Day 55 - High Hopes

The spectacle at the top of the mountain where the tip has literally been shaved off, leaving a short-strip of flat land bound by death-defying drops, is called Kalymnos Airport.

The airport took longer to build than planned. The delay was caused by a realisation during construction that the runway was going to be too short. Negotiations between the contractors and the airlines ensued and, finally, a solution was found. Rather than squeeze a Boeing 747 onto the runway, as initially planned, why not try a 20-seater plane which could probably screech to a halt before the runway disappears over the edge of a 90 degree vertical cliff into the sea. And the construction was completed. Excellent solution; and it only took 15 years to reach.

We have made many attempts since arriving on the island to climb up high to a point where we will be eye-level with the plane and watch it as it swoops in to land. However, a combination of sleeping in, getting lost, and sporadic landing times have so far resulted in no successful attempts to do so. Today we give it another shot.

We are out of the house by midday – great, just over an hour until landing – and start climbing up to the church of St. Savvas, nearly at the top of the South West mountain. The sun is in full swing and we’re pretty convinced that we should have a clear view of the runway in the sky, a few mountain tops to the North.

Fifty minutes later and we are at out destination. Bugger. We have miscalculated and cannot see the runway. We wander to the back of the church and cast a calculating eye over the rocky mountainside leading up to the summit where the island’s T.V and telephone masts stand guard. Can we do it? Yes, we think we can. And so we start weaving our way up, racing against the clock as we jump from rock to rock.

Paul bounds up the cliff face without a care in the world but Nicole lags behind caught up in a whirl of paranoia that a snake is lurking behind every rock. She insists on hitting everything in sight with a stick just to make sure the python in her head doesn’t materialise. A small domestic breaks out but eventually logic and reason is restored and we get to the top.



It’s an electrical minefield up here. Scattered cables, wires, and rusty aerials outnumber the rocks and shrubs, but we manage to negotiate a path to an outlying piece of rock with an excellent view of the landing side of the runway, and set up the video camera. From where we are, the footage is going to be spectacular. We could probably read the date on a newspaper through the plane windows from here.

Once set up, it dawns on us that if the plane crashed, we would capture the entire tragedy on camera. How terrible! Yes. Horrific! Yes. What would the footage be worth? And we spend the next 5 minutes debating our minimum selling price.

We hear something. Yes, the sound of plane engines in the distance. The tension builds. Any minute now we are going to be touching the wings. And then Nicole spots a plane taxiing to a stop at the end of the runway. Unbelievable, it has landed from the North side of the island and we have missed it again. Of course, it has landed into the wind and if we had bothered to look at the sea, we would have seen that it was blowing from the South.

The take off is unremarkable and we head back down the mountain with no footage in the camera that we could either pimp to the highest bidder or turn into another You Tube masterpiece.

However, we find that a Greek pilot has left his co-pilot to deal with the technicalities of landing whilst he captures the great descent on film. Check it out on You Tube.

Day 54 - What a Load of Rubbish

One of the truly brilliant things about Kalymnos is the rubbish. Not just a few drifting sweetie wrappers and fag butts, a la Glasgow, but big proper dumping - everywhere.

Go for any walk, especially round the edges of town, and you will find dead motorbikes, ex-cars, piles of former mattresses and old ironing boards. Abandoned boats, miles from the sea, is a local speciality.

And is it really such a bad thing? When you happen across a scarlet red washing machine like this which sits so artfully amid the biblical landscape of the road to Vothini, you can see the positive.

Back home, the Scottish Arts Council would fund this kind of thing. The chap who dumped/installed it would rattle out some trite manifesto about the juxtaposition of nature and technology, become briefly micro-famous and get a write-up in The Sunday Herald. Another triumph for art!

There's none of that nonsense here. Just the rubbish or, if you prefer, the art.

Day 53 - Millionaires Row

OK - the whole point of moving here to Greece was to buy time to plan how we're going to generate an income online so that we can become "financially independent".


