Ouch! The Difficulty of Trusting

I've been suffering from exhaustion since our return from holiday, as has the Husband. So much so that we'd been wondering if we'd picked up some sort of virus that has made us incapable of staying awake much later than nine pm! Probably not though: I think in fact that wonderful as our vacation was, it was in no way restful, and that we succumbed to the temptation to fit too much in. So the price for that is a bone-deep weariness that refuses to budge.

It's been (and promises to continue being) a weird sort of week. Daughter #3 has had two of the four teeth removed in preparation for the application of the 'train-track' braces that will allegedly correct her rather eccentric dentition. She doesn't look like she has an 'overcrowded' mouth, but we are assured by the orthodontist that a few years down the line, if uncorrected, she will suffer from more teeth than mouth. But he would say that, wouldn't he? It's in his financial interests that children come to him to have their teeth straightened and aligned. Although he seems a reasonable and honest practitioner, every child under his care represents a big fat pay-check from the National Health Service (even more so, if we'd gone to him under his private incarnation). And there seems to be an element of fashion involved: almost every child in my daughter's year appears to sport a mouthful of metal. Braces were around when I was a young teenager, and indeed I wore them for a couple of years, but they were the sort fitted to a plate by our family dentist, rather than as the result of a drawn-out referral process.

So yesterday I had to sit and watch my child be...well....mutilated in the questionable quest for regularity. And it was horrible (though she was uncomplainingly and unflinchingly brave - bless her!) to see two perfectly white and healthy teeth being levered out of her jaw.....and the same will happen again this coming Friday. My toes were curling inside my shoes: it seemed so....wrong, and I seriously questioned why we were putting her through this ordeal.

But sometimes you have to defer to someone who knows better than you, even if you can't see the immediate need. If you put yourself in the hands of experts, you have to trust that they have gained expertise that is superior to your gut-feeling, or else there is no point in committing yourself to their care.

A similar situation has arisen with the Husband's sat-nav, which has me rolling my eyes. He decided that it would be a good idea to buy one as he often has to negotiate his way to distant offices and sites and is, by his own admission, not the best navigator, particularly when driving.

So a sat-nav seemed like a sensible option, and was bought, and installed. We decided to try it out on our way to the airport, but as soon as it gave my Husband an unexpected direction (turning off the motorway too soon), he had me looking at the road-map questioning the route it was taking us on. I told him what I thought was going on (two sides of a triangle rather than one) and he decided to press on until he thought he should turn off. And lo and behold! By remaining on what the Husband thought was the correct route we ran into road-works (that the sat-nav 'knew' about throught its live update facility) that lengthened our journey by more time than if we'd obediently trusted that sat-nav was right.

Have faith. Sometimes we aren't the experts we imagine we are!

Back Home

I'm sitting in the living room looking out at rain of monsoon proportions, beating against the windows.

It seems scarcely believable that at this time last week we were sitting in a taverna on the slopes of Mount Ipsarion on the Aegean island of Thassos, dining on the local Greek specialities ('fried pies', feta-stuffed courgette flowers, and cheesy garlicy mushrooms), looking across the shimmering, sun-blasted, rocky hillside. We did try to walk the path up the mountain, but the sun was just far too hot and before long sweat was literally pouring down our backs. Unwilling to risk either sun or heat-stroke we returned to the jeep, and took a joyous and breezy downhill ride back to our apartment where we splashed gratefully into the clear sea, not 50m from our front door.

So once again the family summer holiday recedes into the rolodex of memory, leaving a miscellany of impressions, sensations and atmospheres.

We had an absolutely wonderful time - probably the most enjoyable holiday yet. We'd booked it independently in the January of this year, the Husband diligently researching suitable apartments on the island and finding a gem on the outskirts of the main town Limenas.

We arrived via a flight from Manchester to Kavala, a taxi-ride to the port of Keramoti, and a 35 minute ferry-ride across the narrow strait to the pine-clad island that rises straight out of the sea to the summit of Ipsarion some 1800m high. Our landlord was waiting for us and carried us and our bags to our holiday home. We were more than impressed. The property was newish, immaculately clean, air-conditioned (essential) with a balcony that overlooked the sea.

Having settled in and unpacked we made our weary way into town, but as we'd been up since 3am that morning, we scarcely managed to make it further than a proximate vine-covered taverna, where we gratefully sat and watched the sun going down whilst drinking a big glass of ice-cold Mythos beer.

I'd actually forgotten how huge the portions of food generally are in Greece, so we somewhat overestimated what we'd be able to manage to eat and started to struggle mid-main course. We were exhausted too, and stumbled early to our beds along a little beachside path that passed a tiny chapel (St Basil's?) where the oil-lamps burned all night in front of the icons. Its door remained unlocked at all times too, and the faithful could help themselves to candles to light under the 'candle canopy' in the front porch. The unselfconscious piety of the Greek people is moving - it was a source of wonder to me when we once stayed on another Greek island that the many little roadside shrines twinkled in the darkness, the elderly women who tended them (and it seemed to be only women) ensuring that the icon-lamps were kindled at dusk.

It would be pointless recounting our every activity during the week. We spent time on lovely beaches and in tiny coves, sitting in the shade in a bar on the old trireme harbour eating homemade bread and dips, driving up into the mountains (in the rackety old open top 4-wheel drive that we'd hired from a most accommodating and genial local company), exploring churches, monasteries, villages and the many neglected ancient ruins that lay strewn carelessly along the roadsides. We ate (and ate and ate), sometimes breakfasting on yoghurt and honey on the balcony, sometimes paddling down to the very local taverna for strong coffee and hard-boiled eggs, at other times exploring the menus and wine-lists until we'd reached total satiation. The food is so very cheap that even our most expensive meal (which came with complementary watermelon and coffee) complete with beer, wine, soft drinks and water, came in at half the price of an average meal in Sardinia.

We had forgotten how much we loved Greece. We love Greece, and when we returned home it was with a real sense of nostalgia for the holiday week, an aching longing to return and enjoy this vibrant and generous country.

But now I'm looking out on a rainy, tangled, green garden and wishing instead it was an olive tree studded shoreline against a turquoise sea....