And so is everything else!
Goodness me, is that the sun out there? And spring flowers?Better blog it
quickly before it disappears again.
Ten days into March and still we wake up almost every
day to a gloomy Corfu, dreary with drizzling
rain, dark and depressing.
Why do so many words for negative descriptions begin
with a D?
What is it about the letter D?
Dismal, disgusting, doom, dim, dark, dank, dire, dreadful,
desperate … and so it goes on.
I know there are Spring flowers out there in the
dripping olive groves and on the sodden banks but their beauty is obscured and
almost invisible, their colour leached
and stolen away. Here and there, however, one glorious example of beauty in
miniature raises its exquisite head, as in this photo by my friend Sue, of a
Milky Orchid, one of so many to be found in Corfu.
It seems that nothing can prevent Nature from obeying
its own laws of inevitability and whenever the rain stops for a brief moment, a
bird, bursting with the need to build a nest and mate, darts through the barely
budding branches of trees that have yet, in many cases, to put out new foliage.
Eagles were riding the thermals above the crags of Mount Pantocrator
yesterday; Scops Owls held a reunion outside my bedroom window last night, and
the cat now prefers to stalk the garden bushes rather than stake out the sofa. I
haven’t heard a cuckoo yet but I have heard
the first strimmer! Nature is on the mov
But inevitability guides the course of the Greek
calendar year too, and even though the great Eastern Orthodox Easter
celebrations will come at a different time most years from those of the Western
Church, and particularly late this year (6 May) they will come, with all their
tradition and ceremony, both majestic, magical and even a little mischievous.
We are almost at the end of the Carnival period that
precedes Lent. In Greece,
the Church tends to diplomatically ignore the pagan spirit of these
celebrations – far older than Christianity - and fit in where it can. Bawdiness
and vulgarity are displayed in the choice of costumes in a way that would have
been very familiar to the Ancient Greeks. I guess that is something that has
never changed. Human nature!
In Corfu and the other Ionian islands, however, much
of the Carnival atmosphere dates back to the days when the islands were ruled
by the Venetian Republic.
Every part of Greece
has its own particular customs for this period, and while Patras is held to be
the biggest, brashest and best Carnival in Greece,
I have always loved the Corfu Carnival.
My introduction to Carnival here was in simpler times,
when I answered a knock of my front door to find two masked and giggling
‘ballerinas’ with suspiciously large biceps lurking on my doorstep. They pushed
past me, filled the house with confetti and blew loud party noises at me before
departing. I never did find out who they were!
Last Thursday was what we call ‘Tsiknopempti’ – on the
evening of which people gather in homes and tavernas to eat as much meat,
usually grilled, as possible before Lent begins. The air is filled with
‘tsikno’ which is the smoke that arises from the meat as it cooks.
Needless to
say, this eating spree is accompanied by plenty of wine and beer and Greek
music.
Nest Thursday evening will see the ‘Petegoletsa’ which
is a completely original, Venetian kind of street theatre, with women (usually
from local theatre groups) standing at the windows of the old houses in the
town centre, hurling insults, abuse and scandalous gossip at each other across
the alleyways. Petegoletsa means gossip and is a good example of how
unfathomable the Corfiot dialect can be to outsiders. You really do need to be
a Corfiot to appreciate the innuendoes of the dialogue
The people of Corfu
have always celebrated Carnival with great wit and ingenuity, which is
reflected in the costumes invented each year. My family always seem to raid my
cupboards at the last minute each year which has led to come interesting
outfits!
In fact, the Afro wigs come out year after year -after year...
Some of the most traditional costumes belong to the
Venetian period – the long black ‘domino’ gown of the doctor or notary of the
times, Punchinello, the ballerina and so on. Today, political figures local and
international are widely satirized.
The last weekend of Carnival, with the burning of King
Carnival himself, is followed immediately by Clean Monday – Kathari Deftera –
an unofficial public holiday, celebrated by taking a picnic out to the seaside
(never far away in Corfu) or into the countryside, and praying for a good
breeze to fly the kites that are so much a tradition of this day.
They can be bought readymade but my husband used to
make ours, huge and meticulously constructed from balsa wood, coloured papers
and foil and miles of string. He learned the craft from a famous kite-maker of Piraeus – does that sound
like the title of a book?
By the time the kites were aloft at the end of a
surprisingly weighty length of string, the kids were tired and Yanni was left
to fly the kite alone. A favourite spot for us on Clean Monday was always the
headland at Kassiopi on which the fortress then stood alone, unfenced, bare of
trees, with no villa neighbours. Most of our kites found their way across the
Channel to Albania
in the end where they probably served for target practice.
Clean Monday picnics are supposed to be composed of
foods that have not involved the shedding of blood and are not obtained from
red-blooded animals. We have feasted off fresh spring lettuce, dill and onions,
taramasalata, baked yigantes (large butter beans), pickled vegetables, every
kind of shellfish, octopus, squid, cuttlefish and shrimps, and of course the
wonderful flat bread baked only for this day and called lagana. The meal is
always finished off with halva,
either the commercial kind made from sesame or the home-cooked variety made
from semolina.
There is an unsophisticated, old-fashioned joy in the
whole event; strangers chat to each other, children in their best clothes romp
on hillsides and cover their white tights and new chinos with grass stains and
it is all part of the day. Only the haughty teenagers are there yet not there,
plugged in to their electronic devices. Food is grazed on all day long , and
frequently supplemented by oranges gathered straight from the trees, or clams
dredged up by a keen snorkeler, or a handful of wild asparagus gathered on the
steep slopes above Nissaki.
Clean Monday allows us the unique and very virtuous
pleasure of eating food that has travelled the least possible distance from its
source to your lips. In Corfu it is a unique
and wonderful experience. The breeze seems to blow away the last vestiges of
winter and leaves you refreshed and revived for whatever the summer may bring.
Corfu has come through a difficult winter and maintained
the spirit of Carnival yet again. Long may that spirit live.
Signing off with another word for the weather that
begins with D – double-cross. Two days of Spring promise then a night of crashing, thrashing thunder, incandescent
lightning and hissing rain.
Is this Spring in disguise?
Thanks to Sue, Frosso, Julie, and Jo for the use of their photos.
