Remoteness

We called to see the Durrells - or at least to see their house, which as they say does look like a sugar cube on the beach - brilliantly located and now a villa-to-hire, restaurant, cafe, film-location and general point of pilgrimage down in its pretty bay.  There is a huge carpark nearby, and a sign saying which film stars have been to visit. This is the power of books and films to keep places alive, or at least to give them a new lease of life when other economic fountains have dried up.    We had drinks and looked out at the water with small boats bobbing about and children playing with floating bananas, a scene replicated in the many other beautiful bays which now play host to the tourist hordes each summer. Every bay has to find something unique to promote.... Some bays have only low-rise buildings, some have big hotels, some have old fishing villages converted to selling tat, some present restaurants lined up end to end. It's the modern way. The kitchens of the restaurants are hot and dark, whereas the terraces filled with carefree diners are light and airy.  Each greeter invites you to come and inspect how fresh the fish is in the kitchen - bream, mullet, bass - all from the fish farms further along the coast.  If I spoke Greek I would ask the girls in the kitchens how fresh they feel.
The roads are pretty good, and the driving is surprisingly smooth (compared with my previous terrifying drives around Athens a few years ago). We duck down to see Ag. Stephanos, and Ag. Nicholas - thriving tourist villages now with pleasure boats all around the water's edge, and (I notice) always one or two beautiful old boats made of wood and to an exquisite shape, professional antique fishing boats... Who knows if they're still working? They look right.
In a taverna, we see a party of priests having lunch after the special celebrations of Assumption Day. A man sits at another table playing an accordion and bellowing out some some traditional music. Posters advertise an event later in the day - the meeting of nine choirs, or something like that.
We eat, we stroll around. K swims, I attempt some drawing and painting - never enough time.
The day's excursions end with a trip back up into the glorious mountains, covered in olive groves. Someone said it was the Venetians who paid the farmers a euro for every tree they planted - well, it can't have been euros, and it must have been a long time ago, but it is striking how green this island is compared to (say) Cyprus or the hills of Croatia. A few of the olive orchards have been recently pruned, with tall trees halved and new growth sprouting out - more accessible for harvest, and also they could get all that lovely old wood to carve into spoons, bowls and chopping boards. One grim stretch had recently been burned - trees reduced to black sticks, everything destroyed, with black ash and rocks the only thing to see for hundreds of acres.  Such a fire must be devastating - the wind to push it forward and no escape if you're in the wrong place.
Higher than the fire is an abandoned village - Old Perithia - which had 130 houses, 8 churches, 15 wells, 3 threshing floors and spectacular views - until the 60s. Then for whatever reasons, it was left to rot. Not enough work, no beaches, too far away, life too hard.  The buildings are said to be 'Venetian' and indeed are very very pretty. In 2009 a pair called Mark and Saskia (and I am sorry I do not know anything else about them) set themselves to save the village. They did up one of the houses, and started encouraging others to do the same. They have signposts up asking people not to drop litter - hoorah! - and also not to fly drones which invade the privacy of others. Archaeologists have been to explore and record, the church has been spending money on the icons in at least one of the churches. There are several taverna now, and holiday cottages, and horses to hire. The twists and turns of the streets are delightful, and trees grow everywhere - it's green! Mark has written a book about it, capturing the village's history before it's too late - presumably interviewing the families of people who lived there and still remember it.  In a strange way, the death and rebirth of the village has preserved more of its genuine character than you'd find in the villages which have enjoyed continuity of purpose.
The glories of the island are spoiled by an ongoing saga or row with the company providing my mobile phone service aka access to the Internet and the ability to post these bulletins. Incompetence, stupidity, bad systems, all these combine to induce rage and/or despair.
The old life - before mobiles and computers - is still visible and tangible, with electric wires, telegraph wires, air conditioning units, aerials, dishes, all manner of 20th century gadgetry draped over and nailed to the older buildings. Up in Perithia you get none of that. You can see the monastery and radio masts of Pantokrator up on the horizon.  We were up there the day before of course, looking down on the village without knowing we'd be calling in there the next day. Pantokrator is an extreme example of the new being smashed onto the face of the old.