Cretan Update - Stetson Hats All Round
by Ken Wanstall
THE NEW HOUSE . . . Neo Spiti
The last time I wrote work had just begun on my house build. At the time I thought it was well on the way to being finished by September 2007 (the contracted completion date). Little did I know.
Everything steamed ahead until August. The completion of the concrete shell and brickwork meant that the central heating system was next on the list of works. The timing however coincided with the Greek annual holidays and I was told that the heating engineers would not now be available until the middle of September. It was also at this time that the builder asked for an advance on the next stage payment (12,000 Euros). I’m still puzzled as to why he wanted it all in 20 Euro bills. The teller had to find a supermarket bag to put it all in.
The contract had specified that the price of the build included building taxes, which were payable at various stages of construction. The civil engineer/project manager suggested that he and I should first check with IKA (the bureaucracy involved) that the builder had indeed been paying the taxes at each stage. No doubt you can guess what we found. I can’t remember how much was outstanding, but in the end it was agreed that I would pay the taxes in future and the amounts involved would be deducted from the stage payments due to the builder.
Eventually the under floor heating system was laid in place and work continued (at a snails pace). It became apparent around Christmas time that it was going to be a toss up as to which occurred first — the house being completed or the builder going bankrupt. Eventually the house was handed over to me at the beginning of February. This was only after I threatened to impose the penalty clause in the contract stipulating a 100 Euro a day reduction in the final cost of the house if it went beyond September. As I had chosen the heating system it is debatable whether I would have won a court case, so the threat of the penalty being imposed was not really in truth an option.
I’ve glossed over the minor difficulties that arose during the build, eg
(a) The bricklayer building a brick column in the middle of my picture window because it would have been easier to make two short lintels rather than one long one. Up with that I did not put.
(b) The downstairs toilet being built just a little too small to allow the door to miss the pan when being opened. I arrived at the house one morning to find them hanging the door so that it swung outwards. Again I had to insist on the original spec, and the plumber had to find a different toilet and hand basin, which would allow the door to open inwards. I’m surprised that now that it’s done I don’t have to stand on the toilet to close the door — but it’s a near thing.
(c) I’d asked for recessed ceiling lights in the lounge ceiling but the civil engineer hadn’t communicated this prior to the men pouring the concrete, and it was not possible to do the work retrospectively.
(d) I’ve noticed that one of the items in the heating system has a sentence in its specifications saying “Not for use in an earthquake zone”. We’ll have to see what happens.
(e) No allowance was made for the hot water supply getting from the boiler to the upstairs heating system manifold. The plumber had to break through the staircase wall and run two large pipes down the wall and through the concrete staircase. I was spitting blood over this. The civil engineer blamed the builder and the plumber, and no doubt each of them would have blamed the civil engineer (who I blame).
There was also the matter of an extra 3000 Euro for the heating system plumbing, which hadn’t been allowed for, and a 260 Euro payment to the Electrician’s Union which still sounds dubious to me. Why is it that it’s not until after you’ve chosen your builder that you meet someone who says “Oh you’re letting Christos build your house — I think he’s OK — when he’s sober”?
On the whole the electrician seems to have been a free spirit as well. I told him what I wanted doing and he went ahead and did whatever he wanted to do. To say the house was handed over would seem to imply it was finished, which isn’t entirely the case.
Back in September I’d started to ask the civil engineer about requesting an electrical supply. He assured me that there wasn’t any need to do this until the house was near completion. The house needs to have windows and doors before the electricity people will make the final connection. In the event I applied for a connection on 8 January this year (the dates are engraved on my heart). The man at the electricity office said, “It will be a month or so before we come to connect the house”.
I thought at the time “that’s probably a Greek month” which is a bit of a moveable feast. True to my thoughts two men eventually turned up on 13 March, stopping just long enough to tell me “Oh you need poles to bring the electricity to the house. We’ll have to go away and plan that. We’ll be back in a month or two”. In May I went to the electricity office to see if anything was happening. It was.
Because the house is just inside the village boundary the electricity company had asked the local council at Ziros if they wanted to extend the electricity supply past my house. Ziros had surveyed the road out of the village and had indicated two extra poles down to the Venetian spring. They had then passed the request on to the provincial council at Agios Nicolais for their approval. It looks as though they decided that they either hadn’t got the money or didn’t want the extension, because I eventually got a phone call at the end of May to go and pay 2,400 Euro for work to proceed on the supply.
