Author: lindsayford

Each day in lockdown gets less surprising, but what has kept me going has been the unpredictability of the weather. It’s been a mixed season on the island, so each day is a mystery unfolding that starts with staring out of the window, cross checking the weather forecast and dressing for all the seasons! As clouds gather in billowing plumes as the sun rises, I am left wondering what kind of signs are these. Planning a day inside or a long walk, and always if possible, a swim; a run to the supermarket in between rain showers. Life feels close and present, immediate and subject to change. That’s been a good thing.  

Normal Christmas (what even is that?) was not an option so we decamped from the coast to stay in Ano Syros. A few weeks tangled themselves into a joyous longer stay where I got used to scaling steps and seeing the world from the hill – watching the solitary shadows of light dance along the worn cobbles. The rituals of living in the oldest part of the island were a good reminder of what’s important; even if that meant it turned fetching drinking water into a near daily adventure and battling the cascading waterfalls flowing down the marble steps when it rained. 

Up and down the hill I trudged reminding myself of the strength that lies in belonging to the family of things. Order, history and belief. Long lean threads of life walking down stone paths and forever repeating. Out to the valley at Finikia, past the Springs – fallen leaves mulching in the damp earth. The stones marked by worn indents in holding the tide pools of years unknown. The path green soaked in growth and newness creeping over old Winter, shedding darkness from the edges of days. The smell of petrichor rising from the earth. 

Το άρωμα της βρεγμένης γης μας μεθάει γλυκά 

(The scent of the wet earth makes us drunk with sweetness)

The cold slap of footsteps on the path outside the house became a clock ticking- with so few people living there I found the noises familiar after a while. The mule’s steady clopping hooves – the builders chatter; the women leaning over the balconies to share news as they hung the washing out. After a while these sounds join the bells of each church and sound like music. Little orchestrated symphonies of daily life. 

It became easy to deduce the same person headed out to work – realising how that fact of leaving the house at a certain time, appointments and plans had become as rare as knowing what day it is. Those days past when schedules would have to be set; early showers and grabbed lunches from fridges, catching buses and trains, walking out onto dark streets waiting for dawn to signal out the day. Reading snatched pages of books of crowded trains, breathing in the scent of warm bodies and their breakfast.   

Other people have almost slipped into nothing more than memory – a conversation in person is snatched – brief hellos, requests at the bakery (the lady calling me Koritsi mou every time), simple and gracious passings of the time of day, the air is cold, the sea is warm; just a handful of words come out of my lips to anyone outside the house.  

Everyone recognises Ano Syros as the upper town. The medieval settlement dates back as 1202 when the first iteration of St George’s was built.  He’s seen a fair few makeovers, but since the 1830s its been the same recognisable broad peachy coloured Cathedral on the peak.  What I like about this town within a town is that it is and isn’t a ‘typical cycladic chora’ – it does have elements of whitewashed houses and blue domed churches, winding stone streets and shocks of pastel shades and bright leaves of bougainvillea, but it’s history and identity has been forged over many centuries of Catholisim since Frankish rule. Leaving a legacy of a greater concentration of Catholic worship in Ano Syros than any other. Much of this is reflected in its architecture which is as confusingly layered as it is diverse. No house looks entirely alike; balconies and terraces are jumbled, stone work and pastel hues compete with white wash, so none look entirely out of place. Each house built upon the next, walls leaning in to one another and layered over; ancient dry-stone walls competing with modern concrete. 

Ano Syros is possibly the only place in Greece with a Catholic church dedicated to Saint Sebastian.  In medieval times, Saint Sebastian was regarded as a saint with a special ability to protect from plague, and devotion to him increased when plague was active. 

In fact I was reading up about how well Syros fared in the Spanish Flu outbreak 1918. Apparently the enterprising nuns at Agia Varvara, the imposing Church on the road down to Kini took down the icon and brought her to Ermoupoli. For months the icon was displayed in Miaoulis Square to save the inhabitants of the island from Spanish flu. Whether you believe it was good timing or religious intervention, when Spanish Flu cases reduced they managed to get enough donations to start the building of the larger church of Agia Varvara after that. If you haven’t seen the icons and painting there I’d recommend a look – the original icons and ceiling painting are as beautiful as they are brutal. Saint Barbara is often the patron saint of soldiers and miners, used to protect those in battle or using explosives – which given that the site of the original church lies on the Ermoupolis – Episkopio – Kini path which leads to Varvaroussa beach (after Delfini) where other stone quarries were sited, I have wondered if there is that connection. Perhaps the miners and quarrymen stopped in on the way to pray? 

