Warm wishes for the holidays, wherever you are!
Happy Holidays...
Bet you thought I'd be frolicking on an Australian beach and preparing to throw another shrimp on the barbie, mate. Well, so did I, but here on the south coast of New South Wales, the weather's a little patchy. Cloudy. I did go for an extremely swift swim in a very cold ocean, but I thought we'd all prefer to see some sunshine from around this time last year back in Tilos...
My heartfelt thanks to all of you for continuing to support the Octopus in my Ouzo and Falling in Honey this year. I've been using my time away to write a lot. I've also been having plenty of fun with pet-sitting adventures off the beaten track in New South Wales. I'll leave you with photos of some of the new friends I've made in the last few months.
A Field Guide to Happiness
Having moved to the
tiny, isolated Greek island of Tilos to make my own life happier, I can relate.
I read this book so quickly that it was almost over too fast. One of the things
that makes Tilos special for me is the extreme ‘otherness’ of life there,
compared to many parts of the world, which helps me to make the most of each
day. I’ve given such things much thought since, through force of circumstance,
I’ve spent most of this year temporarily living in Australia. Throughout Linda
Leaming’s funny, interesting, thought-provoking book, I found myself saying, ‘Exactly…’
Living in Bhutan has
made her think differently about pretty much everything, from time, work and
money to nature, family and other people. And that isn’t because it’s been a
walk in the park. Often it’s the challenges that have made her appreciate how
simple happiness can be. She talks about losing your baggage, calming down and
learning to breathe, illustrating each life lesson with Buddhist ideas and with
smartly written, entertaining anecdotes from her life spent between Bhutan and her
native Tennessee.
With food, for example,
the range of ingredients in Bhutan is limited; its remoteness means the shops ‘aren’t
perpetually stocked’, and sometimes they have to make do. Yet they eat very
well with what they have, and appreciate it. It’s satisfying, fresh, wholesome,
natural.
One of the things I’ve
learned not to do in Tilos is to look at recipes for yummy things
for which half of the ingredients will not be available. Better to buy what
looks good, then make something from it; wondering what to have for dinner is
not really something I need to think about, then. When I first arrived in
Australia and could shop in large supermarkets again, the array of foodstuffs,
rather than being exciting, left me baffled. How do you know where to start
when you can have anything? The choice did not make me happier. Whereas in
Tilos, the arrival of fresh vegetables after a winter storm has left us cut off
for a week is a cause for celebration.
Leaming has a beautiful
way of describing the simple pleasures of life. Walking in high mountains, she
says, ‘slows me down mentally and diminishes the volume of my inner voice’. The
simple matter of getting from A to B, with nothing to do but ‘relax in that
feeling of suspension’, induces a meditative frame of mind. There’s a lovely story
she tells about divorce mediation (not hers), which has absolutely nothing to
do with lawyers, and which has a happy ending. There’s also a delightful story
about sending her husband Namgay into town to buy a part for a washing machine,
and him returning instead with a salad spinner.
Although on the surface
it’s an easy-to-read, funny and accessible guide to increasing your inner peace
wherever you are, the book also subtly demonstrates that one country can be
more conducive to happiness than others. Bhutan is famous for its Gross
National Happiness, which Leaming explains was originally a whimsical comment
made by the fourth king of Bhutan during an interview, but has developed into
something more like a manifesto. Government policy is determined not purely by
economic factors but by consideration for the environment and culture. Which brings
her back to the point that for happiness, both on a large and a small scale,
it’s important to decide ‘what’s important besides
money’. Clearly money alone doesn’t bring happiness, so why pursue it so
doggedly? *
Having lived in several
different countries, I find it fascinating to observe the subtle variations in
the way people do things, and I’ve always tried to absorb lessons; that’s also
why I love books by people who immerse themselves in different cultures and have
challenging experiences. Did Leaming learn to enjoy life more by living in
Bhutan? Part of it was simply her character and life happening around her, but
being forced to reassess her values constantly helped put it into focus. When
you’re always learning, your mind is alert to small differences. If you’re
changing your whole life, it’s easier to change the way you do the small
things.
