Past times

The other day, I cooked a chicken and, because I knew I wouldn’t have much time to cook the next day, I cooked twice as many potatoes, peas and carrots as we needed. Then the next day we had cold chicken with a Russian salad. It occurred to me that we hadn’t had Russian salad since I don’t know when. Then I realised that it’s a thing which has disappeared, in England anyway. I bet my kids don’t know what a Russian salad is, and I’m absolutely sure it’s not in modern cookery books. But it used to be really common; in fact, I seem to remember that Heinz actually offered small tins of it.

So that started me thinking about what else has disappeared in my lifetime. Well, there are very few independent department stores any longer. There used to be one in every reasonable sized town. The quality varied a lot, of course, but now they’re all House of Fraser or Debenhams, and they’re all more or less identical. You’ve been in one, you’ve been in them all. Woolworth’s has gone altogether, of course, but Wilkinson’s has filled the gap brilliantly.

Another thing which has changed is the casual – well, I suppose I’d call it sexual harassment nowadays.  Recently a friend and I were talking to her daughter and her daughter’s friend, and they were horrified by our tales. But even decent (ish) men used to behave badly. Lorry drivers tooted their horns as they went past; walking near a building site was bound to elicit wolf whistles and worse, even if you looked like the back end of a bus. There were plenty of men with whom you couldn’t get in a lift alone, or accept a lift in a car from, or climb on steps in front of, or sit next to; and the stationery cupboard stories we have! And curiously, we just accepted it as all part of life’s rich pattern. And if you did have to defend your honour, instead of feeling traumatised, you were cross with yourself, for being stupid enough to let yourself get in a situation where it was likely to be necessary. Now I’m not saying that there are no problems any more – of course there are, but that fairly low level, constant, groping and leering  - well, that seems to have largely stopped. Of course the harassment suffered by women who venture onto the internet is extreme, but that seems to be a toxic combination of misogyny and anonymity rather than the almost casual harassment we lived with.

Hats haven’t quite disappeared, but they have certainly changed their purpose. Nowadays, there are sunhats and woolly hats for winter, and that’s more or less it, apart from Ascot. Even for weddings,  women often wear those stupid “fascinators”  rather than proper hats. Or nothing at all on their heads.  My aunts used to go out for morning coffee in town wearing hats. (Not my mother, though; she thought sitting having coffee and gossiping while wearing a hat was a complete waste of valuable time.)  School uniform always included a hat – caps for boys and various styles for girls. My school had berets, and an uglier form of headgear is hard to find. The daring girls used to have bee hive hairdos, and stick the beret flat on the back with hair grips. It looked bizarre and used to drive the teachers nuts. Actually, that’s another thing that’s changed. We could get into trouble for things done on our way home – eating things, not standing and offering our seats on the bus, for example. I’m sure no school would try to enforce that  sort of thing now. The parents would be up in arms, defending their little darlings.

The other week we had an electrician working in the house. Phil offered him a cup of tea and he said yes please, and “leave the bag in the mug, I like it strong.” So Phil said, well, we don’t use bags, but don’t worry, it’ll be strong. So when the chap had had his tea, he said “That was lovely, how did you make it?” Phil had to demonstrate loose tea and the use of a tea pot. So how long will it be before loose, tasty, tea goes the way of Russian salad?

Zakros

After breakfast on Thursday we walked up to some rooms where we have been told they have maps on the local walking routes. The patronne, Stella, was very helpful and the rooms looked very nice, but they aren't right on the sea as ours are. Then we visited the Zakros Minoan site. It is, I think, the third biggest Minoan palace complex, and the most recently excavated. It was here they found the elephant's tusk, the bronze ingots and the wonderful bull's head vase. It's really interesting, as the lower half of the complex, where the finds were and where they even found food in cooking pots on fireplaces, was never rebuilt, whereas the higher bit was partially rebuilt. I'm convinced it was done for by the Thira eruption and tsunami, especially since it's so near the sea. Apparently some of the site is underwater, and as this is quite a wide and not particularly sheltered bay, I imagine there must have been some sort of port installations. Anyway we enjoyed looking round, and particularly enjoyed the many turtles which have taken up residence in the sacred wells. Not archaeological, I know, but they were charming.  

