Hydra bustle
We’re back on the island again. Back watching the waves, searching for strangers to talk to, pies and cakes to nibble, ouzo to sip. This time we are staying in the port of Hydra, instead of being out of town. Here we’ve no need to clamber up a gazillion steps or to forage bread and fish and vegetables to cook for lunch. Someone else will be doing that for us. It’s a lazy time we’re anticipating, a time of people watching and of making a single beer last all afternoon, before sloping back to the room for a nap, another nap.
Our journey to get here was long and exhausting starting at two in the morning with a taxi to the airport. The airport was mobbed. Four o’clock in the morning and there’s us eating breakfast, watching so many fellow travellers necking beers and prosecco. Troops of chubby bleached blonde women in silly hats and too-tight trousers doing their best to get into the spirit of the thing. Except it’s four a.m. A rowdy couple whose bag doesn’t fit the EasyJet guidance for cabin luggage have the energy to fight with the check-in staff. They get so worked up that the check-in staff, long suffering and tired and having seen it all before, deny them boarding. Somehow having such a thing happen for such an early fight is much worse than if they’d rocked up fresh pressed and wide eyed, following a decent night’s sleep. Maybe they wouldn’t have made such a fuss, maybe they’d’ve been less inclined to combat, if it had been later. Maybe but probably not.
Watching the sun come up suddenly and blood red as we headed east at 37,000 feet we knew we would be on the island today, without a stop over in Athens, without the delay. Without having to bully ourselves into believing that an evening in Athens would be exciting. Of course it would, but it’s not what we want.
We want Hydra, the warmth of the harbour’s silky stones, the steepness of its walkways and the noise of its church bells and tooting ferries, of its multi-tongued tourists and its wonderful people. We’re here late in the season and wonder at their intrepid kindness and patience after so many weeks of frantic service to their visitors and livelihoods.
Despite the early start and the late eventual arrival, and despite the seductive charms of lots of pillows and a bed someone else has made, we venture out. Ouzo and water and the charming conversation of strangers and an old friend. She’s fascinated by writing and always wants to know how it is done. I equivocate, but I want to say it’s like walking except with words: you put one in front of the other and see where you end up. But she might take that description literally. There are already too many poor authors flooding the internet, stalking fame. Or maybe it’s just that they crave acknowledgement.
The strangers come originally from France, Switzerland and Germany and all of them live here year round, high up above the harbour with sunshine on their balconies through all the seasons. The idea of retiring here as they have done, keeps bubbling up and when we ask the family, would you come they say yes. Maybe they would. It’s a good plan, so the strangers say.
But plans are for another day. This day is for getting through the daze of sleepiness, that tiredness creeping along in the wake of many hours of adrenalin fueled excitement and schlepping. This day is for getting it together enough to make it out to the sea, getting into the sea and getting back out again. This day is for the sensuous anticipation of return to those crisp white pillows and the bed that someone else has made.
领英推荐
?
? Laurel Lindstr?m 2024
?
Fourth Grade Social Studies Teacher
2 个月Good read well done. Thank you