There are parts of the
book that you may disagree with, which makes me think it’s an interesting pick
for a book club. Linda and her husband, a Buddhist painter, spend part of their
year in the USA, where Namgay has a weakness for buying gadgets. There was a
jolt for me when she mentioned him using a leaf-blower, which strikes me as a
piece of unnecessary baggage that has potential to infringe on other people’s
happiness: I am happy to say my peace and quiet has never yet been torn asunder
by the noise of a leaf-blower on Tilos – though it was torn asunder by plenty
of other things.
But one of the pleasures
of this book is its idiosyncrasies and its tone; she’s not claiming to be
perfectly happy or enlightened or to have all the answers. It’s a book that
makes you think while it gives you pleasure, and for me that’s a five-star
reading experience.
Bhutan seems to inspire
beautiful books; this one will go on the shelf alongside Jamie Zeppa’s Beyond the Sky and the Earth, and Britta
Das’s Buttertea at Sunrise. I say ‘on
the shelf’, but I mean it metaphorically as I currently don’t have any
bookshelves. How’s that for getting rid of baggage? Instead I’ll keep it on my
Kindle and read it again more slowly, calming down and taking time to breathe.
A big thank you to Hay
House for the review copy. And to Linda for the use of her photos of Bhutan (that's Linda and Namgay in the photo above),
and for sharing her thoughts and experiences in this book. Here's a link to her website:
(*note how I cunningly inserted a picture of a Bhutanese dog, clearly not in the slightest bit interested in pursuing money doggedly...)
The Pet Project
On my last nights in Tilos back
in mid-July, I slept on the terrace under the stars, and Lisa spent her nights
either curled up on the comfy chair nearby, or waking me up by cracking bones with her teeth. Once she came over to where I was sleeping and nuzzled me through the mosquito net.
On the final morning, waking at
a few minutes to five, I took her for a morning stroll. There was a big full
moon over the mountain of Profitis Ilias. Back home, I dragged my big suitcase
out to the car, then came back and rubbed her belly while she gnawed on the old no-longer-stuffed toy (she took the stuffing out of it last time
I left). When it was time to leave, she graciously accepted a treat to eat as I
left, so I didn’t have to look at sad eyes, but a happy dog.
Still, I didn’t really stop crying for
her until I was halfway around the world.
Now, the whole point of our
being in Australia, Ian and I, is to look after his mum. But that means being
tied to her house, in a place on the South Coast of New South Wales that is
very pretty but - a little way back from this spectacular coastline - has lots of houses and cars and not enough hills that you can get to without a car. OK, we’re
pretty picky, after living in Tilos. We’re used to being free to move around a
lot. We’re also used to having pets around; in my case, one demanding dog, in
Ian’s case a large number of cats.
I started dreaming of Tilos,
and dreaming of Lisa; it didn't help that I was working on my new book and looking over old photos of her. Every day we walked up or down the coast paths, and were
making friends with more dogs in the neighbourhood than people, almost.
One day, walking back from the
shops, I saw a dog running down the street and heard the man shout to it, ‘Katse
kato!’ Are you Greek, I asked. Yes, he said, from Chios. He’d lived in
Australia decades but still talked to his dog in Greek.
Something needed to be done; we
needed to go somewhere; we all needed a change of scene, as Ann, Ian’s mum, wasn’t happy staying at home all the
time anyway. So it occurred to me that after my experience with house-sitters
earlier this year when I needed someone to look after Lisa, we could do some
house- and pet-sitting ourselves. I signed up to an Australian house-sitting
website.
It took a while to find the
right assignments, but finally we started in mid-September in one of our
favourite places, the Blue Mountains. Our first assignment was to look after
five cats, seven chickens and a diamond python, which I thought sounded
perfect. And it was. The hosts were happy for the three of us to stay. We were able to explore lots of new walks.
I’ve just started my second
assignment in the mountains, looking after a lovely dog called Major (I
feel a little like Basil Fawlty calling ‘Major!’). This one I’ll
do on my own, and will use the quiet time for working. On my first day, today, he enjoyed his walk around the neighbourhood but gave me that familiar
sad-eye expression when I left alone to go into town. Then he
only ate his own food when he was absolutely sure my own food wasn’t on the menu.
Dogs!