Perhaps if there’s ever a place to spend time in a pandemic, it’s a place that has already survived the plague, alongside a variety of epidemics like cholera, the black death, smallpox and the Spanish Flu. Alongside wars and invasions from pirates – whatever history has thrown its way Ano Syros has seen it all before.  Each crisis layered over and rebuilt, evolving into the place it is today.

The month has turned to November. The season ebbs, showing frailty, reminding us of mortality. A blue moon rose last night so large in the sky it was easy to feel small, far away and distant. 

We have just returned from a little slow travel around the Dodecanese islands – unplanned, on a whim, every few days we moved on, savouring what felt like the last of summer.  Only after the clocks changed last weekend did I really acknowledge a sharpness of shorter days. 

Over three weeks we visited Leros, Symi, Kalymnos, Lipsi and Patmos. Each very different and with their unique charms. Although the weather was glorious there were little markers here and there of the season ending; tour boats returning to the docks to repair. No more bobbing in the harbour plying their trade; ripped flags flapping in the breeze. Their chalk boards with itineraries and special offers wiped clean. The odd restaurant closing up early – places opening late in the day or not at all. Everything seemed on a whim and I liked the sense of unpredictability.  Not having spent a full autumn in Greece before (normally a return to the UK calls) I was enamoured by the sense of things winding down – the slow and thoughtful preparations for change.   

In Leros my dream of staying in a windmill came true. Circular rooms, no corners or edges to hide in. No shadows. Out on the terrace high above Panteli I sipped coffee at sunrise; the clouds billowed and the bare islands jutted out near the distant coastline of Turkey. An almost silver shimmer to the metal coloured water. Islands seemed to float and merge and change shape with the weather. Stillness in the air – a far off chirp of birds, the cicadas soft singing. I wondered if this was happiness and if it was, I’d be thankful that it made me the luckiest person alive. Or perhaps it was so quiet and still that I was the last person alive. Either could be possible this year. Leros was strange and fascinating – slightly dark and edgy history with a lot of abandoned military sites and buildings that I’ll write up soon.  

Last week in Patmos I took the day off for a hike.  Finding myself alone on a beach in the village of Grikos, the sea lapped calmly at the shingle and the sun was hazy but still warm enough. Still warm enough to swim. Still warm enough to wonder why no one else was here. How precious it all is – the silence of uninhabited places. With hotels at this time of year you can never really tell when they closed their doors – whether it was years ago or just last week. All signs of life stripped away, folded up, closed inside. Hinges rusting in the salt air. This is why I stay; to see the seasons change, to hear the voices fall to a whisper, to hear the sea untamed and feel the distance. Perhaps that itself reminds me how close we are to the people we miss. 

I’d call this a year of almost-things. Almost-here, almost-there.  For many the year hasn’t happened – strike off 2020 and call it over. In tourist-heavy places like Kalymnos and Symi the talk with locals was of the summer that never happened; the cancelled bookings, the tourists that never came, opening so late with such uncertainty, a few good weeks were the best they had. Businesses may not open next year. Wherever we went I noticed hand scrawled for sale / for rent signs. They seemed to multiply overnight, raggedly hanging from lampposts, little scraps of yellow hope. People are rightly worried. The looming lockdown across Europe makes us all hold our breaths, keep conjuring the spell of distance, play it safe. 

Back on Syros the village has returned somewhat to its primordial state. After the rain on Tuesday the hills have been washed clean of the summer dusty burnt haze and looking fresher. The summer houses and apartments are closed up. This is probably the last weekend for the beach tavernas – as warm days will become rarer. Taking advantage of pleasant weather a few people swam the 2km along the coastline from Delfini to Kini – that was a first for me. At about halfway the waves seemed to build; my goggles steamed up and my strokes felt as if they were taking me in circles. I looked down at the jagged rocks below and up to the path on the headland, realising that keeping going was the only option. 

Autumn seems to be marked by vacant spaces making bells, birdsong and animals seem louder. Kinder sounds like these replace the hurried revs of mopeds and cars. Even the sheep are bleating across the terraces. Scraggly sheep herds have been brought down to the village to graze on patches of land.  Earlier I watched a dozen goats munch their way through a patch of land sandwiched between two houses. Happily chewing through the freshly sprouted grasses and green clover that has grown suddenly in the days since it rained heavily. Nets are being hoisted to the fields and laid out ready for the olive harvest. The air is fresh, cold by sundown when long moonlit nights await.  