The afternoon was given over to swimming and idleness, which was lovely.I am getting actually ahead with my books for book group. I have read “All The Light We Cannot See”, which was a real page turner, especially the Werner story, but a bit floridly written. Now I’m reading a biography of Thomas Hardy, which is quite sad. He seems to have been incapable of happiness.

On Friday we drove up the winding road to Zakros proper. This time we were held up by a herd of goats, again with two men but no dog. The goats seemed easier to organise than the sheep, though. We parked the car and walked back to Kato Zakros along the Zakros gorge. It was brilliant. Because there's water, it's really lush, but because it's quite a scramble it's wild.

 There are all sorts of wild flowers and some sort of oaks, the odd wild olive and almond trees and it's all strongly scented with wild herbs and oleander.

Precipitous sides of the gorge with caves

All you can hear is insects humming, birds singing and the odd goat bell.  There are high cliffs and pinnacles and many many caves, where the Minoans buried their dead. It was super. This path down the gorge is apparently the end of the E4 European footpath, which starts in Portugal. We indulged brief fantasies of walking the whole thing, in instalments of course - we're not over ambitious. Then we phoned for a taxi to take us back up to Zakros to retrieve the car.

In the early evening, before dinner we began chatting to a charming Dutch couple in the next room, as we all sat out on the terrace. Then a German bloke in another room told us to be quiet or go somewhere else, as his girlfriend was trying to sleep. I was so worried about Phil's probable reactions that I hardly felt offended. However, he kept his cool, while calmly telling the bloke to clear off. It was actually our Dutch friends who got fierce. All four of us had decided that we would not be told what do by some ill mannered German.  That's Europe - all one big happy family.

We went for dinner with the Dutch bloke, Theo, as his wife has stomach problems and didn't want to eat. It was a very interesting dinner. It's curious that we always seem to get along with the Dutch, even if not the Germans!

It rained in the night and we got up to a strong but warm wind and a rough sea. We had decided to walk to the Pelekita cave. It's a good long walk around the headlands; they say three kilometres, but it's more than that, I'm sure. I have to say that once we were round the first headland, where the walk is very close to a long drop into the sea, it was rather boring. It's over volcanic rock and I have never imagined you could have huge boulders of pumice stone. You can see where the lava reaches the sea and is all buckled up in waves. But it does mean that it's really barren. There's nothing growing except exceptionally spiky thyme. There are a lot of bulbs but they have finished flowering. I thought at first they were hyacinths, but now I don't think so. There are loads of millipedes and some beetles and some goats, which must survive on the thyme, so they are ready flavoured for the grill. We kept seeing goats, gazing down on us from some high point on the cliffs above, like guerrillas spying on government troops. The path is well marked but very rough and the stones are very sharp. I think both of us were a bit worried about tripping and falling, as everything was so sharp one would really have hurt oneself.

Guerrilla goats

 Also, like a fool, I left my walking trainers at the hotel in Chania. They are keeping them for me and we will collect them on our return. But all I have now are sandals and a pair of Converse plimsolls I bought in Aghios Nicholaos, and plimsolls are just not up to this sort of walking; the soles are far too thin.  My feet are bruised. Anyway, we reached the cave, which is a bit similar to the Dikteon, in that you climb down into it. 

The opening of the Pellekita Cave

There's a massive first “room” with pits where there is obviously ongoing archaeology, and then you can go down into a second enormous “room”. We went so far down, but didn't reach the floor of the lower bit. Our torches felt very feeble in this vast space. There are some formations, but nothing on the scale of the Dikteon. You can go a bit farther and see a Minoan quarry, but we'd had enough by then. We've also rather gone off the E4, if it involves boring bits like this.

 

The surface of Mars.

Our last day was really windy, with white horses on the sea, and occasional spatters of rain. It meant we had a quiet day, sitting out watching the sea. The drive back to Chania was quicker and easier that we had anticipated, in spite of the inevitble flock of sheep, and so we had a few hours to wander around. I do really like Chania. It has a cheerful atmosphere – well, all of Crete does, to be honest, and there are layers and layers of history – Byzantines, Venetians, Turks, Germans, have all left their marks on the place.

Well, we’ll definitely return. Maybe we’ll go to the west of the island next time. 

A visit to Spinalonga and on to Zakros.

From Aghios Nicholaos you can make a few interesting outings. So first,  to visit Spinalonga we drove along the coast to Plaka for a boat. 