We’re already booked in for two
more assignments in the coming months, so we have plenty of new experiences coming up. I don’t think there will be too many
dull moments.
I'm also posting stories also on the 'Australia' page of the blog, and photos on my Facebook page.
A Walk to Plaka
Everything was packed and
organised. Plaka was where I'd decided to spend 12 July, my last day in Tilos for months. I
set out with Lisa in late morning. Walking by Elpida, the taverna by the sea
where the road turns one way to Ayios Andonis, the other to Plaka, on impulse I
stopped and bought dolmades se paketo
to take to the beach for lunch. The clouds that had kept the day cool seemed to
be clearing, and I might want to linger by the sea.
The
dolmades were warm as I wrapped them up and tucked them in my backpack.
Sotiris, the taverna owner, sat down again on the terrace and asked about
Yianni, when he was coming back from Australia. Not yet, I said. His mother needs him. But he wants to come back. I asked Sotiri to fill up my water
bottle, needing enough for Lisa and me for the day.
The
walk was beautiful; though it’s a road, not a footpath, there are hardly
ever any cars. I kept Lisa on the lead so she couldn’t chase the goats.
We passed the little monastery of Kamariani, where back at the start of the
year I had arranged to meet Ian – known to locals as Yianni – for a walk to
Plaka.
After
eight years in Tilos, he had to leave, he said, as his 82-year-old mum needed
help. He would go at the end of January. We’d been friends since I arrived
on the island but never close – strangely, as we both loved writing and books and walking. Until recently, I'd assumed the 'S' he wrote about in his blog was still his girlfriend; and on the other side of the mountain I'd been with my own S, though quietly I'd felt it wasn't to last.
In the final days before he left, realising there might be something more
between us, we got to know one another, walking to some of our favourite places
in the hills and swimming in ice-cold sea together. And
now, six months later, I was leaving Tilos too for a while. Why would anyone
leave Tilos in the summer to go to Australia in the winter? For love, of course.
When
Lisa and I reached the top of the track that leads down to Plaka beach, the sea
looked clear and blue and perfect. I let her off the lead so she could run to the
sea to cool off.
There'd been a fire at Plaka just a week before. My mum had been
staying with me, and we’d seen the plume of smoke rising from the side of the
mountain one day as we returned home. They’d managed to put it out quickly, dropping
seawater from above, though that night we’d seen the red lights of the helipad still
illuminated.
Now
I made my way slowly down the rough track, surveying the fire damage. A large
area of the park was charred to dark grey. The peacocks, I'd heard, had all
survived. When I looked up from the beach, there was still a view of trees and
green hillsides, but when I swam out into the sea, large blackened sections of
ground were visible. It would probably take the winter rains to start things
growing again.
People
used fire sometimes to help things grow better, didn’t they? What can seem
terrible damage one day… like what I’d done at the end of January… that was for
the best, I hoped.
Along the beach was a scattering of hippyish Greek holidaymakers.
I walked farther around to my favourite place, and found Lisa some shade to
sleep in. I swam underwater over the posidonia, the sea grass that sustains so
much sea life, as it flowed back and forth with the waves. Using Dimitris’ old
mask, which his family gave me, I got up close to some of the fish: a skaros below
me tilted its body a little to look up, then spotted me and
shot away; a yermanos, mottled grey and white and black, had ferocious spines
sticking up from its back although it was only half the length of my hand. I
touched bright orange-red anemones and swam into shoals of tiny fish, and watched
groups of others as pale and uniform as the Christian ichthus.
As
Lisa and I walked back across the beach, peacocks stalked the sand, moving
their heads back and forth under delicate tiaras. A couple of them flew up onto
the crumbling gateposts as if pretending to be ornamental; then they stared at
one another, and leaped down into the park.
I
considered what I love about Tilos: it’s rugged, wild, vibrantly colourful,
diverse and yet empty, like living in a national park. Yet it’s small enough to
get to know intimately, to see how the view changes from season to season, from
morning to evening or depending on the way the wind’s blowing. It’s uninhabited
enough – except for its roaming animals and underwater life – that you can believe
it’s your own.
Those
last few days had been intense, with many powerful emotions coursing through me.