Perhaps there is a slow violence as the season changes – a shiver of fear creeping into the last of the warming sunshine. Perhaps it reminds me of distance. The idea of distance from all that summer was; slow and welcome, syrupy warm. When it comes, winter arrives in the opposite direction; rushed and cold. Our eyes face the horizon anticipating the storm. Wondering at the last minute if I have gorged on enough of summer to get through the winter, much like a bear puts on fat to survive hibernation. 

I’ll prepare for winter with what we have, where we are.

Stepping outside was a sensory overload. As someone who had not stepped outside the 10 mile radius of a small Lincolnshire village for 100 days it was pretty monumental even getting on a bus.  Face masks and social distancing in practice – although there were 4 people on the double decker bus including the driver.

But I found a sudden and unexpected joy in such a tiny journey. It snapped my limbs into liquid when the bus lurched forward, speeding up the slow landscape into a new light. Poppies blurring a smeary red across the fields, the hills ebbing away, the houses receding back. After months of busying myself at a desk, in a house venturing outside only to watch nature – the closest I had been to travel was pushing through a run as a breathless way of gathering speed against the inertia – there I was moving at 5omph feeling small and magic and excited again at the outside world. 

We locked down in March’s bare branched silence – Spring peeling its way in, unfurling outside the window of the rented cottage, leaf by leaf. Listening to the crows. And even when Midsummer announced itself there were so many quickened hours of daylight I didn’t believe it still got dark. My faith held the elusive night’s existence in the same way I held a belief that this all could be over;  that a world could exist with vaccines to guide everyone equally to safety with zero transmission rates. I still hold out a small hope that we will come through this, better and kinder. 

That same unravelled thought led me to realise I couldn’t remember the last time I walked on a street in darkness – the beauty of shadows bathed in acidic yellow streetlight. Yet all through Winter I lived in the dark, inhabiting the same grey shadows commuting early doors and late nights on dark streets greeting the same worried faces on the platform under illuminated lights. Shuffling into seats and passing days, complaining at the dark sulk it let loose in me.  Nothing foretold anything about what would become of these rituals when the pandemic struck. Soon all the commuters disappeared into home offices or office homes. The furloughs, the redundancies and economic gloom are just one side of the devastation wreaked by Covid – the other is a lost life behind every of the 500,000 deaths. This is the battle that weighs heavy on us all. 

 What did I do while the numbers on the screen raced and days passed quick as breath? Like most people I did not know what day it was and constantly thought about food while I refreshed the endless news cycle. I zoom-watched my friends and family take on new roles as caregivers, homeschoolers, super-multi-taskers and day-dreamers. In less than a few weeks the world became divided by class lines; those who knew what a sour-dough starter was and those on the front line who went out to work each day. I guiltily plodded on and wandered the green lush wonder of the landscape.  I became lost as the wind howled over the flat plains, emptying out the last of what I thought mattered.

I stumbled on a railway crossing where an abandoned bar and hotel stood. Peeking through the conservatory window -the table set as if they ate breakfast, stood up and left. Bean juice dried at the edges of the plate – a violent streak of yolk on the knife where it lain unpaired from the fork. I was always taught to  to set them in the middle to say you’d finished. Perhaps they never had time to finish at all.

I realised that in the high pelt of sun stalks of corn are almost blue before they yellow. I watched light pinging off glass and listened to the sound of the grass being mowed -the hum and cut of blades. I watched rare planes streak vapour trails across the sky and stood still. I learned the smell after rain is called petrichor after the  Greek petra, “rock”, or petros, “stone”, and īchōr, the fluid that flows in the veins of the gods in Greek mythology. I inhaled the petrichor at dawn in a garden I first thought so vast, only to grow used to its small strange reality. The lilac blossom and scent of roses outlasted my anger. But still don’t know what day it is or how to make sour-dough.

I am sure I am not alone with nervousness towards leaving lockdown – weighing up the risks alongside the political encouragement to get back to ‘normal’. I look around at the roads filled up, pavements busy and shops open as if each one of us is living on slightly different pages of a distorted history book. Each staking a claim on the experience and working out what route to take. 

Which way now?