Fishermen at Plaka

The fortress entrance

Spinalonga was a Venetian fortress for hundreds of years - it didn't fall to the Turks until 1709. Then it was a Turkish settlement, but after Crete - finally, long after the rest of Greece - became independent, the inhabitants left. Then the island became a leper colony. Apparently Crete had a high rate of leprosy and of course there was no cure until the 1950s. At first, it seems that sufferers were taken to the island and pretty much left to their own devices, although things improved later. It didn't close completely until 1973,which seems amazing - a leper colony in Europe until the 1970s.

Restored house

Dead olive. Shows how windy it is here.

 

The main gateway, facing Plaka

Spinalonga

Venetian fortifications. Cannon placed low to the water,
to prevent landings.

It's very exposed and windy and rocky, and although the main street, with some restored buildings and a history of the leper colony, are rather full of tourists, the rest of the island is not. The influx of tourists seems to be due to Victoria Hislop's book "The Island". I have read it but can't remember a great deal about it. But it's obviously been translated all over Europe and probably the government of Crete should give Hislop some sort of award.

So we really enjoyed scrambling around and visiting all the Venetian fortifications and old buildings. You can see tiny terraced and walled fields where the patients farmed a bit - there are very bent olive and fig trees still struggling along.  It's quite moving to think of the Venetians struggling to keep a foothold in Crete for so many years, and then the lepers confined to a tiny windy island until they died. Not, actually, that the Venetians treated the Cretans much better than the Turks did.

We returned on the boat to Plaka and had a superb lunch of baked vegetables and stuffed aubergine, at a lovely traditional taverna with a sea view, and then a potter round. There were a number of surprisingly smart shops and I have to admit I bought a dress. Well, two. The vendeuse was really helpful and Phil was full of holiday spirit. Well, that's my excuse.

We went back to Piato for dinner Once you've found somewhere as good as that don't mess about trying anywhere else,  is our motto. It was just as good as last time. Only problem -  they will insist of giving us a shot of raki, which we both hate. There's a bonsai olive tree on every table; I wonder if raki would kill it...........

The next day we went up onto the Lassithi Plateau and to the Dikteon Cave. The drive up was brilliant, winding up and round hairpin bends, the roadsides rich with broom, vetches, sea hollies, coltsfoot, mallow, rock roses. The Lassithi plateau villages are very traditional but very isolated. It's quite a drive up there now; it's 900 metres above sea level  - in winter it's probably sometimes not possible. 

There are lots of traditional Greek old ladies, all in black including black headscarves. We saw peregrine falcons but apparently you may spot vultures,  or even a lammergeier. As you go through the pass onto the plateau and again as we left on a different road, there are a line of windmills, ruined now, in the wind tunnel. There are still some metal ones with traditional sails raising water. All the houses have a brilliant show of geraniums and roses and there are pomegranate trees still in flower. The main fruit blossoms are over, sadly.

Climbing down.

The Dikteon cave is where Rhea gave birth to Zeus and hid him from his father Chronos, who ate his children.  You climb another 800 metres to the cave entrance and then climb down into the cave. It's brilliant - wonderfully spooky, and it feels as though you are descending into the underworld.

The opening to the cave.

The cave is chockful of amazing pillars where stalagtites and stalagmites have met, and huge expanses of convoluted flowstones - you could imagine anything in the shapes. No wonder it was a place of worship for thousands of years. Very many votive offerings have been found and we were amused to see that visitors have thrown quite a lot of coins into the water at the bottom of the cave. So we threw in a ten cent coin each. I hope Zeus doesn't feel short changed!

After returning to Aghios Nicholaos I had a swim and then we went for dinner at the same restaurant. I don't think we are likely to eat as well from now on. I also managed to get the grandsons T shirts with friendly octopi on them. There was a shop opposite the museum in Hieraklion selling T shirts with the Minoan friendly octopus design on them, but to my disappointment it was closed. I don't believe in insisting on bringing a present home from holiday, but I did fancy the friendly octopus, so I'm pleased we managed to get them.

Next day, Wednesday, we packed up and set off for Kato Zakros, right at the east end of the island. We stopped in Sitia (SitEEa), where the car park was so crammed that I got out to help Phil back into the place we'd found. I was astonished to be clapped on the shoulder by a middle aged Cretan man who took over the directions! Clearly it was man's work. After all, what would a woman know about reversing a car? It was quite difficult for both of us to keep a straight face and thank him.  