But it was time to leave and continue getting to know the man who also loved
this place in very similar ways, who loved being alone in the emptiest parts of
the island and who also cried to leave it. At these times when I felt utterly
in love with my surroundings, he was the only person I could really imagine walking
and swimming with.
After
I got back to Megalo Horio, I went to say goodbye to my landlord, Antoni, and
he told me he wanted to keep the house for me when I returned, and that I
should pass on his greetings to Yianni. As I walked up the hill, Vasiliki was
at Kali Kardia and Lisa attacked her with love, holding her face in her front
paws. Vasiliki said she’d make sure Lisa got to spend some time at their house
over the summer with their dog Freddie. I couldn't take her with me, but she'd be happy at home with Stelios in Tilos.
Nikos
and Rena were sitting outside the supermarket. ‘I’m leaving tomorrow,’ I said,
and Nikos nodded to Rena, who went inside and came back, smiling, with the aluminium
bottle that Nikos had asked me to take to Yianni. Ouzo. Nikos never tired of
telling me how Yianni would hike up to the monastery in the rain or swim all
the way across Ayios Andonis bay. ‘Tell him to come back sooner!’
I
sat on my terrace looking out at the dark with a glass of wine,
listening to the footsteps of people passing through the alley in front of the house,
Lisa growling or barking at a person or a cat from time to time. I hadn't managed to see Michaelia before leaving; like so many people in Megalo Horio, she has relatives in Australia.
When Lisa and I arrived at Kali Kardia, it was busy with people from
the village and for a while Maria sat down with me, pretending to be a customer
so she could get off her feet. Michalis and Vasiliki invited me to join their
table but understood when I said I wanted to sit alone tonight. Lisa had picked up on my
mood and sat quietly, looking out over the balcony. When it was time to go, everyone
wished me a good journey to Australia and sent ‘many, many greetings to Yianni’.
‘We
are waiting for you!’ they shouted and waved goodbye as we walked up into the
village.
So
now, for a little while, ‘an octopus in my ouzo’ is based in Oz – as is that
other Tilos blog, ‘when the wine is bitter’ – writing about Tilos and listening
to Greek songs... I hope both will be back in Greece before too long.
Courage to Lose Sight of the Shore
This may be a little hard to follow. Bear with me. In the long
run, I hope things will be clearer.
My friend Fran, who once went to Crete for a holiday and
stayed for ten years, wrote: ‘We must always trust and follow our hearts. It
can take us to some very happy places.’
This year for me has so far been full of adventure, which is
what I hoped for, after two years when – in spite of being in a place I love,
living my dream life – I spent too much time having to be cautious as I fell
pregnant and miscarried and then did IVF and, in spite of everything looking
apparently excellent, didn’t get pregnant at all. I’d had enough of doctors and
hospitals for a while.
People ask from time to time how Falling in Honey ‘ended’,
and the answer is that it didn’t. The media, for whose interest I was certainly
very grateful, wanted a story that ended with me ‘finally finding true love’. But
my life is messier and more complex than newspaper stories (as if you didn’t
know that). Most lives probably are.
There was an Epiphany on the sixth of January. There was
happiness and there was sadness. Then, after saying I wasn’t going to
Australia, I went to Australia for six weeks to try things out. I returned to
Tilos for six weeks to pack up ready to fly back to Australia, with the plan
that I’d stay until next year.
It wasn’t so easy. I almost couldn’t leave Tilos. I knew it
was only temporary, but it was harder than I’d expected to cut ties for a while
with the place that has been such a reliable source of happiness.
Someone wrote me a kind message about my book around that
time, and wished me ‘smooth sailing’ and blessings on life’s journey. Then I
saw on her website she had a quote from Andre Gide: ‘Man cannot discover new
oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.’
I booked my ticket. Greece would still be waiting when I
returned. Lisa would be fine in my absence.
Michaelia asked one morning how I was, and I replied I was
very well, but a little sad because I was leaving. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘If you’re
just going to Australia for a holiday, then don’t go. But if you’re going for
something more serious,’ which she knew I was, ‘why not?’