We've been wearing out our thinking socks and have brewed up LOADS of different website ideas which are all genius. If you are interested in finding out more details, you can buy them off us for $1000 each. Send us an email.


But now we have settled on one idea to go ahead with for our first project and we are preparing our site: planning...


Of course, being THE PERFECT COUPLE means that all of this is being achieved with NO arguments and NO strops and NO marital strife and NO swearing.


You've guessed it... this is a dirtier lie than the Iraq War pretext - but there's a price to pay for being two such gigantic creative talents who are also always right.


So can a good romantic relationship be a good working relationship? What do you think?

Day 52 - Greekonomics

Hey! Do you know how amazing the situation is here? Do you have any idea?

Look at the picture - every single house has a solar panel on their roof. You know what that means? Yeah, that's right, free hot water and electricity forever!

Every house has a garden and every garden is full of natural food which just grows. For example, our place has dates, figs, oranges, garlic, eggplants and lemons and we have olive trees at the plantation. The sea is at the end of the street and it is absolutely chock full of fish. That's right: free food!

All houses here are kept within the family and never sold - merely passed down through the generations. That's right - no one in Greece has a mortgage or any rent to pay!

In fact, everyone's basic needs are taken care of to such an extent that any money a Greek person earns or finds can be spent on luxuries. Which is why they all smoke 40 fags a day - and even the fags are about a pound a pack. Wow!

Day 51 - Sick Pussy

Everyone downstairs has caught the flu. First Maria was sniffly on Thursday and Friday, then Michael picked it up on Saturday and now, mysteriously, Avramopolous the cat seems to have caught it from somewhere.

Although, perhaps it's more than just a cold. As well as sneezing and sniffling, Avramopolous (pictured right, lying down) isn't eating and is thinning visibly by the hour. His condition causes such concern that an emergency trip to the vet's is announced.

The vet's place is a brand new building, all nice wood and smooth plasterwork. We actually noticed it for it's shiny quality on a walk last week but misread the sign and took it to be a gynaecologist. Yes, our Greek is not improving.

Anyway, the vet does her vet thing, admits that she doesn't know what the problem is and promptly charges Michael 40 Euros.

We make a joke about the cost of pussy spiralling out of control and laugh like drains.

Unimpressed, Michael decides to wait a few days for the return visit because if Avramopolous "pops off" anyway, then the money will have been wasted.

Economia!

Day 50 - What Christmas?

Oh, is it really just one month to Christmas? You know, we never even noticed. We are only reminded of the God-Birthday when an email from the UK mentions the cursed festival.

Here in Greece, no one seems too bothered yet. We haven't seen any big stupid Santas or snowmen gatecrashing the shop windows, just the usual clutter. And we've heard no terrible carols over the speakers in the supermarket - only the standard "life is pain" Greek music .

We haven't noticed any Xmas ads on Michael's TV and no do-gooders have asked us to think about "others less fortunate than ourselves (at this time of year)".

Call us humbug, but it's a nice change and evidence that Christmas doesn't have to be like the consumer-fest we have gotten used to during our lives.

There was never going to be any big spending for us this year anyway - but we have decided that our Christmas treat will be a spinach pie from the Aladdin Cafe. How we miss them from our time at the olives. Ho ho ho!

Day 49 - Animal Cruelty and Sex

There's a sad dog who lives by the wharf. It's a chocolate brown coloured beast that looks like some kind of Weimerarner.

It lives, chained to a rock, on an open concrete platform at the bottom of a set of stairs that lead up to someone's house. The people who live there must feed it occasionally because although thin, it's still alive.

But every time we pass, the dog is alone and seems to say with it's big sad eyes... "Please love me." It's as if the dog is chained not only to a rock, but to lonliness itself.

Boo Hoo.

On a lighter note, we have managed to capture video of two flies having sex with each other. You can watch it on YouTube