Sleeping with Muhammad Ali

Sleeping with Muhammad Ali

It's another hot day on the island. Thankfully the day is bearable by a good breeze that wafts the perfume of our jasmine, lavender and geraniums around the place. I washed a pile of towels this morning, some big heavy bath towels - all were dry and very well aired within an hour of being hung out. That 'big heater' works wonders.

Our swimming pool - aka about to be a lily pond - is evaporating quite noticeably now. The plank that Waldo put for Freddy to sit on is now listing precariously with the bottom half in the water and the top half at an angle as the string holding it in place needs lengthening to allow it all to float of the surface of the water. This, combined with the early morning searing sun means that Freddy has changed his habit of just sitting on the plank and taking the occasional dive into the cooling waters.  Some time during the night he swims diagonally across the pool onto the first concrete step and crawls under a large stone put there by Waldo last year for the birds to stand on and reach the water. Freddy's conversation now has a strange echo sound as his voice hits the stone and bounces back. He stays there until mid-afternoon when the sun has moved around and then he has a leisurely swim back across the pool and onto the sloping plank. I don't know whether it is the effects of the sun but he seems to be getting greener by the day. He has slightly yellow rings around his eyes and under his mouth he is paler green. A handsome frog you might say!
Whilst Freddy was practising his swimming, me and my handsome frog were trying to sleep in the heat.  Both bedroom windows are kept wide open (we do of course have wire screens to stop unwanted guests), but still there is not enough air. We have a large fan which we have to keep gong all night. The sound of the fan obviously reaches into our subconscious. One night I was dreaming that I was in a hotel, near a motorway with the steady drum of heavy traffic. Waldo spent one night testing vacuum cleaners! We have both, separately had nights when sleeping on a ship with a cabin above the engines. But what happened last night cannot be put down to the noise of the fan.

In this heat Waldo sleeps without any sheet over him. I, on the other hand, have this irrational need to be covered from top to toe. Thus I have the sheet quite tightly wrapped over me with only my head, above the chin sticking out. My the time I have twisted and turned in the night I usually wake in the morning to find that I am like the centre of a cigar rolled in a damp few outer layers. Last night I was dreamlessly sleeping in this sweaty cocoon when suddenly, I was grabbed and punched in the face; well directly onto my right eye to be exact. I screamed and tried to unravel myself. Waldo was sitting up in bed, just repeated 'sorry, sorry, sorry' and holding his head in his hands. It turns out that he had been dreaming that for some reason, unexplained in the dream, a man was chasing him and he had returned to his parents' farm in the Vale of Glamorgan. Sure enough the man came into the kitchen and walked down a corridor. Knowing that there was nothing there and that the man would have to return, Waldo, with his mother behind him, hid behind the kitchen door waiting for him. He must have been getting quite worked up about this for the man had a gun and although strong, Waldo is not a big man. He would soon be overpowered and so he knew that he had one opportunity, with the element of surprise to overcome the man and disarm him. Like a cat waiting for the mouse to pass, Waldo waited and then, he pounced. He grabbed and threw the punch. We will never know what happened after that!
Meanwhile I now have a puffy eye which is actually aching, particularly when I turn my eye. But it could have been worse, I might have been shot!
At least, in reality this island is a safe place to live. I can walk anywhere in the dark and never feel afraid. The last 'crime' we had was two years ago when a tired young man, after a night out decided that the couldn't walk home, up the mountain from our seaside village. So he took one of the tourist hire cars. Having had his adrenalin rush, and being more sober when he reached home, he realised that to park outside his home would be somewhat of a giveaway and so he dumped it in a distant field. Before that, the previous crime involved people coming over from the mainland, trying to 'blow' a safe but failing to do so, stole the safe and tried to make a getaway by boat. They were caught. All that was some twelve years ago. But such is the deterrent against crime here that they were immediately imprisoned awaiting trial - the case came to court about 18 months ago when they were found guilty and sentenced.
Because of the lack of crime we rarely lock our car, often we forget to lock our front door. Our garden furniture and all manner of tools are put out when we arrive on the island or when we use them and not returned to their locked cupboards until we leave; there is no fear of rain nor theft.  We readily leave money for meals at tavernas on the table, knowing that only the waiter will pick it up when he is ready. Shops are left unattended, and we either leave the correct money on the counter or take the goods to a local coffee shop where we find the owner and pay. When shops are closed, goods are left outside for us to collect, secure in the knowledge that only the rightful owner will collect them. A few weeks ago I must have dropped a shopping bag when I got out of the car. About a week later when we went shopping and parked in our usual place, there on the wall in full sight was my shopping bag.

The consequences of this are that we have to be really careful to alter our habits when we return to the UK. Having to close windows at night, to lock everything up, to take time and consideration to protect our own belongings is quite restricting. Here on Kythera we feel much freer than we do in the UK and much of that freedom comes from knowing that social values are different. People respect each other, care for each other and are judged not by the work they do or the title they have, by the make of car they drive or the extent of their jewellery but whether or not they are a 'good person'. Sure enough education is valued and Kythera has some of the highest results and greatest percentage of the young population with postgraduate qualification in Greece. But people are thus respected for having worked hard and applied themselves rather than because they have the qualifications. Family is important and thus the pressure 'not to bring shame' on the family is high. In a small island community such as this, any crime committed would be immediately known and the family shamed. It's about 'good, old fashioned values' which make life and living so much easier. We all know the boundaries and keep to them. This means that we all have freedom without impeding others' freedom.
Nikos Kazantzakis understood the Greek notion of freedom, epitomised in his character Zorba; the lovable rogue who lives simply but has so much. Freedom and simplicity are rewarding bedfellows - no sudden punches in the night here! Modern materialism seems to equate freedom with the ability to spend, the freedom to choose what we want to spend our money on, how we want to live our lives and what are our rights as human beings. Why can't we realise that this a great myth developed and created by a market led economy which is dependent upon growth and more spending and more 'doing our own thing'.

Kazantzakis' epitaph reads Δεν ελπίζω τίποτα. Δε φοβούμαι τίποτα. Είμαι λεύτερος. -  "I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free." The first statement is not about lack of ambition, but rather in translation means 'I want for nothing'. That want or desire is not borne out my having everything, it is about having ownership of very little and having the freedom to live, rather than spend a lot of time choosing to buy things and then even more time  and money spent looking after them and protecting them. Living simply means not having to fear the trauma of theft, not being tied to location because of possessions but by relationships with people.

Whilst Waldo and I feel privileged that we are living under exactly the premise of wanting for nothing, fearing nothing (except perhaps death and the consequential separation) and of being free. It was around 30 years ago that we decided that we would have a place to visit in Greece when we retired. It took us 20 years of looking for somewhere, 20 years of financial planning, risk taking and working towards having the ability to make it happen. And at least 10 years of getting our working lives into a framework that could withstand a dual living lifestyle. We've made it, we are here, we are free. What we have is not some designer created condominium that may be let out when we aren't using it. What we have here is a ramshackle, always needing work, home. In it are the photos and remnants of our past and those no longer with us nestling with the clutter or our present hobbies, work activity and leisure.

Our freedom is to be able to stop twice a day and sit together. We have our seats on what we call 'the top patio' in the shade and from where we can watch the ships coming and going along the Maleas Straits, see our island ferry ploughing its way through the waters  between Diakofti in the south-east of the island to Neapoli on the mainland. As we drink iced coffee or water we chat about the day and what we have been doing, we work out what to do and we gossip about friends and relatives. Sometimes we share an issue that is bothering us; usually just by talking enables us to deal with it. But often we just sit, holding hands and share the silence. We are as one; free.