Knowing I’d be gone for a while intensified my feelings for
Tilos, brought them into focus. For the last week, I gave up trying to work and
simply made the most of every single day, walking as far as I could. I slept
outside on a mattress on the terrace, under the stars. Crows woke me at dawn. I
drank fresh lemonade made from the lemons that fell off the tree every day. The
kitchen smelled of melon. There were beach days and taverna nights.
Up early one morning – though Lisa had woken me during the night cracking bones between her teeth, then padding over to my mattress to lick me through the
mosquito net – I drove us down to Livadia for 7 a.m., picked up breakfast at
the bakery then walked to Tholos for a blissful couple of hours on the dark
sand alone. The swimming was wonderful. It was hot work going back up the hill
just before midday. Back home, I ate cold melon then fell asleep.
That evening, we walked to Ayios Andonis in the evening. I
watched the beautiful golden sun set behind the island, then started walking to
the harbour, and a red sliver of sun came into view again and I had a second
chance to watch it set. Stopped for a drink and a chat by the sea, and when I got
up to leave, a bank of fog was spreading over the island. After the intense
heat of the day, it was delicious to walk home through damp cloud.
The following afternoon was my first ever walk to
Agriosykia. I was determined to do as much as I could. Long, tough walks,
swimming at my favourite places...
...and if Michaelis invited me to help pick watermelons at 7.30 a.m. one morning, that's what I'd do.
‘I catch, I no catch?
Because I don’ know exackly.’
Michaelis
was shuffling around the field of watermelons, a roll-up in his mouth, his
shoulders hunched. With baggy shorts falling off his hips, he peered at melons
twice the size of his head, trying to determine which ones were white enough to
be sweet.
‘I no wan’ catch if
no ready. Where is Grigoris? He go somewhere with the goats.’ The Norwegians
who just moved to Megalo Horio were getting married and needed watermelons for
the meal, and their friend Michaelis had arranged to buy them from Grigoris the
farmer. After a drink with them at Kali Kardia the previous evening, I was
invited along. But there was no sign of Grigoris and he wasn’t picking
up his phone. Finally, after we’d stacked half a dozen watermelons, Michaelis
called Sofia, Grigoris’ wife, at the kafeneion. He hung up the phone and cursed.
‘Grigoris drink
coffee!’
We picked another
half dozen and carried them to the gate, covering them with tarps so the crows didn’t
eat them. I picked up a rock to hold the tarp in place and Michaelis told me to
be careful of scorpions. I walked back, taking a look inside the little church of
St George that I’d never really looked at before behind the football field,
with ancient marble columns worked into the bricks. As I walked back through
the village, I noticed almonds drying on a table in a courtyard on the way up
to my house. Those last days, I wasn’t just learning how much I loved
Tilos, but the pleasure of making the most of every day.
Washed Up on Skafi Beach
We were leaving Skafi
beach when Mum and I noticed lifejackets strewn on the pebbles.
All sorts of things
wash up on Skafi; visitors make shelters out of driftwood and artworks out of
old shoes, and clothes are sometimes hung across the cave at the far end to scare
the goats away when the farmer, Menelaus, doesn’t want them drinking seawater.
The lifejackets were
odd, though. They seemed expensive and new, and I wondered if they’d
inadvertently been lost from a charter yacht. This is the season for yachts to
be mishandled by holidaymakers, and in fact during these days at the start of
July, one was just about to enter the harbour at Livadia in an ill-advised way
during a storm, and sink Nikos the fisherman’s little varka.
Closer inspection
revealed the floatation devices were different sizes, including a few for small
children. Alongside were items of clothing. Hours later we learned
there’d been a new arrival of Syrian refugees, and I guessed they must have
arrived at Skafi.
This month, Tilos
became a dropping-off point of choice for people smugglers. Not for the
first time, this fairly empty bit of rock with its deserted coves just a few
miles from Turkey has become a convenient place to leave people who’ve paid to
escape a war-torn country for a new life in Europe.
The next day, though it
was very hot, Mum and I walked with Lisa to Politissa, the ‘monastery’ in the
hills above Livadia that’s only used once a year for the celebration of the
Holy Virgin in August, or for the occasional wedding. It’s recently become a
useful spot to house the refugees, and their friendly faces lit up to see Lisa
cooling off in some flowing water.