I’m not entirely unhappy that the council isn’t paying for the poles. If they did, they would undoubtedly want to put streetlights on them. The whole point of my choosing a location away from the main part of the village was that I wanted to be able to use my astronomical telescope without suffering excessive light pollution.
23 June saw the arrival of an excavator and two poles. For the price I paid I’d at least expected brass plaques with my name on each pole.
Sunday 10 August — the cabling team came and strung the wire between the poles 15 metres from the house — so near yet so far.
Tuesday 12 August a man came and inspected the poles and cable. One of the poles leaned back slightly so I’m not sure if the man had come to check the cabling or if the cabling team had reported the pole as being out of true. The inspector’s footprint is clearly visible on the pole, where he checked its stability by giving it a kick. I think the next stage is for the electricity company’s man to come and install the meter. My electrician then has to wire it to the internal electrics, then someone from the electricity company comes to make the final connection. The worst part of all this is that none of them seems to have heard of project planning. It seems that at each stage someone does something and then reports back for the next stage to be put on someone else’s list of things to do.
The lack of electricity has meant that the heating system cannot be completed, so that’s another small item to be struggled through and, as we’re back in the Greek holiday season, no-one will be available to do the work until September.
I’d forgotten to mention that when the plumber came and did the final work on the heating system the water pressure dropped dramatically. When I asked about this his lad told me “It will come back when the electricity is on”.
All in all, I’m considering ordering four Stetson hats — one each for the civil engineer, electrician, plumber and builder — as they’re all bloody cowboys. The only Greek swear word I know is “Mallaker”, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it applies to them all. The translation begins with a “w” and ends “er” so work it out for yourselves.
The only good thing that I’ve gained from all the sleepless nights I spent during the build is that I worked out the outline for a book to divert my mind from the house problems. All I need now is the electricity to be connected so that I can use my PC to write it all up. If I can sell the film rights I’ll be a wealthy man. I need the money to feed my cats!
A HERD OF CATS
On to other matters — I looked back at my last diatribe to you all and I can’t believe so much has happened on the cat front. It’s become apparent that cats are not at the top of the food chain on the island. There are martens in the valley that make occasional forays to the edge of the village, and I expect a cat is much like a rabbit to them. Add to that the Greek love of guns and rat poison in about equal measure, and you have a high turnover of the cat population.
My old cat died in 2007 from a virus infection, but not before one of the village cats had climbed into her basket with her (in front of the TV) and delivered five kittens. Later that year another cat brought her two juveniles to my doorstep and left them there.
In February of this year we had a snowstorm and shortly after I’d gone to bed I heard a feint meowing at the front door. Opening the door I found a three week old kitten covered in snow. It had the temerity to hiss at me when I picked it and brought it indoors. During the course of the night (2 a.m. and 4 a.m.) the mother brought another two and dropped them at the door, with the fourth and final one arriving mid-morning. The mother had obviously seen me as a last refuge against the cold.
Some of the entourage I seem to have accumulated has disappeared, but I’m still left with more than enough. To top it all, one of the February four, barely out of kittenhood herself, delivered an offspring last week on the sofa at the new house. I wasn’t even aware of her pregnancy.
I initially started to get cat food from two supermarkets, as I was too embarrassed to empty the shelf from just one, but I now go to Lidls and buy in quantity. Last week I was heaving two trays of tinned food into my trolley and a woman behind me said, “You must be a foreigner”. You’d go a long way to find a Greek buying cat food by the lorry load.
So, the current tally of cats eating me out of house and home (including some itinerant toms and queens) is: Cary, Veronica, Edith, Grouchee, Chico, Harpo, Zeppo, Polly Garter, Tweedle-Dee, Shadow, Patrick, with the latest addition — Silvers — relying on his mother. Tweedle-Dum is persona non grata after creeping into my crypt (well actually my shower) and . . .
In addition I’ve been looking after an English couple’s dog (Mandy) since June, whilst they’re visiting the UK. She had turned up, malnourished and timid at their doorstep.
She’d obviously been mistreated and had had her tail and ears tips cut off, which is something the Greeks do to hunting dogs to save them getting caught in undergrowth. Fortunately she’s an outside dog, so remains chained to the fig tree at the new house, and is happy to be fed only twice a day.
