Derek Brice

A few thoughts from your Greek correspondent ... this picture shows us on our quadbike, which does sterling work both here and on Aegina. The motif at the foot of this page is the port at Aegina Town.

The dog beside us was "King of the Island" until his untimely death a year ago. In the winter months, when his owner went back to Athens, he was "our" dog. However, we have two other dogs that we mind fairly regularly.

The Greek Easter this year was a week after the Western one. We celebrated both. On the Western Easter, I was asked to conduct an English-language Communion Service. We held it beside the hotel pool with a congregation of about a dozen people. Oddly, most of them wer Roman Catholics!

My brother and his wife came here at Easter. They are keen walkers and I was able to take them on hikes over the mountain tracks. It was there that we encountered one of the island's characters. We call him the "mock-priest". He is in his thirties, very thin, with a curly black beard. It was his burning ambition to enter the priesthood, but he did not have the intellectual capacity and was turned down. Undeterred, he did his own thing. He bought himself a priest's gown and a tall black hat, and now he wanders over the mountain paths, carrying a wooden staff, and blessing the island as he goes. He walked with us for miles, and by the time we reached our destination, he had told me his family history. Yes, my Greek is beginning to improve.

Speaking of history, this island does not have one. Over the centuries nothing has ever been recorded. Our landlady has suddenly had the idea that I would be the ideal person to write one. That will be a tall order, because I shall have to acquire materials across the language barrier. I have already discovered that there are facets of the island's past that people do not like to talk about. For instance, until 1970 it housed one of Greece's last leper colonies.

One final anecdote. Our landlady's husband, Taki, was owed some money. The debtor paid him in kind with two cockerels. They were penned in the hotel yard and for weeks, at 3 or 4 in the morning they were crowing loudly and disturbing everyone. A Dutch friend, Hans, whom we had known from previous years, came to stay. Sadly, he is now caring for a wife who is suffering from dementia. He came for two weeks rest and recuperation. Every night, the cockerels disturbed his sleep. On Tuesday, he went down to the yard in the early hours of the morning and wrung their necks. Taki is not a happy man. The feathers are still flying.