After our exhausting excursion (and alcohol intake) yesterday we decided to stop by the hotel pool today. I finished ‘Sharpe’s Trafalgar’ – I had to laugh and shake my head when Cornwell said something like ‘a cockerel announced the coming dawn’ – the blummin’ things crow whenever they want – doesn’t matter if it’s the middle of the night or half past three in the afternoon – the idea they only crow at dawn is a total fallacy. I know we’re surrounded by the bloody things.
There are some parents with a child who is barely able to walk who insist on talking about each other in the third person ‘mummy is going to do this, once daddy has done this…’ They’re nice enough folks but it is eye-rollingly irritating and referring to your child as ‘clever’ when he pushes a plastic table gratingly up and down the tiles by the side of the pool takes the biscuit. It took all of my sense of good manners not to let my heat-crazed lack of chillaxation get the better of me and stride over there and rip the table from the sproglet’s small clutching hands and throw it into the pool and shout ‘look, the nasty man has gone bananas! Do you think daddy is going to punch him?’ Bump number five perhaps? (see previous post).
We were treated to a wonderful drum accompaniment with knife and fork on highchair to the traditional Greek music for the Mayflower’s Greek Night from the same sproglet. He reminds me a bit of the baby dinosaur in that odd sitcom ‘Dinosaurs’ from back in the day. ‘Not the mama!’ etc. Anyway, like I said, they are an okay bunch really and I’m exaggerating as usual. Honest. I channelled the spirit of our good lady mother Mary and let it wash over me.
There’s a quiz on at The Mythos on a Monday night that we really should have gone to instead. Neither of us were up for making prats of ourselves in a kind of ‘must have fun’ Children In Need type scenario. And frankly if you’ve seen one Greek night you’ve seen them all and usually the only attraction is the chance that flaming Ouzo might set fire to someone’s traditional MC Hammer pants.
We sacked it off after the food had been served and went down town for cocktails. The first was a disappointing and suspiciously pre-mixed tasting long island iced tea for 3 Euros at a bar that will remain nameless.
The second and third were Pumpkin Pie and Roses at a far posher gaff down near the roundabout – the bar attached to the Meni restaurant.
More about Meni in a later post. What looks like a cigar in the photo is a smouldering cinnamon stick.
It was all very classy, with funky mixed paprika nuts, and still cheaper than Skiathos. The last was at Memories – an Avalon accompanied with more peanuts.
When we got back to the hotel I read a little bit of ‘Scar Tissue’ by Anthony Kiedis with Larry Sloman while Siggy fell asleep.
I have three mosquito bites on my hands, one on the soft flesh of my upper arm (where I would have bingo wings if I were a woman of a certain age) and the Euro sized scab on my head. I feel like I’ve been in the wars. Either the mosquitos are more abundant or voracious than in Skiathos or maybe only starting my antihistamines on Day 1 of the holiday was a mistake.
Normally I am already well into a course of pills to combat my hayfever and so maybe haven’t reacted when I have been bitten in the past. I certainly remember seeing a mosquito take what seemed like a pint of blood from my shoulder on one walk around Skaithos before I slapped it away, and it didn’t leave a scratch on me. However I feel I got off lucky in the end – I got one more bit on my other arm on the last day in Kos (typical) but at least, unlike a fellow Mayflower guest, I didn’t get bitten on the end of my knob. He told us, he didn’t show us…
All photos: Copyright 2015 Matthew Haynes
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