As my time has been divided between two houses, she was left to her own devices and started to chew my wooden garden furniture. The cushions were quickly reduced to shreds and the foam innards are scattered to the four winds. I made up a paste of Madras curry powder, hot chilli pepper and Coleman’s mustard, which I daubed on the woodwork, but she seems impervious to the heat and I’ve had to move the furniture and all the pot plants to a safe distance. The cats quickly learnt the limit to which the chain restricts the dog and are quite happy to sit just out of range of her. Having said that, the one tom now enters her territory and lets himself be mauled occasionally so long as it includes a good licking. Thanks to the dog the fig tree has received a lot of nutrients and water (from my constant washing down of the patio) and now has a bumper crop of juicy figs, which brings me on to the subject of horticulture.
THE GARDEN
I think I’ll give up trying to grow most “English” plants. Once again the sweet peas refused to do anything, and the flowers on the runner beans are constantly being blown off by the incessant gales we have in July and August. This year I decided to experiment with chilli peppers and bought seeds of several varieties, including Firecracker, Holy Mole (presumably pronounced Holy Moley), and the ominously named “Bangalore Torpedo”. The seed packets came with the dire warning “Do not inhale dust. Handle with rubber gloves. Do not rub eyes. If ingested seek medical advice.”
I’ve learnt that chilli peppers are graded for hotness on the Scoville scale. Your average Jalapeño Pepper is somewhere between 2,500–8,000 on this scale. One of the varieties I’ve planted is graded at 1,001,304, so I’ll have to watch how I use them.
Last year I grew some cayenne peppers, and despite washing my hands three times after handling them I got a very uncomfortable sensation after going for a pee a little while after (don’t try this at home children). The hotness does not seem to have stopped the insect life of Crete attacking the plants, so we’ll have to see what survives the onslaught.
My other experiment has been with palms and agaves. I’ve had palms from seedlings in the UK, but decided it wasn’t worth trying to ship them out here (on the coals to Newcastle principle). I think it was the dearth of palm trees in central Birmingham, where I was brought up, that has drawn me to them.
At the moment I’m concentrating on palms for outside the house and have about thirty in various stages of “seedlinghood”. Lord knows what I’m going to do with so many, but having started them off you have to continue with them. The method of propagation (I’m not boring you, am I?) appeals to my impatient urge to dig things up to see how they’re going. You put the seeds in a plastic bag with a little damp soil and inspect them weekly (or daily in my case) to see if they have started producing a root. I planted some tomato seedlings below the patio, which have been quite a success (once again thanks to Mandy’s contributions and the washing down). The only problem has been that she developed a taste for them and plucked them off the plants to eat.
TECTONIC SHIFTS
Back in February of this year we had a couple of minor earthquakes. Both occurred in the middle of the night and the rocking of the bed woke me up. I was surprised how even the rocking motion was (sinusoidal). In June we had a bigger quake and once again I was in bed (in the new house — despite the lack of electricity). This time it was quite a hefty and prolonged shaking and I lay there and thought “OK you’ve got my attention, you can stop now — I said you can stop now — You can stop now ").
Thanks to the tons of reinforcing rods and concrete, the house seems to have sustained no damage. I must get it insured.
HEALTH ISSUES
As indicated above, I’m now sleeping at the new house despite the lack of electricity and hot water. In May, shortly after moving over, I closed the sliding window to the patio and shortly after walked into it at full tilt. It wasn’t until a couple of days later that I noticed that I had a grey area in the vision of my right eye.
Thinking I might have detached the retina, I went to an ophthalmic surgeon in Sitia. She couldn’t find any problem with the retina. That was on the Friday, and on the following Monday I went to Heraklion for CAT and MRI scans at a clinic and shortly after went to another ophthalmic surgeon in Heraklion for another test.
This latter test was pretty awful and involved having a fluorescent dye pumped into the back of my hand while the surgeon took a video of its progress through the capillaries at the back of my eye. The dye made the world look rose tinted for a couple of hours
The conclusion was that I had an haematoma in the optic nerve, and that it would dissipate over time. For the next two days I was peeing out the bright yellow dye, which would have been quite a talking point if I’d visited a public urinal during that time. The only good thing that has come out of the episode is that I can spell ophthalmic without having to look it up.
WELL THAT’S ABOUT IT
Life is going along at its usual slow pace. I’m still being inundated with courgettes, cucumbers, spinach etc (and eggs) from the villagers. At least this year I have the figs to counter the eggs. Hopefully I won’t have to spend a third winter in my cold stone-built house.
I’m going to go to enrol on a Greek language course in September. Perhaps I’ll learn some more Greek swear words.
Tuesday 19 August 2008
* * * * *
[Back] | 