It encouraged us to
walk up and say hello, which is how we met a young woman speaking excellent
English who’d just a day earlier been washed ashore in an unknown land with her
children. They’d arrived at Skafi in the dark of night, and been told the boat
had a problem and they must get out at once, taking nothing with them. Several
of the children – shy, wide-eyed, now gleefully stroking Lisa and clutching their toys – were very
young, while over in the corner a smiling man held a baby only a few months
old. It must have been terrifying as they jumped ashore on a wild beach
surrounded by rugged hills, with no lights visible. They lit a fire, and in the
morning they saw a path and the young men walked to see where it led.
For now, they were
safe, although the mother found it hard to explain to her kids why they
couldn’t go for a swim in that lovely blue sea down the valley (they’d been
told, as their papers were processed, that they could go for a walk in the early evening). They could sleep in peace and make
food and had been given clean clothes, and it was sad to think that these were
probably the best days they’d have for a while, before they were shipped off to
a holding centre somewhere.
Later, we swam, feeling
grateful, and when we drove back to Livadia in the evening we went back to
Politissa. A young man greeted us cautiously and asked what we wanted. We
showed him a picture book and some finger-puppets for the kids – perhaps
something to keep them entertained on the long ferry journey to come. He
smiled. ‘You have one more for me?’ Beema had taken the kids for a walk down to
the sea, and he asked if we wanted to wait but we expected they’d be a while,
and I had a dance class to go to. We danced outside the church, in the cool of
the evening.
A few days later, Mum
and I went back to Skafi one morning, watching eagles circling above; having
awoken early to the sound of cicadas and crows and bees, and set out swiftly, we
had the beach to ourselves at just after nine, and the water was a perfect
topaz blue.
At first, the
lifejackets seemed to have been removed, but Mum figured out that the windstorm
might have blown them in to shore, and sure enough we found them all in the
scrub bushes. Fearing they’d be scorched by the sun and left as rubbish, we
gathered them up and carried them towards home. As we stood in the shade of a
tree near Menelaus’ enclosure on the way back to the village, tourists passed
us on their way down to the beach, and I laughed, realising we looked like we
were selling our armfuls of lifejackets; perhaps we’d do better business down
in Livadia...
As we neared Megalo
Horio, we looked down into the valley and saw people at the little chapel of
Ayia Paraskevi. Only later did we find out it was Anna Parliara, the
Silversmith jewellery maker, along with her partner and son, celebrating her
birthday by painting her chapel.
A couple of days after
Mum left, I went back to Skafi on my own one day with Lisa. The weather had
turned strangely grey with clouds, though the beach was still colourful with
brick-red sand, and the bay empty except for a yacht.
I swam around with a
mask and snorkel and watched the fish: the loners with the rough,
chocolate-brown downward stripes and a flash of blue on the side, which hide in
the shadow of rocks when they see you; skaros, purple-brown with big scales
like armour, and comical yellow eyes that look up at you anxiously; and the
tiny ones with the forked black tails and white bellies, curious and bold, that
swim right up to you.
When I got out and lay
on the beach, I felt something strange – tiny drops of rain, just a few, lovely
in the soft, warm afternoon air. On the walk back home, I saw a green-blue
roller fly across the valley as I reached the top of the hill. And I noticed
more lifejackets, and empty water bottles, and wondered if there had been more
refugees.
It was true. Back in
the village, Marios told me proudly that he was up all the night before. He’d
been working on his car (as always) when he heard a voice in the dark, ‘My
friend, I want water.’ He ended up walking up from Skafi with that group,
helping them find their way. ‘I like Syrians. Is good people.’
Later, I was taking
Lisa out for her final walk of the evening around midnight, when I saw Maria
whispering over the wall to Marios.
‘More refugees!’ she
said. ‘Kristoforos call me. They arrive now at Skafi.’ The two policemen had
gone to Menelaus’ enclosure to try to find them. We joked that Tilos would
become Syrian at this rate – after all, there are only 300 residents of Tilos,
and if the Syrians keep coming every few days… ‘We give them Mikro Horio,’
joked Marios, referring to the abandoned village. Suddenly, we heard voices.
‘What’s that?’ But it was just the sound of a private party in the village.
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