Sitia is pleasant enough but not nearly as nice as Aghios Nicholaos. It had a large pond which I think was a mix of seawater and fresh water, and I saw a blue heron which was very exciting. There were some traditional caiques in the harbour, and an Arab dhow.

 It does have a small but very worthwhile archeological museum. The highlight was a priestess's ivory jewel box, the gold and beaded necklaces in it and a set of large ivory pins, presumably for her hair; Minoan women's clothes, as depicted in the frescoes, don't seem to require much fastening.

Then we drove on over the mountains. The roads are lined with oleander and broom and the mountains have their feet in the blue sea. It's gorgeous. We got held up by a flock of sheep, in the charge of two men with crooks, but no dogs. They could have done with a dog; the sheep weren't nearly as impressed as they should have been, not just by our car but by the fuel tanker which followed us. We stopped at Moni Toplou, which is a fortified monastery. (Toplou means "with a cannon"). It's in a wilderness of rock and scrub. There were a few goats which put me in mind of Holman Hunt's picture The Scapegoat, that's how desolate it was. The monastery is fifteenth century, but has been attacked by Saracen pirates, the Knights of Malta, the Turks of course, more than once - in fact more or less everyone you can think of, because it has always been important in supporting Cretan independence. In fact the German invaders continued the tradition and shot the abbot. There are some lovely icons, including one that is apparently very important, illustrating an important Orthodox prayer, and I'm afraid it went over our heads.

Moni Toplou

Eventually we arrived at Kato Zakros, which is really just three or so tavernas with rooms along the beach, near the entrance to the archaeological site of the Minoan palace of Zakros. Our room is very simple and basic and almost on the beach. It's all a bit hippyish and brilliant. One goes to sleep to the sound of the sea on the shingly beach, and there is a view of the bay and headlands as soon as you get up. A lot of our friends like luxury hotels, but they aren't really our cup of tea, and a site like this definitely is. So I had a wonderfully refreshing swim, and then we went for dinner at the taverna. It's traditional Cretan food and well done, and they do grills over an olive wood fire which smells delicious. 

Kato Zakros

Crete again

This year we've decided to go to places we can get to from our local airport, East Midlands. This usually means Ryanair, but this is OK because they started losing profits, largely, I think, because they were so rude to their passengers. So it has improved, although you do have to pay strict attention to Ryanair's little quirks. So on the flight out, Phil was at one end of the aircraft and I was at the other. But we'll be more careful next time. And it allowed me to get on with my book. 

At Chania on time, we picked up the hire car, a Hyundai I 10, with which we're very pleased, although it does rather mark us out as tourists, and went straight to a hotel.We got up in the morning to rain, which continued all day with short gaps. It was my turn to drive and apart from tending to forget it isn't automatic, I enjoyed driving. I used, years ago, have awful trouble changing gear right handed, to the extent that when I took my mother to her brother's grave in the war cemetery at Rheinberg, I hired an automatic. I felt the whole trip was going to be fraught enough, without gear problems. But for some reason, I don't find it in the least difficult any longer. You'd think it would be harder to adapt as you get older, not easier. Anyway, for whatever reason, I can do it now, and Cretans are quite relaxing drivers; it's not like driving in Italy.

We stopped at Hieraklion. We'd read that the museum of antiquities is fully opened after goodness only knows how many years. We were a little worried, as last time, there was one gallery of the "best bits", and we were worried that the rest of the Minoan stuff might be a bit of a letdown. We were completely wrong. There are about nine large rooms full of the most staggering stuff. The craftsmanship is of the highest possible quality. The jewellery is so wearable, even nowadays. I particularly liked the hairpins which opened out into a flower at one end. The effect must have been really pretty. The stone vases, beautifully using the natural veins and colours of the stone, apparently carved using obsidian tools, were just gorgeous - those, and the pottery, made me think of the arts and crafts movement, and were just as desireable for a modern home.

Then there were the every day bits - a cooking pot, which when found contained a stew of two hares, a lizard and a snake, plus, I think, a rabbit and some snails. It seemed to show an "if it moves, we'll eat it" attitude.  There were bee smokers and wine presses. It was fascinating.

The explanations of what is known of Minoan life were very clear and helpful, although explanations of the rituals made Knossos sound even more like Ghormenghast than it seemed when we visited the site. One small thing that intrigued me was that the rhinocerous beetle was venerated. It doesn't seem the most obvious thing to pick on. And we did like the representations of the goddess with  snake in each hand and a cat sitting on her head. Not sure what that was about. 

