Playing House

One of the pleasures of living on a small Greek island for as much time as possible is the idea of having guests. Now Waldo and I have never been social animals in the sense of going out with other people every week; we have much more preferred our own company. Over the decades of our relationship we have found it deeply satisfying to go out for a nice meal with a bottle of wine and talk to each other. Over the years that mutual support has helped us stop personal problems before they occur, enabled each of us to see work and business problems with clarity, find solutions and be motivated to put them into action. The great strength of our relationship is that ability to talk, the comfortable companionship we have evolved and the knowledge that we are both completely free, because we know each other so well, we have nothing to hide.

Despite that rather isolated lifestyle, we do have friends; we are even friends with a great many relatives, which not all people can say! We do enjoy having people to stay, although we don’t always believe that in the few days before their arrival! Now I have never been prone to housework; never really seen the point of it, nor found any satisfaction in it. As we have both always been in full-time, well mostly over-time work, I have always said that we should share all of our other responsibilities. Our first priority has always been to make time for each other. Our second is work. Our living places have always been bought with their selling potential in mind. Hence, in our houses, we have always lived in moderate to utter chaos and untidiness, sprinkled with a modicum of dust. As we age, so the clutter increases for I am getting to the point that anything which is ‘out of sight, is out of mind’ and need to have things placed in strategic locations to remind me to do something or other. Waldo is much tidier, except for a long-term uncomfortable relationship with keys, glasses, pens and reminder notes: life has been a constant ‘where’s my ...’ as he wanders from room to room searching for the keys in his pocket, the glasses on his head and such! I have never bought any clothes that do not drip dry and have never seen the value of ironed towels, underclothes or sheets. My only stipulation for any house that we have bought is to have a space large enough to hang up washing. Of course out in Kythera we have the whole outdoor space with ‘the big heater in the sky’ to dry anything in minutes.

When friends are coming to stay, about two days beforehand it is ‘work stations everyone’ and we decide what has to be done. Usually it follows the same pattern, unclutter the lounge, clean and make-up the spare bedroom, clean the bathrooms, prepare food and then clean up the kitchen. Apart from, tidying away my clutter, which I must admit is about 99.5% of the clutter, finding the clean sheets and helping make up the beds, the rest of my preparation involves shopping and preparing food. Poor Waldo in the meantime flies around the place like a whirling dervish with the mop, vacuum cleaner, dusters and various plastic bottles of cleaning fluids. No surface is missed whether it be floor, table, shelves, the lot, and of course the bathroom. I always find it mildly amusing that when friends make any comment about dust, untidiness and such is always directed at me; nobody ever considers that the state of the house is either Waldo’s responsibility or at least a joint effort; no it is still ‘the lady of the house’! Whilst some friends have got used to us now, others find it quite incredible that whether in UK or Greece if they need the vacuum cleaner, iron and ironing board, a hair dryer or accessories such as a damp cloth, duster or the like, it is Waldo they must ask for I do not have a clue where they are kept. Ever since I can remember two sounds make my teeth on edge: the sound of a vacuum cleaner and a baby crying. Both cut deeply into me as effectively as a nail drawn over a blackboard offends most other people.

My famed lack of understanding of what goes on in the house amuses and concerns many friends. Some years ago whilst I was away in Greece on business for about three weeks, Waldo decided to redecorate the lounge. A friend called round to check that he was surviving OK. She was somewhat surprised to find most of the lounge furniture stacked up in the hall and dining room. Waldo was busy preparing everything to be painted: walls, ceiling, and doors. Judy felt sure that I would have told her if we were decorating the lounge. Waldo told her with glee that he had just decided to get it done whilst I was away.
“It’ll be a surprise for her when she gets back.” He told Judy enthusiastically.
“You mean Liz doesn’t know?” asked Judy, vaguely perturbed.
“No. I thought it would be good to do it now. She won’t have the chaos.” explained Waldo.
“But she’s agreed the colours beforehand? You have spoken to her about it?” Judy was really concerned now.
“Oh no, I know what Liz likes. It’ll be a nice surprise for her.” Waldo was adamant.
“I bet it will!” said Judy.
She was even more surprised and confused when she telephoned me a day or so after my return. Her curiosity couldn’t be contained any longer and she asked me how I liked the lounge. To this day she still cannot get over my lack of awareness of my surroundings, for I had to ask ‘what lounge’ and she explained that Waldo had redecorated. When I looked I did recognise that something had changed: the walls had changed from magnolia to pale pink, the ceiling from magnolia to white with a hint of pink, and there was a new rug in front of the fireplace over the old worn carpet!

