Living in Greece, Part 04

We Live Here
Saturday, 04 September

We are not exactly on holiday; we live here. There’s a big difference. Holiday-makers don’t usually have much housework – at least not until their vacation is over — and don’t sit before stacks of paperwork or pay bills or shop for their food, or cook it themselves, or do dishes afterward. Or work on their books or knit or – no, wait, I haven’t had time to knit yet…

Can you tell I’m still in a cranky mood? I think maybe a bit more rest would cure me, but I can’t rest until my house is as it should be; in Demetrios’ word, kanoniko. Thus far, I have only done a hurried job, enough to make it very livable, but I am bothered by the stuff that still needs doing: vacuuming the upholstered furniture, washing the windows and glass doors, and the like. What bothers me worse is that I just can’t do it as quickly and efficiently as I want to, used to. Signs of old age, geramata. Kyrie,eleison!

This afternoon my brother-in-law Christos took us to a super-store at the edge of town called Mega Markt. It’s very like Circuit City, full of appliances and electrical stuff. Christos says, darkly, nobody knows who owns it.

It has a rip-off scheme to keep you shopping there. They don’t give you cash discounts, but if you buy something, they give you a credit against your next purchase at the same store. The amount of the credit varies with how much you spend and the credit never expires.

So…Demetrios bought the television from them a few days ago and was given enough credit to make the new stove we bought today ridiculously cheap. (Our current stove is 35 years old and has only one working burner.)

Once the stove is delivered, the store will give us a credit toward the next purchase. But guess what? Our next “purchase” will be a tiny microwave oven we found there that costs the same amount as the credit.

The idea of getting rid of the old TV was daunting. There are always passing Gypsies calling out for discarded items. The problem was getting it to them, because it’s big and old and very heavy, and Christos says the First Rule of Gypsies is: never, under any circumstances, allow them into your house.

Finally we set the ancient television upon an equally ancient bedsheet and dragged it out of the flat and into the elevator, in which it just fit, together with the two of us. We dragged it thence into the entry hall of our building. Then when we heard the cry of the next Gypsy, we hailed him. Not such a big deal after all.

We still haven’t “done much” to write home about. Give us time to get settled. It takes longer here than in England.