So after three hours or so in the museum, and without looking at any of the Hellenistic stuff, we got a late light lunch and drove to Aghios Nicolaos (or Ayeeos NiKOLaos, because of the Greek habit of putting the stress in what seems a very strange place. (KefalonYAH; ePIDaurus; iTHAKa  - where Odysseus came from, in case you don't get it - I didn't the first time I heard it pronounced that way.)

Aghios Nicholaos is a really nice resort - quite smart but not pretentious, and its situation on a bay and under the mountains, is fantastic.

 

Aghios Nicholaos

We have a lovely sea front room at one end of the town and right on the rocky coast, and we went for a walk before dinner, although it was still raining. The shops are quite smart, and in fact there are some very expensive ones, selling furs and ostentatious jewellery to the Russian market. But we haven't seen any Russians, so I don't know whether it's too early in the season or if they have stopped coming here. I hope not, for the sake of the Cretans. Some of that jewellery will be pretty hard to shift to anyone else. There is often a small cruise ship but they only stay one day.

We ate at a brilliant restaurant called Piato, on the seafront. It has a rather cool and modern take on the decor of a traditional Greek taverna and the food is the same - all the classics, including less usual ones, cooked very well indeed.

The next day, Monday, we got up to beautiful sunshine, so I went straight in the sea. This is a low, rocky coast and there are highly convenient steps down, so it's easy to get in and out, as long as you don't mind being out of your depth. There are a group of four or five Greek ladies who swim every morning. They wear shower caps with baseball caps on top and swim a little way out and then tread water and chat. It's a kind of aquatic coffee morning.

 For breakfast we have been given cake with what looks like chocolate sprinkles, but it's spicy, and I've realised that it's carob. There are loads of carob trees around. But there are thousands upon thousands, probably millions upon millions, of olive trees. They are without exception cared for and carefully pruned into a bowl shape, and not allowed to get too high. Imagine the labour! And God only knows how they get picked. I've picked olives and I know how labour intensive it is. I can only imagine the Cretan farmers draft in the army - the Chinese army, not the Greek one.

Cymbeline again

Before we realised that the Globe's indoor Jacobean playhouse was putting on Cymbeline, we had already booked for another production of the play, at Stratford. So on Tuesday off we went.

We had a really nice day; even the drive there was pleasant because it was a lovely day and everywhere looks so brilliantly green. We met old friends for lunch, who live out of Stratford in the opposite direction to Nottingham, and had a potter round the shops. I bought a baby girl's top. It's very exciting to have a little girl to buy for, because my daughter is forty this year and up until February, she was the last little girl in the family.  

But the play was really disappointing. Firstly, the theatre didn't lend itself to the play's weird atmosphere nearly as well as the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse did. I suppose it's only to be expected, since Shakespeare wrote Cymbeline with the indoor playhouse in mind. But the bedroom scene where the villain spies on the sleeping Innogen, which is creepy and perverse at all times, was much more so when lit by only a candle. Because it was possible at the indoor theatre, Shakespeare, in these later plays, is quite keen on gods descending from the heavens. The Sam Wanamaker played it straight - Jove descended on wires from the trapdoor in the ceiling  - whereas Stratford went for a psychological "explanation" of Posthumus' vision, which I found frankly less convincing. 

But the really irritating point was that Stratford had gone mad for political correctness. The colour of the actors doesn't worry me; I don't have a problem with a medieval  king of Britain being black, or whatever; but I do have a problem with gender swaps. So Cymbeline, at Stratford, was not the king of Britain, but the queen. Then the wicked stepmother had to become a stepfather, who had to be besotted with his worthless idiot son. I don't find that a psychologically convincing scenario. Then the two lost princes were changed into a lost prince and princess. The princess was the elder and the one who cut off Cloten's head in a temper over her insulted honour. 

I know that there are fewer parts for women in Shakespeare's plays, but a lot of the parts that there are, are tremendous. Rosalind; Viola; Lady Macbeth; Cleopatra; Queen Margaret; Titania; the list goes on and on. Sometimes changing the gender of a character doesn't matter too much - the male apothecary was changed into a female one, which while historically unconvincing, didn't alter the story. But changing the genders of more or less the whole royal family does alter the situation. And I wish they wouldn't do it.