It was not many months after that when I answered a knock at the door of the same house. It was a couple of men ready to deliver and fit a new carpet. Of course they insisted that the householder confirms that the carpet is what they ordered before it is brought into the house. These men could not believe what they were hearing when I had to telephone Waldo, ask him whether he had ordered a new carpet. When he admitted that he had done so, I passed the telephone over to one of the men whilst Waldo described the colour and pattern, AND told them which room it was to go in. I must say that the new lounge carpet looked great with the new decor. But the men just could not believe they were fitting a carpet in a lounge when the ‘lady of the house’ knew nothing about it. Friends feel the same and cannot believe that I hate shopping, just don’t understand these things and am quite happy to rely on Waldo, whose favourite pastime is shopping and for whom his home surroundings mean a lot. Hence, apart from the decorated lounge and new carpet, I have come home from hospital to a completely redecorated bedroom and new bed, and just home from work to find a new cooker, refrigerator, washing machine, car, TV, microwave, music centre, computer and all manner of brown or white goods, technical or otherwise installed in the house.

Most women find this hard to believe. But to me it is just the equality of our relationship. I am not wedded to my surroundings in the way that Waldo is. He enjoys looking around and feeling great satisfaction or sense of achievement in what has been created. I am more likely to have my head in a book, and my sense of creative achievement comes from the items I knit or crochet or things that I write. He enjoys shopping and choosing things and I hate all that fuss. Also Waldo has a much better eye for colour than I. Whilst I would spend ages going round shops with all sorts of colour swatches, he can carry a colour in his head, even the most subtle of shades, and match, tone or contrast as desired. So, it makes sense for him to do as he chooses, to take pleasure from it and to gain satisfaction for his activities leaving me free to spend my time doing other things.

But that division of labour was all before Kalithea Villa, for since we have been here we have both been like children ‘playing house’. Although the house contained all of the furniture, crockery, cutlery, linen and accessories that were needed to live, like animals marking their territory we both felt the need to make it ours. The previous owners had used it as a holiday house with the children’s bedrooms and a large lounge for entertainment. Apart from its minimalist style, the place had been decorated in the mid-seventies; the colour schemes throughout touched every shade of orange, ochre and brown known to paint and fabric manufacturers. No doubt much of the paint colour variations resulted in the method of visual matching used in the days before computer controlled colour match systems. I think the curtains were a result of buying up four ends of rolls of canvas each having some combination of any of the four colours; brown, ochre, orange or stone. We wanted the children’s bedrooms as guest rooms and the rest of the house for living and following our various hobbies and interests.

Filled with the enthusiasm of the ignorant I decided that I would make the curtains. The first curtains I made were to cover the opening to storage spaces in the hall. I measured up and allowed what I thought would be enough for fixings at the top and hems at the bottom. I chose the material in our one-in-seven haberdashery shop. The woman who served me seemed so adept at cutting across the curtain material in a straight line that I had a flash on inspiration – I asked her to cut the material into the lengths I required, two pairs or different length. Quickly and proficiently she did so. She also kindly asked me if I would want matching cotton and heading tape, both of which I had totally forgotten about! Lesson number one! It was only when I got home and held the material in the spaces the curtains would fill that I realised that I had not made any allowance for matching the big pattern of the green and cream weave. Lesson number two! Amazingly I managed to make both pairs of curtains match; the hems are minute and nobody can see the bit sewn onto the top of one. Having struggled to match the material and then spend time pinning everything I then started to sew the curtains and realised that I had a long road ahead! I have no sewing machine! Lesson number three!

Three years later, 32 yards of material have been hand sewn into curtains by me. A further 9 metres of extremely difficult voile have been sewn by my friend Wendy - it’s strange, but Wendy has never since accepted an invitation for a return visit! I’ve only got 9 more metres of voiles to do Wendy! I promise to sew that myself; it’s safe for you to come! Some 5 metres of roman blinds and their linings were sewn by another friend Jan, who also trod the bath washing about 19 metres of existing curtains. Jan is an expert seamstress who makes her own clothes and has helped me enormously with my sewing, but she draws the line at hand sewing. Thus my roman blinds were made in Cardiff and brought out in suitcases. Waldo then improvised and we bought lengths of bamboo cane as the cross pieces and I hand sewed the rings for the thread to run through. They work well in the AcropoLiz. I still have a two metre curtain length with lining to make, about 12 metres of voile to make up and 6 metre of heavy, thermally lined curtain to make! My enthusiasm for sewing is now such that I have progressed to making two pairs of cotton trousers for myself, and have material waiting for my return to Cardiff when I will make even more curtains.

