’t been cleaned. Most new cookers don’t have them, and I didn’t want an extra appliance. I liked making my Greek coffee on my stove.

Then one night when my mum cooked dinner, one of the knobs came flying off onto the floor. An accident? I’m not sure… But I did go online and order a lovely new cooker.  

Anyway, so, a few days ago I was in Livadia when I saw Yorgos hanging out with a group of guys I knew, and as I said hello, I mentioned that I’d ordered some stuff, because Yorgos is still the man who transports large items by truck via the big ship from Rhodes to Tilos.

‘It might be here already,’ he said. ‘What is it, chairs?’

‘Yes, and other things… Call me!’ I said. I was excited; and then as several days passed, I figured it must have been someone else’s chairs that had arrived.

Delivery to Tilos is fairly haphazard, at the mercy of boat schedules plus mysterious other obstacles. Christmas cards from the UK arrive in February. Last year I ordered something from a company that refunded my money because it took so long to arrive, even though I told them that was normal. Yesterday I received an email from another company asking me for feedback on my recent purchase of a new bag. Don't you get tired of being asked for feedback on everything? But in any case, it hasn’t arrived yet.

This morning was Sunday morning, as peaceful as most Sunday mornings at this time of year. Lisa stayed in bed after a big walk to the monastery yesterday, so I made myself a Greek coffee and a little breakfast. Then I noticed someone standing at my gate, and heard my name shouted. It wasn’t Nikos the fisherman, and didn’t seem to be one of the farmers with vegetables…

It was Yorgos, with a truckload of boxes that he said were all for me.

‘Where d’you want it?’ he asked as he and his helper started unloading and carrying stuff in.

I suggested they just stack most of the stuff against the outside wall and I’d sort it out myself, but clearly the cooker at least would need to find a place in the kitchen to await the electrician.

‘If I’d known it was coming,’ I said to Yorgos, smiling, ‘if you’d called me, I could have made some space and cleaned…’

But Yorgos perhaps thought that most people would have their house already in some kind of order and cleanliness, i.e. as a general state of affairs. Whenever I clean, I think how nice it looks and that I should do it more often. But then I go for a walk instead, or into the garden to plant some seeds. And with my front door always open, the kitchen floor seems constantly covered in mud, dust, sand and bits of firewood.

I hurriedly moved boots, dog food, bags, socks, snorkel, sarongs, etc etc and swept a space for the cooker, and the guys carried it in.

Yorgos said, ‘Don’t stand on it,’ and grinning, pointed to the icon on the packaging on top of the cooker that did in fact show a pair of feet and an X over them.

‘Oh, I was hoping to dance on it!’

(And anyone who's been to a party in my kitchen knows that stranger things happen.)

The whole thing had taken maybe ten minutes and then they were gone, with everything piled neatly. I thought Yorgos probably doesn’t call people in advance because this way it all gets done quickly, or as they say in Greek, derived from the ancient Doric I believe, ‘taka-taka.’

It was a warm, sunny morning, but somehow it felt like Christmas. I retrieved my coffee and started opening my first package.