As I have developed my sewing skills, so Waldo has discovered all manner of skills. Painting is perhaps the one he has had most practice with. Our bedroom and en suite was fairly straight forward, as was the small spare bedroom, except that it was done in a day just two days before a friend from Athens declared she was coming to visit! The two guest bedrooms expanded his skill as he used rollers on them, each with different patterns giving a mottled affect. The lounge has been done over a year, with different sections painted at a time. Then there is the outside of the house and the roofs which have been major jobs, repeated a few times. He has also emptied the swimming pool, set visitors to the job of scraping off the paint, and then he resealed it, waterproofed it and painted the great space.

Whilst Waldo has been doing the real painting I have been pottering or ‘potching’ as he calls it. I have repainted an old wooden coffee table, revived a couple of old chairs, painted shelves, pots, metal tables and chairs, bathroom shelves and even a stone moulding of a Greek lady holding an urn. I have developed my own style using spray paints, brushes of varying thickness to create antique aged affects, colour burst clusters and whatever takes my fancy. Four patios, our bathroom and the kitchen are scattered with the results of my efforts. I even inspired Waldo to be creative and in the AcropoLiz he painted four murals each taken from one of the square designs in the curtains. His design was created using square edges, plumb lines and masking tape rather than the freeform sleight of hand that I use.

Waldo had hung pictures, put up shelves and mended all manner of things which just need a few minutes work. He has lined the inside of the roof in the AcropoLiz with plywood panels and he has made a false ceiling with six inset lights which he fitted over our his’n’hers shower units. Flushed with success and disturbed by the ever increasing costs charged for cutting up wood, Waldo has recently purchased a circular saw sitting in a portable saw bench. He has also bought me a sewing machine – thank you, thank you, thank you! We decided to convert one of our storage cupboards into a purpose made space with chest of drawers to store material and wool, shelves for further storage and a hinged table top for the sewing machine. None of the walls in our house are actually perpendicular to each other, and this storage space has added complications because it literally has one wall which is the rock face of the mountain! It took a number of days before we had finally decided upon requirements, measured up and worked out how many sheets of wood we needed. We then hitched up our trailer to the car and travelled to Karvounades to buy our wood from Vassilis - and have our doses of tsipouro and preserved fruit from his mother! I measured up for the shelves and we pencilled out the cutting lines on the 2.5m x 1.25m timber plywood panels. The first cut was the most difficult as we needed to cut through the whole length of the panel which was heavy and the weight would shift as it moved through the saw. It clearly was a two person job, and as I was not strong enough to hold the weight for a long time I needed to be at the front end, guiding the wood to the saw. I had not anticipated the extent of wood dust that would be created and Waldo had the difficulty of holding two heavy pieces of timber and moving backwards as they were cut. We were both in a mess at the end of that first cut; coughing and sneezing whilst trying to breath, hot and bothered with exhausted arms. We called a halt to our endeavours.

The next day we were better prepared. I had a mask and hat to keep the dust away. We both knew what to expect in terms of the shifting weights of timber, and we now had smaller pieces to work with anyway. We learnt quickly and by the end of a few hours we both became proficient circular saw operatives! Five shelves cut to perfection, well almost if you don’t count the first cut! Plenty of shelf brackets, almost all the same size. And just a few small off cuts. Flushed with success we then cut up a thinner piece of timber to be placed under the marble worktops in the kitchen. These needed to be lifted slightly as the marble provided was the wrong depth and thus did not butt up properly to the other worktops and cooker. Now we have one even surface! Our A-team’s next project will be more difficult as we have much thicker and heavier panels to work with. But they will be used for rebuilding Waldo’s sagging workbench, thus they should not require the more complex cutting and shaping our work to date has required.

Whereas we used to sit and enjoy the view, our new found skills have changed our lives. We cannot ignore the fantastic view whenever we sit outside. But now we plan pergolas, bench seats, more shelves and a host of things that can be cut, painted and fixed.